Hello, Madame Foreign Minister (FM). Welcome to the premier league of international game-makers. You are a reluctant occupant of the most difficult chair in the government today when all eyes will be on you to recover Pakistan’s image at a time when our country is almost a pariah in the international community. Madame FM, you will need to make some instantaneous changes to your new job description. From creating fiscal space you will need to change to creating diplomatic space. From accumulating Foreign Exchange Reserves you will now need to work on developing and exploiting all elements of national power to develop relative strength, which could then use the diplomatic space to your nation’s advantage. The bad news is that your country and mine neither has space nor relative strength at this moment to be relevant to the various layers at which the international geo-politics gets played. The key here is that final bit, of remaining relevant to the community, the global community, else what happens is that a community chucks the ‘irrelevants’ out; that is when one becomes a pariah.
Since you are new, and a reluctant FM, it is more than likely that the Foreign Office ‘babus’ will try and fill you in on every and any issue that befuddles Pakistan. If you allow what they will tell you, it will be akin to running at the spot — something we have been doing for the last 64 years — without ever making it to any place despite running. Perhaps you might ask why the alchemy not worked in their experienced hands for the decades that they have held onto the secret formula. The reason dear FM is that bureaucracies by nature work on accumulative increments to an existing process — they cannot break barriers; they are not meant to. And that is why politicos are placed on top of them to provide the visionary goalposts. Visions tend to go beyond barriers, which is why those are important. When politicos let themselves convert to ‘babus’, or their extension, they do not achieve anything. Perhaps some redemption as you venture along to Delhi on your first sojourn is that your opposite number is as lackadaisical and coached as the Foreign Office might try and make you one. That does not make a happy pair but compatible it just might be.
I am certain you know the reason why the president or the prime minister, or the powers that be, must have considered elevating you to the position of Pakistan’s chief diplomat. I hope you do not mind my calling you green, but that seems to have tilted the balance in your favour. What that really means is that instead of being the chief diplomat you will be the prime spokesperson. Now, that does not augur well for your personal political health because the two aspects of your new assignment will measure you up against the huge aspirations that the people of Pakistan will have of you as indeed is the calling that Pakistan makes of you. Politically, you must show results and from a national perspective you will be expected to alleviate Pakistan’s precarious ailments somewhat! If you achieve the latter, the first would have inherently addressed itself.
In many ways your new job is as mathematical as the old one. As any trigonometric function, differentiation and integration will accrue derivatives. Your job will remain where to differentiate and when to integrate. The tools of diplomacy are clear and perhaps the end-state too. And, in simple terms, it shall remain the overarching objective to gain and remain relevant to the global order. Your tools are space and relative strength. When you do not have these, as is implicit in Pakistan’s current predicaments, you must create these, and diplomacy and some policy tweaking at home will let you do that. At times it will call for a paradigm change; we call it a mindset change in Pakistan. Sometimes you will need to dictate such policy reformulations that can help you make your case internationally to chart space for diplomacy and validate relevance.
Perhaps it does no harm to refresh that to the world at large our ‘relevance’ anchors around two imperatives: extremism, militancy and terrorism; and, our nuclear arsenal and the fear that someone within Pakistan may misuse this deadly capability. This you will agree is converse relevance, hinged around negatives, instilling fear and apprehension. As a state thus our task is cut out. If we wish you to succeed and restore our image as a responsible nation, we will need to correct the perception on both these counts. A clear policy on how Pakistan intends to deal with the menace of terrorism at home and on how we hope to bring about socio-economic initiatives that will provide the opposing narrative to the only one in play in favour of the extreme religious strain will not only appease international concerns, it will begin to soothe domestic environment to create domestic and international diplomatic space.
Nuclear matters are more complex and technical and will need a fair amount of knowledge to handle the emerging intricacies in the nuclear domain and the need for deft handling of various sensitivities. In the short-term, the international community will need to be assured of Pakistan’s responsible approach and conciliation to international objectives of arms limitations and disarmament. The road to any of these is long and immediate responses or solutions are neither possible nor expected. The art of diplomacy will be to convert negative aphorism related to these two principal hinges of engagement with international players into positive connotations. There are other facets too of positive engagement but those will come under inventive initiatives and must be found to diversify the spectrum of engagement with the rest of the world. How about beginning with education along with trade and energy that just might find traction to global sensibilities?
In India as the new FM visits with his counterpart, she should be ready for some patronising talk by her much more experienced interlocutors. I am a witness to such first-time experience of a green FM and other epical position holders exposed to the torrents of vicious lessons that are aimed to carve notional space by their opposing numbers at the outset while the newcomers come to grip with finding the right tones. It will be good to merely listen and speak less and not force earth-shattering pronouncements. Not for the moment. After one has found her feet, the larger canvas of opportunities and how we make our case of positive possibilities seeking parallel paradigms of engagement will render more intractable issues to non-traditional treatment and some movement towards resolution. But that will come later.
One other entrapment is the popular political axiom that the foreign policy of a nation must reflect public aspirations. True, but in more mature polities and societies that have found their way. Our strategic environment is still evolving and dynamic. We shall need enough intuition to recognise the fundamentals of what is good for our long-term health and work towards gradually manifesting those. At home we will need to mentor public opinion to such ends; that again is the job of the politicians. Perhaps you will also need to carry the torch of advising your political compatriots in helping mould public opinion.
It is an assignment of immense importance and will decide how Pakistan fares in the world. So, good luck, and bon voyage!
The writer is a political and defence analyst