Ever since its inception, Pakistan’s foreign policy has borne successes and failures in equal measures. With the Kashmir issue still unresolved, the policy-makers can benefit from hindsight and make the country’s external affairs less complex and more successful
PAKISTAN’S foreign policy, like that of any other developing state, has been responsive and reactive to the ever-changing regional and international environment. Not even the most powerful states with greater command of intelligence and military resources and structured decision-making process have succeeded in correctly forecasting political and security events around the world, or have followed a very consistent foreign policy. The change, adaptation and adjustment to different situations as they emerge and demand government attention are key characteristics of a good foreign policy. Foreign policy, therefore, provides, arranges and prioritizes diplomatic, political, economic and military resources to pursue both the primary and secondary national interests.
The primary national interests of Pakistan and all other states are survival, territorial integrity and defence of the domestic political order and its autonomy. We would like to assess Pakistan’s foreign policy in the last five decades in the light of these objectives. The questions that we wish to address are: How has Pakistan fared in achieving these objectives? Were there any alternatives to the different foreign policy approaches that Pakistan has traditionally adopted? What opportunities did it lose? What are its achievements and failures?
How to make itself secure against a much larger and hostile India has been the main concern of Pakistan’s foreign policy since the country’s inception. The circumstances of Pakistan’s creation, communal violence and the images of animosity and bloodshed fixed deep into the very psyche of the two nations have continued to fuel hostility between the two neighbouring countries. India’s occupation of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir provided further evidence to the fears and anxieties of Pakistani leaders in the early years of the country’s independence. The Indian adventure in Kashmir and a number of other acts were meant to cripple Pakistan before it could walk. The Kashmir conflict at a time when Pakistan had hardly any means, diplomatic or military, to counter Indian adventure, and opposition from Afghanistan with irredentist claims on its territory placed her in a very difficult regional situation. The post-World War II international community was more focused on reconstructing Europe and managing security affairs in the Middle East and other important areas than in peripheral regions like ours. What further compounded Pakistan’s problems was its limited economic resource base, which was largely agricultural. It began its journey of nationhood without any industrial base, infrastructure, or even functioning state institutions with enough covered space to house them.
In its early phase, Pakistan was able to win political support in the United Nations for a plebiscite on Kashmir against a better international standing of India. There are two reasons for that success. First, the international community with the destructive experience of the Great War viewed the principle of self-determination as the best way to resolve the problem of contested claims over peoples and territories. Second, the diplomatic skills of late Sir Zafarullah Khan, who pleaded Pakistan’s case at the UN Security Council, won us favourable resolutions.
The force of argument, the marshalling of evidence, the presentation of facts and making right connections matter even when one has the right position and a solid case to plead. Operating with hardly any significant card in hand, Pakistan’s diplomats of that period did a great job. But that was it. How to get the resolutions on Kashmir implemented or bring India to the negotiating table would require strong support and assistance from the international community, which never came about.
Pakistan’s attempts to rally support among the Commonwealth countries on the Kashmir issue didn’t yield any results. Similar efforts to mobilize support among the Muslim countries of the Middle East equally failed. The two great powers, the US and the former Soviet Union, were more eager to win India over on their side than to pay any attention to Pakistan. Nor did Pakistan’s support to the principle of non-alignment earn her any support from the Afro-Asian countries over its problems with India because of the latter’s influence and leadership role in that movement. Pakistan found itself quite isolated. We cannot blame Pakistan’s foreign policy for being in a tight corner. Foreign policy of a country is supported by its resources, power, prestige, standing and value to others in the international community. Compared to India, Pakistan was vastly deficient in all of them.
Never in history have international situations or relationships among states been permanently static or fixed. They change, and as they do, they provide fresh opportunities as well as challenges. Good judgment, vision, leadership qualities and individual skills matter in steering a country through troubled regional environments and in the process taking advantage of the opportunities that emerge. The first opportunity came with the Cold War and American efforts to align countries that would be willing to be on America’s side against the threats of communism. Pakistan chose the American side by joining the alliances that it fashioned.
