This article appeared in Dawn on September 18, 2011

Focused on India: Pakistan’s foreign policy

Reviewed by Huma Yusuf

Books about Pakistan by foreign academics, policymakers, and journalists have recently flooded the market. Many of these have sought to explain – and to some extent apologise for – Pakistan to the western world. As such, these books paint accurate portraits of contemporary Pakistan, relying heavily on anecdote and historical sweeps to do so. Owing to their emphasis on deconstructing the experience of inhabiting present-day Pakistan, these books may be of less interest to Pakistanis who know their country intimately but seek to better understand how it got itself into so much trouble.

To that end, Aparna Pande’s Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: Escaping India is a worthy read. An accessible academic text, Pande’s book describes the logic and evolution of Pakistan’s foreign policy, showing how much of it is grounded in pre-Partition tensions between the Muslim League and Congress. She shows how India’s Muslim elite constructed an Islamic identity to differentiate themselves from “Hindu” India in order to buttress the two-nation theory.

To some extent, Pande’s task is easy, since few will deny her basic argument that Pakistan’s foreign policy is India-centric. Her choice to revisit the historical underpinnings of that India-centricity is what makes the book an interesting read.

Understanding that history is vital for contemporary Pakistanis. After all, the extent of the threat posed by India is one of the main issues that divide liberals and conservatives in present-day Pakistan. Right-wingers buy into the establishment viewpoint that India is an enduring threat, permanently poised to dismember and undermine Pakistan. Liberals, on the other hand, are increasingly convinced that India recognises the importance, for its own growth, of having a stable and prosperous Pakistan across the border. Speaking at Aligarh Muslim University in January 1948, former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru put the latter viewpoint best when he said, “I do not want to carry the burden of Pakistan’s great problems. I have enough of my own.”

In light of this divide, most Pakistani readers stand to learn much from Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign Policy. Liberals, for instance, will be interested to read the many examples Pande quotes of aggressive statements by right-wing Hindu nationalist organisations in the wake of Partition. In 1949, the RSS raised slogans like, “Pakistan tor do, Nehru hakumat chhor do” (Pakistan should be broken up, Nehru should leave office), which contributed to early Pakistani paranoia about Indian intentions. Similarly, conservatives will learn how other Muslim countries have been closed to Pakistan’s calls for closer cooperation across the much-revered ummah and have historically maintained close ties with India.

The bulk of Pande’s book shows how concerns about India’s hegemonic intentions have driven Pakistan’s foreign policy strategies vis-à-vis Afghanistan, the United States, China, and Middle Eastern (and other Muslim) countries. In each case, she traces developments through the decades, showing how Pakistan’s India-centricity has often been to the detriment of its ties with other countries.

Given Pakistan’s current major foreign policy challenge of finding a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan, the chapter on Islamabad’s relations with Kabul is particularly interesting. Many Pakistanis are familiar with the establishment’s fears of encirclement by India, and therefore support close ties with a pro-Pakistan leadership in Kabul. Pande adeptly explains the origins of those fears. For example, she points out how the Afghan demand for an independent Pashtunistan was made in December 1947, even while the Indian army in Kashmir was marching towards the Pakistani border. She also relates how ‘Pashtunistan days’ were celebrated across Indian cities in the late 1940s. Through such examples, Pande nuances her analysis of Pakistan’s foreign policy imperatives towards Afghanistan by showing that, in addition to encirclement, Islamabad fears an India-Afghanistan collaboration to dismember Pakistan by stirring ethno-nationalist movements.

Pande’s analysis is also strongest in the Afghanistan chapter. She shows how Pakistan has tried to strengthen ties with Afghanistan by emphasising a shared, glorious Muslim past, even while rejecting Indian attempts to normalise relations with Pakistan by emphasising a shared South Asian identity. She also highlights an important difference between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s political approaches: while Pakistan aims to eradicate ethnic and geographic difference by celebrating a shared religion, Afghanistan seeks to indulge and manage ethnic and tribal differences to maintain harmony. These contradictory approaches have also strained Pakistan-Afghanistan ties over the years.

The chapter on Pakistan’s foreign policy strategy with regards to the United States is less compelling, only because that history is well-known and regularly rehashed on prime time television. Readers will, however, be interested to find that divergent strategic priorities have always marred the US-Pakistan relationship.

For example, Pande explains that Pakistan joined SEATO in 1954 in the hope that being part of an American-led treaty would protect Pakistan from Indian aggression.

However, from the start, the US clarified that it would only come to Pakistan’s aid in the event of “Communist aggression”.

Pakistan’s inability to differentiate between Communist and other (read: Indian) aggression led to its first disillusionment with the US as an ally. And as is well known, that history has gone on to repeat itself.

The examinations of Pakistan’s ties with China and Middle Eastern countries are more interesting because that history is less well-known. The chapter on China reiterates the fact that Beijing has always prioritised its own national interests in its relations with Pakistan, and stands to gain from all the aid and support it offers Islamabad.

The section on Pakistan’s foreign policy vis-à-vis other Muslim countries offers an even starker wake-up call. Pande describes how, in order to emphasise Pakistan’s Islamic identity, it sought a “virtual relocation” to the Middle East through alliances with Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Pakistan’s right-wing stalwarts would do well to read this chapter and learn how these Muslim countries have remained pragmatic in their dealings with Pakistan, and denied Pakistan’s dreams of a Muslim federation by maintaining ties with India.

There are some points in the book where Pande’s analysis seems weak because she relies on single, one-off quotes from former foreign ministers and international diplomats to provide evidence for trends in Pakistan’s foreign policy. This tactic occasionally makes it seem as if the argument is based on perception rather than ground reality.

One wishes Pande would occasionally go deeper and offer context to explain the motives for particular policy decisions by both Pakistan and India.

For example, in her discussion of Pakistan’s desire for military – and therefore nuclear – parity with India, Pande would have done well to examine further how the India-China dynamic spurs military competition across the region.

That said, Pande’s account is ultimately a balanced review of Pakistan’s foreign policy imperatives that simultaneously justifies Islamabad’s concerns while highlighting the fallout of clinging to them too closely.

The reviewer is a freelance journalist

Explaining Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: Escaping India
(HISTORY)

Aparna Pande

Routledge,

UK
ISBN 0415599008
256

pp. £85