ABSTRACT
Two constants have dominated Pakistan’s foreign policy since independence in 1947: the perception of India as the primary threat to its security, and the need to ‘balance’ this threat with the help of external patrons. The great power politics has played a pivotal role in shaping the country’s persistent contestation towards India by providing the military with opportunities to consolidate its power to the detriment of civilian forces. Successive periods of foreign policy since independence manifest different types and degrees of great power involvement, of the United States and China in particular. They demonstrate that while the sources of Pakistan’s revisionism are primarily domestic and tied to developments during Partition, its persistence can significantly be attributed to the ways in which significant great powers were involved in the India-Pakistan rivalry. With the likely erosion of US military and economic support post-2014 NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistan has sought to consolidate strategic relations with China, with the conclusion in 2015 of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor accord being its foremost manifestation. Meanwhile, resurgence of IndoPakistan tensions has dimmed renewed hopes for rapprochement between the two countries. This means that Pakistan’s India-centric foreign policy is likely to persist, thereby limiting the Nawaz Sharif government’s ability to forge closer relations with its eastern neighbour. This chapter provides an overview of Pakistan’s foreign policy evolution with a focus on how its persistent India-centrism was interlinked with its reliance on great powers’ assistance. It divides the foreign policy since independence into six historical periods, each distinct in terms of level of dominance of particular patrons, with variation either driven by changes in domestic political constellations or in the external environment at a given time: 1947-1962, 1962-1971, 1971-1979, 1979-1988, 1988-2001, and 2001-2014.1
Introduction Pakistani foreign policy has stayed its course for almost seven decades. Since independence in 1947, the various political strands of foreign policy making in the country were all equally underpinned by the perception that India presented a fundamental threat to its existence and international status. Based on this
perception, ‘balancing’ Indian hostility and hegemony has remained Pakistan’s primary foreign policy objective. In order to achieve this goal despite a professed economic and military inferiority, Pakistan has sought to capitalize on its favourable geostrategic location and geopolitical prominence by entering alignments with great powers to assist in ‘balancing’ the Indian threat. As a result, it has become increasingly entangled in great power politics. How did this entanglement influence Pakistan’s persistent contestation toward India? Which forms of cooperation and great power allies has Pakistan primarily chosen, and what influence have these patrons exerted on the dynamics of its contestation? Much has been said about the sources of Pakistan’s contestation.2 The role of great powers is, however, still contested. Some observers argue that the great powers’ extensive diplomatic, economic and military assistance to Pakistan and pressure placed on India have substantially contributed to its prolonged contestation, in particular by providing the change-averse military opportunities to foster their grip over foreign policy at the detriment of civilian political actors.3 Others emphasize third-party mediatory effects and argue that in the absence of the great powers’ pivotal deterrence, diplomatic disputes and conflicts may have morphed into outright military conflicts.4 This debate emerged again when the most recent phase of civilian ascendance to power was accommodated by hopes for rapprochement in Pakistan’s India policy and received unprecedented backing by great powers. In 2008, the transition from military to civilian rule was internationally supported by the newly established ad-hoc coalition of the Democratic Friends of Pakistan (including China and the US as founding members) and the historic tilt of US aid away from focusing on military assistance to civilian support in the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, commonly known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act. It was further strengthened with democratic transition in 2013. The civilian regime under Sharif, in particular, declared its intention to boost economic and normalize political ties with India, a shift similarly supported by the US and China. However, its advances triggered the military to intervene and marginalize the prime minister – driven among other factors by the urge to regain hold over the country’s foreign policy.5 This episode seems to suggest that convergence of Pakistani civilians and great powers on improving ties with India is too recent a development and the external resolve too limited to trump persistent revisionism of the long-backed military leadership.6 A brief review of the aforementioned six periods of foreign policy in the pages ahead testifies to this assumption.