The decision to join western pacts pulled Pakistan out of isolation and provided economic and military assistance that it needed to build up its defence infrastructure. It is debatable whether it was the right decision because of the domestic political consequences of a military alliance with the United States. Some historians rightly argue that military alliances derailed Pakistan from the path of democracy. The imbalances in the civil-military relations, dominance of the military in politics and its repeated interventions have considerably damaged the institutional base of democracy by marginalizing popular politics and substituting genuine representation with manipulation.
The rise of Bengali nationalism was a result of political alienation that the military rule generated. The separation of East Pakistan was largely due to the political and economic distortions that the military regime of Ayub Khan had introduced. That was too heavy a price for security through alliances that placed the military in control of the state leading to dismemberment of the country.
Coming out of the East Pakistan trauma was one of the biggest challenges both in domestic and foreign policy spheres. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a vision and strategy to pull Pakistan out of a very difficult situation resulting from a humiliating defeat that left 90,000 Pakistani prisoners in India. This was one of the most immediate and pressing foreign policy issues that he very ably addressed by negotiating the Shimla Agreement. Many of us tend to forget that he had hardly any cards to play with, but succeeded in getting the prisoners released and restoring the pre-war position along the borders.
Yet, a greater success of his foreign policy was to give a new orientation to Pakistan’s foreign policy towards the Middle East and the Third World countries. Most of it appeared to be symbolic on the surface, but this strategy coinciding with higher oil prices and ensuing construction and modernization boom in the Arabian peninsula put a new energy into Pakistani economy and society. The most significant and the most enduring contribution of Bhutto was the nuclear programme that he visualized as the best guarantee of national security against India. That was, in my view, a rational response to the imbalance of power in the region and Indian ambitions.
Defending the nuclear programme and its continuation presented Pakistan with enormous difficulties in the mid-70s. Pakistan had no leverage at all and had to remain on the defensive, arguing it was its national right to develop the programme for peaceful purposes. The western countries were too sceptical to accept this line against the experience of Indian nuclear explosion that triggered sanctions against Pakistan as well. Imposition of sanctions, denial of aid, and implied threats didn’t deter Pakistani policy-makers from developing nuclear capability. This is one of the issues on which we see a bipartisan approach and consistency in the policies of both civilian as well as military governments.
At a time when Pakistan became isolated in the late ’70s, the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan that set in the second Cold War offered another opportunity to align with the United States. In the entire decade of the ’80s, Pakistan’s foreign policy focused on seeking withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Pakistan had two choices: to capitulate to Soviet pressures and accept the ‘reality on the ground’ or support the Afghan resistance. Those who managed the Afghan policy in that decade understood the vulnerability of the Russians and had a very ambitious domestic and regional agenda. Confronting a superpower and finally defeating it by organizing counter-intervention through the Afghan Mujahideen was the greatest foreign and security policy achievement. Being a front-line state in this war, Pakistan was successful in building a broad international coalition of Muslim and Western countries against the former communist giant. At every international forum, including the General Assembly, Pakistan led the condemnation and demand for Soviet pull out. It skillfully used the opportunity to quicken the pace of its nuclear programme because Pakistani leaders knew it too well that once the United States achieved its objective of Soviet defeat it would be less tolerant of the nuclear programme and would terminate its assistance. This is exactly what happened once Soviet forces completed their withdrawal as a result of the Geneva Accords that were completed in 1988.
Pakistan, however, failed to benefit from its success against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Its goal of a friendly, peaceful and united Afghanistan evaded it in the next decade. Policy consensus on Afghanistan collapsed with the signing of the Geneva Accords, an issue that became enmeshed with a struggle for power between General Ziaul Haq and Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo. Zia had a very ambitious and unrealistic agenda for Afghanistan — an exclusive Islamic government of the Mujahideen. He rebuffed secret overtures by Dr Najibullah to reach a settlement that could lead to the formation of a national government. He himself became a casualty of domestic political polarization and foreign policy chaos.
