Who makes foreign policy in Pakistan? The answer to this question is not as obvious as it might seem; while the Foreign Office is ostensibly responsible for navigating and negotiating Pakistan’s relationships with the rest of the world, it has long been suggested that the actual agenda-setting and decision-making authority rests in the hands of the country’s powerful military establishment. Evidence for this view is usually supplied with reference to the country’s engagement with India and Afghanistan, with antagonism directed towards the former and interference in the affairs of the latter being attributed to a military-led national security mindset that sees Pakistan’s strategic objectives being secured by relentlessly countering perceived Indian hegemony through any means necessary; even if this involves alignment with militant non-state actors and the rejection of peace overtures, such as increased trade along the eastern border, that might breed greater interdependence in South Asia.

In Pakistan and a World in Disorder: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, career diplomat Javid Husain provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing Pakistan in the contemporary context. Starting with the observation that the world is currently undergoing a seismic shift in the balance of global power, with the status of the United States as the world’s sole superpower increasingly being challenged by the rise of China and the reassertion of Russian authority, Husain argues that Pakistan needs to adapt to this changing scenario by strengthening its economic base while simultaneously cultivating relationships with other large and medium-sized powers to offset the growing influence of India. In particular, as explained in considerable detail over the course of several different chapters, Husain builds the case for pursuing greater alignment with China and Iran, and for pursuing measures that could lead to more durable and lasting peace in Afghanistan, as a means through which Pakistan can chart a more progressive path forward.

There is much to recommend Husain’s account of Pakistan’s foreign policy missteps over the past three decades. Drawing on his own experience of working in Iran, for example, he points out how extensive efforts to facilitate a rapprochement with that country in the late 1990s and early 2000s met with only mixed success, largely due to a lack of enthusiasm on the part of Gen Pervez Musharraf’s government at the time, which was more interested in pursuing a counter-productive Afghan policy that was at odds with Iran’s interests in the region. On Afghanistan itself, Husain does not hesitate to state that Pakistan’s approach over the past few decades has been disastrous, both because of how it alienated Iran, but also because of the obvious fallout Pakistan has been experiencing, domestically and otherwise, due to its links with the Taliban and other non-state actors. Similarly, when evaluating the success of Pakistan’s foreign policy, Husain laments how short-termism and the delineation of unrealistic (and imprudent) goals have severely hamstrung the country’s efforts to articulate and achieve its aims at a global level.

In efforts to craft favourable relationships in the emerging world order, Pakistani policymakers would do well to analyse past missteps

While Husain’s identification of the problems with Pakistan’s foreign policy is largely correct, it is equally important to provide an explanation for why the country has failed to adopt strategies that would be more beneficial to the achievement of its objectives. Here, the question of who makes foreign policy in Pakistan assumes greater significance and while Husain is unsurprisingly diplomatic when identifying the causes of the malaise, his intent and meaning become clear by the end of the book when he attributes the declining influence of the Foreign Office, and the wrong-headedness of Pakistan’s foreign policy, to the tremendous influence exerted by the military establishment since Gen Ziaul Haq’s years.

For Husain, this is problematic not just because of the continuation of an Afghan policy rooted in the support of the Taliban and other militant groups, but also because of the way in which the military’s power has led to the prioritisation of military mechanisms through which to counter the challenges Pakistan currently faces. Given that the success and stability of Pakistan ultimately depends on the strength of its economy, Husain argues that focusing on military solutions to complex diplomatic problems serves to take attention and resources away from economic development and the strengthening of alternative civilian institutions that might be better suited to the task of formulating and pursuing foreign policy goals. Husain agrees that any truly comprehensive foreign policy would necessarily have to take military considerations into account, but simply suggests that the military must play the role of a stakeholder rather than the ultimate arbiter of what can or cannot be achieved.

All of this makes sense, although it could be argued that Pakistan and a World in Disorder does not go far enough when it comes to critically engaging with some of the imperatives that drive Pakistan’s foreign policy. That this might be the case becomes evident in the chapters on India and Islamophobia in the West, as well as some of the observations made in the concluding chapters evaluating Pakistan’s foreign policy. Talking about India, for example, Husain states that “a comparison of the essential characteristics of Hindu and Islamic civilisations would show that they are far apart from each other”, going on to use this claim as the basis upon which to suggest that India and Pakistan will always be locked in a relationship defined by enmity and antagonism. Indeed, Husain’s observations on the innate characteristics of Indian civilisation first appear as a response to “so-called liberals” and “misguided NGOs” who downplay the cultural differences between the two countries. For Husain, these differences are an essential and enduring part of Indian and Pakistani identity, and also serve to explain why India, as a rising power, would always seek to harm Pakistan’s interests.

