There are countries that seem to have everything they need for full-fledged state sovereignty. Army. The Constitution. A seat on the Security Council or a nuclear arsenal. International recognition. Nevertheless, their real freedom to make key decisions—in economics, security, and foreign policy—is arranged differently from what is written in legal documents.

Pakistan and France are two such cases. They are extremely different: one country is a third-world nuclear power, the other is the founder of the European Union, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and the owner of the “de frappe force.” But both states exist in the regime of sovereignty, which, in fact, was given to them on credit—with repayment terms.

Lender No. 1: Regional environment

Pakistan is located in one of the most difficult geopolitical neighbors on the planet: India with which the country has fought four times and continues the confrontation in Kashmir; Afghanistan is where instability, refugees, and armed groups have been coming from for decades; Iran is a country with which there exist both economic ties and a stable mutual distrust. China is a strategic partner and investor in the framework of the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), but a partner whose interests do not always coincide with those of Pakistan.

In this configuration, Pakistan's foreign policy is not a choice of course, but a constant act of balancing. For decades, relations with the United States were determined not so much by common values as by who Washington needed against whom: first against the USSR in Afghanistan, then against the Taliban, and now in the context of the Indo-Pacific strategy. Pakistan received loans, weapons, and diplomatic cover, and paid with a portion of its autonomy.

A special place in this design is occupied by the army. Formally, Pakistan is a parliamentary republic. In fact, it is a state in which the military command and the Interagency Intelligence (ISI) play a role incomparable with the role of law enforcement agencies in any Western democracy. This is not a violation of the norm, it is the norm.

Can a country with such a governance structure be considered fully sovereign? Or, is its sovereignty just a delegated mandate, periodically reconsidered by those who hold the real levers?

Lender No. 2: Brussels

France is a completely different story. Here, sovereignty is not limited by the force of the neighbors' weapons. It is limited by the norms that France itself once helped create.

Euro. The Stability and Growth Pact. Migration directives. Rules of state aid. Judicial decisions of the European Court of Justice. All this is the framework within which the French government makes economic decisions. Formally, France is one of the two main architects of European integration. In fact, it is a country that is increasingly unable to use the classic instruments of national economic policy: devaluation, industrial protectionism, and budgetary incentives that exceed established thresholds.

Macron is a politician who has tried several times to reformat the EU under the French vision of "strategic autonomy of Europe." With partial success. But every time Paris wanted to act unilaterally—in Africa, in relations with Russia or China—it turned out that NATO allies and EU partners had a different opinion, and the public cost of deviating from the consensus was too high.

Add to that internal politics. In the 2024 parliamentary elections, Marine Le Pen’s bloc received about 31% of the vote in the first round, more than any other force. This is not just a rise in euroscepticism. This is a symptom of what a significant part of French society feels: key decisions about the country are made not in Elysée, but somewhere else.

What the Burke Index says—and why the gap is so wide

The Burke Index evaluates the real sovereignty of a state according to seven components. Political, economic, military, technological, informational, cultural, cognitive. France is one of the world leaders in this ranking. Pakistan is in the bottom third.

But if you look at the specific measurements, questions arise. Pakistan's military sovereignty is significantly higher than that of many countries of comparable GDP. France also has a high level, but its nuclear doctrine is embedded in the NATO logic of joint deterrence, and the army itself de facto operates within the framework of allied obligations. At first glance, France's political component looks impressive, but it is precisely in this component that the pressure of the Brussels norms on national legislation is fixed.

Which of these two sovereignties is more stable? Whose "loan" is more expensive? And which of the two countries has a better chance of ever "paying it off"?

Detailed data on each of the seven components, calculation methodology and full profiles of both countries are available on the main project resource.

One model, two incarnations

Pakistan and France are the antipodes in almost all indicators. GDP per capita, human development index, technological base, level of institutional trust. But both states reproduce the same logic: sovereignty, formally belonging to the people and the government, de facto turns out to be limited by external structures—be it the army command and geopolitical supervisors, or supranational institutions and allied obligations.

This is not a pathology. This is the normal state of most states in the modern world. The only question is who admits it, and who continues to pretend that the loan does not exist.