Pakistan's foreign policy

SINCE 1947, Pakistan's foreign policy has gone through several phases of development, responding to the changing pattern of relationship with the big powers and the varying political align ments within the country.

In the first phase, it was an independent foreign policy in the sense that Pakistan was not formally aligned to this or that bloc. But her built-in alliance with Britain, coupled with a favourable Western attitude on Kashmir vis-a-vis India, and the fact that she was a suspect in the Communist world, all combined to tilt Pakistan's orientation towards the West.

In 1954, the second phase started with a formal alignment with the West, which, paradoxically, coincided with the establishment of a dialogue with China. The meeting of the Prime Ministers of China and Pakistan at Bandung was historic, because it gave them the first ever opportunity to understand each other. It was almost a decade later that Pakistan could put through her case to the Soviet Union.

Pakistan's foreign policy entered its third phase with the Sino Indian border clashes. It was a policy of dual alignment. While clinging to the benefits accruing from her alignment with the West, Pakistan strengthened her informal relationship with China. This paradoxical twist of diplomacy, tolerated to some extent by the West, reached its climax during the Indo-Pakistan conflict. The Soviet Union came on the scene in a big way in the wake of the Tashkent Declaration.

Pakistan is now striving to strike a balance between the interests of the big and medium powers, often working at cross purposes. The first two chapters of this book give a detailed account of the determinant factors of Pakistan's foreign policy and explain certain time-worn cliches used by Pakistani leaders, e.g. the terms "national security and survival" and "India's non-reconciliation to the very existence of Pakistan."