ABSTRACT
There is no lack of turning points in early Pakistani history. The year of 1958 brought the first military coup; the Kashmir War in 1965 was a military failure and above all a political disaster leading to the downfall of Mohammad Ayub Khan; and 1971 saw the secession of Bangladesh. The year of 1962 easily adds to the list of crucial dates. There was no other third party more affected by the Sino-Indian border war than Pakistan. It triggered events which would finally add the second constant to the country’s foreign policy. From its birth, the country has been entrenched in never-ending antagonism with its much larger twin India. The year 1962 resulted in a similarly stable constellation – the axis Beijing-Islamabad, surviving all turns of the Cold War and the Cold War itself. Whatever other common interests they shared, India’s two arch rivals discovered that cooperation was to their mutual benefit. As we will see, the alliance – informal until today – did not come out of the blue. Moreover, until 1965 or even 1971 the United States seemingly offered an alternative or even a supplement. American policy during and immediately after the border war, however, made Pakistani decision-makers understand that Washington considered non-aligned India more relevant if the worst came to the worst, an assessment to be confirmed in 1965. On the contrary, whatever the many enigmatic features of Chinese policy, there could be no doubt that Beijing shared Islamabad’s interest in reducing Indian influence in the region and the world.
