ABSTRACT
Thucydides argued that statesmen’s choices emerge from a combination of fear, ambition and interest. To reconstruct the fears, ambitions and interests of the statesmen who have led the major states in both South Asia and the Gulf, this chapter explores the way Pakistan and India developed their respective relationships with principal states of the Gulf, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The approach of both India and Pakistan to their neighbors in the Gulf is difficult to understand without some appreciation of how these two have dealt with each other within South Asia. The leaders of the Islamic state of Pakistan saw themselves a part of the Middle East as well as of South Asia. Pakistan found in both Iran and Saudi Arabia neighboring Muslim countries with whom collaboration was both natural and supportive. The Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war have altered specifics of these economic relationships, but they have not changed the fundamentals as much as one might expect.
