Daily Times

Pakistan’s foreign policy, which is often conflated with defence policy, is very unique in nature and character. For example, since the current Sharif government took oath, the Prime Minister (PM) has visited many countries, including China and, most recently, the US. However, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Raheel Sharif, and his core team also felt the need to visit crucial countries such as Russia. There is news of the COAS visiting the US in the months to come. Why does the military leadership visit different states on its own despite the fact that there is an elected government in Pakistan? Who makes foreign policy in Pakistan? These are some perplexing questions that even a layman keeps asking but the civil government is silent. Interestingly, the broad body of existing literature on this topic is also descriptive, generic and, in some cases, silent and unable to, for instance, address who made the country’s foreign policy under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto or his daughter, Benazir Bhutto.

However, before trying to solve the puzzle, it seems prudent first to present a brief review of the literature relevant to Pakistan’s foreign policy. Indubitably, there is an abundance of work produced on Pakistan’s foreign policy one way or the other. For the sake of comprehension and clarity, I have summarised major work into the following categories: geostrategic point of view, legitimist literature, conspiracy theorists, system theorists, Islamist view, structuralist literature, and legalist and ethnic perspectives.

Geo-strategists believe that Pakistan’s geostrategic location was such that it assumed a significant military role since independence in 1947. In the Cold War period, the US sought military alliances with Pakistan to contain its communist enemies in South and Southeast Asia. This literature magnifies Kashmir as a bone of contention between India and Pakistan. Unless resolved, Pakistan geo-strategically remains vulnerable to ‘Hindu’ India. However, this literature has failed to look at the domestic variables and the way they influence the making of foreign policy. Moreover, it makes no clear distinction between defence and foreign policy. Almost similarly, legitimist literature attempts to make us believe that Pakistan faced a grave security threat from India from day one. Therefore, for the (physical) survival of the state, Pakistan was compelled to enter into military pacts with the US in the 1950s during the Cold War. Moreover, this literature believes that the civilian leadership acted immaturely, thus paving the way for military intervention. It has also focused on the centrality of the Kashmir issue at the expense of many other important bilateral issues between India and Pakistan. Sir Creak’s apprehended fishermen, piracy and smuggling at sea are cases in point. Conspiracy theorists are the most vociferous to conclude that Pakistan’s foreign policy is made and operationalised in Pakistan on behalf of the US. They even believe that the military intervenes in the country’s politics to fulfil Washington’s geostrategic interests. However, conspiracy theorists obviously pay no attention to domestic politics and present little solid empirical evidence to substantiate their claims.

The structuralists have highlighted the importance of structural factors in the making and operationalisation of foreign policy. They assume that it is the structure of the Pakistani state that determines the course of its international relations. The state of Pakistan inherited structural constraints such as low-performing parliamentary institutions, a well-organised (civil-military) bureaucracy, socio-economic ‘classes’ and security threats. Therefore, Pakistan’s foreign policy was influenced by such structural variables. In the same vein, this literature claims that the military was drawn into politics due to the structural imbalance between parliamentary institutions and non-elective forces. Despite the above, this literature has, by and large, ignored agency, rationality and the context of actors, their strategies and events respectively.

The systemists view the determination and implementation of Pakistan’s foreign policy from the prism of the country’s political system and its being ensconced in the international political order. In so doing, empirical realities of Pakistan’s domestic politics are grossly ignored. The Islamist literature, on the other hand, solely relies on the Islam factor in the making not only of Pakistan but also its foreign policy. Therefore, in the post-independence period, examples are provided whereby the country not only established bilateral relations with Islamic Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia but also supported the cause of Palestine. However, If Islam were the main factor in Pakistan’s foreign policy, why did Pakistan fail to maintain good ties, for example, with Afghanistan in 1947, the 1970s and currently?

The identity literature has emphasised on identity construction projects based on the secular and the sacred in India and Pakistan respectively. In this respect, both countries’ elites, from 1989 to 1999, perceived the threat through the prism of Kashmir as a result of their emotive preoccupations with the ideologies of secularism and religion. Despite the application of the post-structuralist methodology to the comparative case of India and Pakistan’s elite perceptions regarding the making of foreign policies, this narrative pays little attention to historical facts. The fact of the matter is that, since partition, the Pakistani elite has instrumentalised religion in order to pursue non-emotive interests.

Finally, from a truly legal perspective, a couple of studies have viewed Pakistan’s foreign policy from an international law perspective, therefore underestimating domestic factors. Similarly, ethnicity literature has attempted to oversimplify the complexity of domestic political variables. For example, Punjabis are held responsible for the making of Pakistan’s foreign policy. There is no mention of political parties, politicians, civil bureaucracy and the military separately. In the light of the foregoing, it is argued that the existing literature on Pakistan’s foreign policy and Pakistan’s politics is limited with regards to its analytical capacity to explain the impact of domestic politics on the country’s foreign policy. In this respect, epistemological debate of the difference between the proponents of comparative politics and its deterministic impact on international relations, and the exponents of international politics and its overwhelming influence on internal politics is now well established within the domains of political science. Therefore, the author prefers to epistemologically posit himself within the school of comparative politics, and thus domestic political variables are preferred to the international system, structure or any conspiracy in foreign policy conception and production, and not vice versa. Conceptually, rational choice in which neo-institutionalist perspective is applied to Pakistan’s case wherein the military, political parties, civil bureaucracy etc. are assumed rational actors in the sense of having a clear conception of costs and benefits. The reason behind the choice of this combination is not subjectivity but the underlying assumptions of these perspectives i.e. cost-benefit analysis and ‘agency’ (to make things happen).

Now, reverting to the core question, who makes foreign policy in Pakistan, it is argued it was the civil government that determined the course of Pakistan’s foreign policy in strategic understanding with civil-military bureaucracy from 1947 to 1951. From October 1951 to 1958, civil bureaucracy led Pakistan’s politics and foreign policy in close alliance with the Ayub-led army. And, during the Ayub and Yahya years, the military directly determined our foreign policy. During the 1970s, Zulfikar Bhutto re-asserted our foreign policy though in strategic partnership with the army. More importantly, however, since 1977, Pakistan’s foreign policy has been made and implemented by its military. The civilian and bureaucratic input and impact is barely traceable. Little wonder then that the Director General (DG) of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) visited the US before our PM landed there. Not only this, a retired general was tasked to monitor PM Sharif to avoid a repetition of the Ufa summit. Finally, General Sharif is expected to visit the US sooner to see whether his PM has made any strategic blunder.

The writer is a political scientist by training and professor by profession. He is a DAAD fellow and the author of Military Agency, Politics and the State in Pakistan. He tweets @ejazbhatty