Pakistan’s Afghan policy after the end of the Soviet occupation has been a major disaster. Neither Pakistan nor other countries in the anti-Soviet coalition paid any attention to the politics of the Mujahideen. They remained divided and factionalized, a fact that resulted in a civil war and, unfortunately, Pakistan became a party to it in supporting the Pushtun Taliban against other factions that were supported by Iran, Russia and India. That has left deep scars among the Afghans that continue to see Pakistan more of a trouble maker than a genuine friend interested in peace, stability and order. The Afghans from non-Pushtun groups interpret our U-Turn on the Afghan policy as an expedient diplomatic move made under American pressure in a vastly changed world. It will take time to repair the damage done to our relations with Afghanistan that is so vital to our links with Central Asia and so important for us in terms of our own stability.
It is for the second time that events in Afghanistan, this time with the presence of Al Qaeda network, brought Pakistan into the American-sponsored coalition against terrorism. The U-Turn on Afghanistan was a difficult decision, but a right one under the circumstances. Pakistan made virtue out of necessity. The new alliance with the US has given Pakistan a fiscal space to restructure economy and come out of the debt trap. The writing-off of some loans and rescheduling of some others and greater flow of aid are some of the windfall benefits of change in policy. International isolation is over, and the sanction regime imposed in the wake of nuclear tests has come to an end. These are positive effects of foreign policy. On the negative side, support for US operations in Afghanistan has caused internal divisions. Army operations in South Waziristan, apparently to flush out foreign militants, have alienated the tribesmen that have been so loyal to Pakistan.
Pakistan’s foreign policy has been a mixed bag of successes and some disappointments. The biggest disappointment is that the Kashmir issue continues to remain a festering wound and after so many sacrifices of the Kashmiris and Pakistanis there is no solution in sight. The problem has taken a life of its own and in the process has grown too tangled and complex to be settled any soon in the near future. Therefore, one has to be cautious about the recent thaw in relations with India. There is a possibility that the two countries might open up trade, allow free movement of peoples and increase government to government interaction. India will, however, continue to remain at the centre of Pakistan’s foreign policy for managing security in the traditional sense, negotiating nuclear risk reductions or enhancing regional cooperation. This belongs to the future to see if the two countries would understand the logic of a globalized world where economic security and welfare issues are reshaping the entire discourse on the nature of state and its relations with the society it governs.
The successes of foreign policy are not too meagre. Pakistan, starting from a very limited base and going through the painful and humiliating experience of the East Pakistan debacle, has resurrected itself as a powerful, influential, and the first Muslim nuclear state. Pakistan greatly benefited from its foreign policy turn in the early ‘60s by establishing close relationship with China. Beijing has been a valuable partner in security and development fields. It sold arms when other sources had dried up. It has been quite generous in the transfer of defence and other technologies, and in assisting big infrastructural projects. Pakistan has also used its Islamic connection with the Muslim countries very effectively for their diplomatic, political and economic support. It played a leading role among the Muslim countries during the Afghan war. But its efforts to create an Islamic economic or political bloc have been frustrated, because of the influence of other more powerful actors in the Middle East politics.
Vastly disadvantaged, operating in a very difficult regional environment, and having few cards to play with in world politics, Pakistan’s foreign policy record seems to be impressive. Pakistan had the benefit of brilliant diplomats like Sir Zafarullah Khan, Sahibzada Yaqoob Ali Khan and Agha Shahi who provided stewardship to Pakistan’s foreign policy at very difficult junctures. Since the foreign policy of a country is rooted essentially in its domestic environment, Pakistan could do better had its domestic politics been stable, orderly and democratic. For domestic troubles we have done far below our potential in foreign affairs.
Ever since its inception, Pakistan’s foreign policy has borne successes and failures in equal measures. With the Kashmir issue still unresolved, the policy-makers can benefit from hindsight and make the country’s external affairs less complex and more successful