“The linchpin of Pakistan’s grand strategy, taking into account the national situation and the security environment at the regional and global levels, should be assigning top priority to the goal of rapid economic growth and subordinating everything else to the attainment of this supreme national objective. This would require single-minded focus on and maximum possible allocation of resources to the task of economic development. However, this would be possible only if we have peace in our neighbourhood and avoid a major armed conflict allowing us to allocate the lion’s share of our resources to economic development while maintaining a credible security deterrent. This in turn would require us to pursue a non-adventurist foreign policy. Over-ambitious foreign policy goals should be avoided so that we do not fall into the trap of strategic overstretch and exhaustion in which we are caught at present. We will also have to strengthen ourselves by entering into alliances with like-minded countries to safeguard our security.” — Excerpt from the book

Husain’s emphasis on these kinds of ‘civilisational’ arguments is puzzling, not least of all because a significant amount of space in the book is devoted to countering the influential Clash of Civilisations thesis advanced by Samuel Huntington, which predicted that the intrinsic differences between Islam and Western cultures would inevitably lead to conflict between the two.

There are many reasons why this argument is flawed, and Husain’s contention that the entire debate ends up caricaturing and stereotyping Muslims around the world, with diverse beliefs and backgrounds, is not incorrect. However, to then suggest that India, a country that is home to over a billion people and characterised by the presence of significant ethnic and religious divides, represents some kind of monolithic, anti-Islamic entity is simply incorrect. Similarly, when Husain argues that Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan have strong cultural affinities on a shared religion, it could be argued that the evidence for this is sketchy. While it might certainly be the case that segments of society in all three countries have similarities based on language, ethnicity, and history, the same could also be said of parts of India. Indeed, one might even be tempted to suggest that the average Pakistani in northern and central Punjab might have more in common with a counterpart from north-western India than one from Iran or Afghanistan.

This is an important point to make because, at some level, the insistence that India will forever remain an implacable enemy of Pakistan ultimately serves to strengthen the very same tendencies in policymaking that Husain wishes to eliminate. The assertion that India is irrevocably alien and implacably committed to the destruction of Pakistan is what justifies the outsized role played by Pakistan’s security establishment in material and ideological terms and the notion that India must be countered at any cost often militates against the pursuit of peaceful and diplomatic means through which to resolve differences between the two countries, and also fuels the paranoia that any and all steps towards the normalisation of relations will ultimately lead to Pakistan’s subjugation by South Asia’s new regional hegemon.

To his credit, Husain does not fall prey to this tendency, ending the book with a plea to pursue a mutually beneficial peace with India and to avoid any Kargil-type misadventures in the future. Nonetheless, there is a tension between the characterisation of India as the eternal enemy and the recognition that military solutions to Pakistan’s problems with India are simply not achievable, and this is evident throughout much of Pakistan and a World in Disorder.

Peace is obviously desirable, but difficult to achieve in a context where the starting point for all interactions is defined by suspicion. To be sure, India also has a role to play in fomenting this atmosphere of mistrust, and Husain is correct to point out how Narendra Modi’s government in India is not a credible partner for pursuing peace in the subcontinent.

Similarly, it would be naïve to believe that India, like all other states, would not be interested in maximising its own interests at the cost of other nations, including Pakistan. However, to the extent that ideas and narratives matter when engaging with other states, it might be useful to suggest that softening attitudes towards India would be a necessary part of any attempt at achieving peace in the subcontinent.

The conclusions Husain offers are timely and welcome. In the aftermath of the Uri attack in India, when the Foreign Office has constantly been blamed for its seeming inability to counter attempts to isolate Pakistan internationally, Husain is correct to suggest that more attention needs to be paid to strengthening democracy and democratic institutions as a means through which to formulate better foreign policy. He is also correct to suggest that economic development is key to achieving broader strategic objectives at the global level, and that Pakistan would do well to build stronger relations with other states amidst declining American political and economic power. While the book is arguably too hawkish in its approach towards India, it nonetheless provides a useful and thorough overview of the foreign policy challenges Pakistan will face in the near future.

The reviewer is assistant professor of political science at Lums.

Pakistan and a World in Disorder: A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
(INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS)
By Javid Husain
Palgrave Macmillan, US
ISBN: 978-1137600295
217pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, November 20th, 2016