“When everyone is dead, then the Great Game is finished, not before”
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
The quote highlights the permanence of the Great Game, a term used by a British political officer Arthur Conolly in India in 1840 to refer to the regional conflict between British Empire and Tsarist Russia. Like the fabled Kim of Kipling, the Great Game was as much about external threat as about internal threat.
The empire apparatchiks went about countering every Russian move to make ingress into British sphere of influence with the same alacrity and efficiency as shown while countering rebellions of their colonial subjects. Three concepts of classic international relations theory i.e. internal, external and offshore balancing featured prominently in the British Great Game strategy.
External balancing was ensured through an astute foreign policy relying on a network of external alliances and neutralisation of espionage threats through a ‘forward policy’, tribal pacification, and presence of buffer entities between the Tsarist Russia and British spheres of influence. In the politically-charged post Crimean War environment, the conquest of Khiva Khanate signalled the heralding of a Victorian-era Cold War. Shrewd diplomatic initiatives like “Granville-Gorchokov Compromise” of 1873 helped douse the fires of impending conflict. Such diplomatic stratagems however resulted in negative peace as conflict drivers remained intact. The offshore balancing was also practiced – both by Russia and British Empire – by placing friendly forces in allied territory that acted as a deterrent. The successful British diplomacy thwarting Franco-German-Russian coalition in 1905 and co-opting Turkey and Persia had resulted in the famous Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 that ended the Great Game.
As all these games were being played on the Asian chessboard, the British had sedulously consolidated their hold on their most prized possession i.e. British India through political, administrative, and economic reforms. The military pacified internal dissent, while the steel frame of the Raj i.e. Indian Civil Service ensured administrative efficiency and revenue collection with equal aplomb. It was a classic symbiosis of internal, external and offshore balancing at its best. A colonial power that everybody feared or resented had effectively displayed how to survive and neutralise threats to its core interests.
Today, Pakistan is confronted with similar Great Game threats in an era where geo-economics trumps geopolitics, according to some IR experts. The question remains if geopolitics has been completely trumped or have we entered a phase with some sort of a hybrid version of the two?
However, in Subcontinent, where hate pathologies have prevented a diplomatic solution to intractable conflicts, geopolitics and geo-economics will coexist, until the sheer force of geo-economic reality crowds out the historical animosities and irrational hatreds.
A new Great Game is, therefore, challenging Pakistan’s political, military, and diplomatic resolve where the strategic competitors on the same old chessboard now include America, China, Russia, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. And China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative constitutes the matrix that features all these countries in a conflictual relationship.
The present US policy in South Asia is a negative variant of the win-win version propounded by Professor Stephen Walt. With India as a regional surrogate pressed into service to derail Chinese OBOR initiative and Afghanistan as a base to destabilise OBOR, the Sino-US rivalry is eerily reminiscent of the Anglo-Russian rivalry in the 19th century.
The Sino-US rivalry is eerily reminiscent of the Anglo-Russian rivalry in the 19th century — with India as a regional surrogate of the US pressed into service to derail Chinese OBOR initiative and Afghanistan as a base to destabilise OBOR
Pakistan will continue to be threatened and destabilised by India. Iran despite its protestations of brotherly love would continue running with the hares and hunting with the hounds in pursuit of its own strategic interests. Indo-Iran commercial ties and Iranian interests in the war-torn Afghanistan in support of its loyal cliques would continue to be a source of concern.
The US attitude towards Pakistan will remain hostage to its own agenda of countering China. But the US needs to resolve its policy paradox in South Asia by abandoning its anti-OBOR approach if it genuinely wants peace in the region.
Surrounded by hostile or estranged neighbours, Pakistan is left with no option but to try the British recipe of success in the 19th century Great Game.
For internal balancing it would need to change from a soft to hard state. The stiffening of the sinews of state through out-of-box administrative and political reforms would be de rigueur even if they entail unpopular decisions and an enhanced clout of the security apparatus of the state.
Maudlin sentimentality should not stand in the way of Pakistan while going for external balancing through military and diplomatic alliances with gulf countries. General (retd) Raheel Sharif’s heading the coalition forces would not be enough. Pakistan would definitely need to make a meaningful contribution in troops in order to retain its clout and relevance. It, however, should insist upon clarity of purpose behind the Islamic Military Alliance sans a sectarian bias. The force objectives, command articulation, threat perception, organisational structure, linkage with OIC, and political oversight must be crystal before making any troops’ contribution.
India-Pakistan Track Two diplomacy must continue burrowing at the carapace of diplomatic indifference without genuflecting too much at the cost of core interests. The test of Pakistan’s diplomacy would be to keep the eastern border quite while the mess on the western border is cleared through simultaneous engagement with Afghan government and Taliban for a negotiated solution acceptable to all stakeholders. The USA must be made to realise that the road to peace in Afghanistan would pass through a Pakistan enabled peace process.
As regards Sino-US rivalry a realistic approach would be not to expect a sea change in each protagonist’s approach. Pakistan however should endeavour to present itself as a bridge for peaceful cooperation rather than the arena of conflict between China and US. That indeed would be the true test of its new Great Game strategy.
The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; email [email protected]