Cover Story 
 

Cover Story

Perennial Quest for Survival

Our biggest challenge today is to convert Pakistan’s pivotal location into an asset rather than letting it remain a liability.

By Shamshad Ahmad Khan | March 2025


The foreign policy of a nation is always predicated on where it wants to go as a sovereign, independent state. That is the basic determinant of a country’s foreign policy. In our case, at the time of our independence, like Alice in Wonderland, we just did not know which way to go, and this turned out to be the fateful dilemma of our foreign policy. For any country, it is always important who its neighbours are, as their attitude and conduct have a direct bearing on its personality as a state. Pakistan’s geopolitical location placed on it the onerous responsibility of consistent vigilance and careful conduct of its relations not only with its neighbours but also with the rest of the world.

Four major constants have marked our external relations since the very beginning of our independence. These are a quest for security and survival as an independent state, excessive reliance on the West for our economic, political, and military strength, total solidarity with the Muslim world and its causes, and a troubled relationship with India, which, in fact, has been the centre-point of our foreign policy. A country remains vulnerable externally as long as it is weak domestically. No country has ever succeeded externally if it is weak and crippled domestically. Even the former Soviet Union could not survive as a superpower only because it was domestically weak in every respect.

Challenges of geopolitics are crucial for any state. In our case, they have been of exceptional nature, rooted as they are in our history and our geography. Besides our geo-political environment as well as an exceptionally hostile neighbourhood, Pakistan’s foreign policy has been inextricably linked to its domestic policies, governance issues, and socio-economic and political situation. No wonder Pakistan’s foreign policy has remained marked by a complex balancing process in the context of the turbulent history of the region in which it is located, its own geo-strategic importance, its security compulsions, and the vast array of domestic problems.

For seventy-eight years now, we have followed a foreign policy that we thought was based on globally recognized principles of inter-state relations and which, in our view, responded realistically to the challenges of our times. But never did we realise that for a perilously located country, domestically as unstable and unpredictable as ours, there could be not many choices in terms of external relations. Pakistan’s geo-strategic location was pivotal to the global dynamics of the Cold War era and remained crucial to the post-9/11 murky scenario. The events of 9/11 represented a critical threshold in Pakistan’s foreign policy. In the blinking of an eye, we again became an ally of the US.

This was the beginning of another painful chapter in Pakistan’s history. We became the only country in the world waging a full-scale war on its own soil and against its own people. We paid a heavy price in terms of human and material losses. In recent years, grave crises and problems have proliferated in our volatile region in a manner that has not only made Pakistan the focus of world attention and anxiety but also forced it to make difficult choices in its perennial struggle for security and survival as an independent state. Today, the regional security environment in different parts of the world is only an extension of the global security paradigm with all its alarming ramifications.


The current global security environment is marked by what we call the challenges of diplomacy mixed with brute force and a discriminatory nuclear security order. The events of the last two and half decades, representing a critical threshold in the world’s new strategic matrix, have immeasurably shaken the international system, which is no longer governed by the rule of law or universally acknowledged norms. The UN is no longer the sole arbiter on issues of global relevance and importance. Washington, not New York, is the focus of world attention for actual decision-making on these issues. Countries today have to fend for themselves in a local or regional quite often hostile environment.

If ‘containment’ was the keyword describing international diplomacy during the 20th century, ‘belligerence’ in the name of ‘security’ is its substitute during the present one. The Cold War is long over, but Cold Warriors are still out there in the driver’s seat. The concept of global security has changed from its Cold War context only to be replaced by security arrangements at regional and sub-regional levels. Meanwhile, the concept of security has itself undergone a substantive change from its Cold War context. Since the “Global Order” in which we are living today is dominated by the United States, our challenge today is how we respond to Washington’s China-driven Asian agenda.

From being a major power in South Asia always equated with India, Pakistan today is bracketed with Afghanistan

The most alarming is the US security doctrine based on “regime change” wherever or whenever it so considers necessary for its own good. This doctrine is being pursued with impunity and without justification, as was seen in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by what happened later in Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, and now in Syria. From being a major power in South Asia always equated with India, Pakistan today is bracketed with Afghanistan. This is an unenviable distinction that circumscribes our role both within and beyond our region. But all these challenges that we face today to our security and survival are largely rooted in our domestic weaknesses.

As mentioned above, a country remains vulnerable externally if it is weak domestically. And domestically, ours is a long story of leadership miscarriages, political perversities, and governance failures. Our domestic weaknesses have not only seriously constricted our foreign policy options but also exacerbated Pakistan’s external image and standing. We in Pakistan often misunderstand the realities of foreign policy and tend to overplay the role of the military or so-called ‘Establishment’ in its formulation and execution. In every country, foreign policy decisions are made by the executive branch of government. However, foreign policy formulation cannot be left to the whims of any individual or authority.

Besides the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an officially designated foreign policy arm of the government, it invariably also involves other concerned ministries and stakeholders, including GHQ and intelligence agencies, in a larger consultative process for decisions on foreign policy issues. I can say from my experience that on national security issues, the Foreign Office cannot operate without military and intelligence inputs in its normal functioning. Even in Washington, the State Department does not operate without the support of the Pentagon and the CIA. In our case, if there are instances of military dominance in foreign policy issues, it is because of the strategic bankruptcy of our political cadres.

We in Pakistan often misunderstand the realities of foreign policy and tend to overplay the role of the so-called ‘Establishment’ in its formulation and execution.

But what if their ‘plan of action’ is itself part of a plan to overstretch the armed forces through excessive use of Article 245 in order to exhaust and weaken them. Politicians have already reduced the judiciary and legislature into non-consequential entities and made the army, police, and bureaucracy subservient to their own vested interests. All these problems that we continue to suffer have nothing to do with our foreign policy. Our problems are all domestic. Even our foreign policy issues are extensions of our domestic failures. Unfortunately, when the gravest of problems stares us in the face, we tend to ignore them because we just can’t do anything about them.

Our biggest challenge today is to convert Pakistan’s pivotal location into an asset rather than letting it remain a liability. For us, what is important is not what we are required to do for others’ interests; it is what we ought to do in our own national interest.

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