Suhail Khan Mandokhel
A fateful decision, which Liaquat Ali Khan took in May 1950 to visit USA instead of USSR, laid down the erratic foundation for our foreign policy. He switched to US in his capacity of premiership and doing so, he committed himself to the obligations of capitalistic bloc in dead-end cold war. Following this, Pakistan worked out many feats of adventurism only for the sake of ingratiating with Capitol Hill. But in the aftermath, Pakistan was conferred upon the vicious circle of terrorism and the appellation of a terrorist state.
Disregarding tens of thousands of sacrifices made by Pakistani nation, US invariably comes up with the rhetorical typical of “Do more”. Consequently, resentment against US is mounting in the minds of people in Pakistan. Unmanned Drones buzz overhead and hit them without pinpoint accuracy. Furthering this resentment, India has now hitched its wagon to US and is about to clasp the membership of Nuclear Suppliers group notwithstanding the fact that India is outlier of NFT. These craggy facts evince that alignment of Pakistan and US will be annotated in history as a typo in foreign policy. This partnership produced in its trial only intangible results in shape of transactional benefits provided to us for containing Russian moves. However, demonetization became our fate whenever Pakistan did try to carry through its economic uplift in a democratic process.
In my write-up, I will evaluate critically the fateful decision of our first premier to prefer US over then USSR. Why Pakistan took the rain cheque against Russian invitation and acquiesced to that of USA? Answer to this question became apparent in papers of Pakistan Institute of International affairs in 1956: “There are important divergences of outlook between Pakistan, with its Islamic background, and the Soviet Union with its atheistic background”. Now have a double check. In first check, one can declare these divergences very incidental when look at the unscrupulous support of US for Israel which is, as it is believed, the archenemy of Islam. In second check, The Verse of Holy Quran can be cited which declares Jews and Christians the unreconstructed foes of Muslims. In this Almighty injunction, there is no any mention of Atheists. So it is clearer than crystal that our state religion had never been an obstacle in taking up friendship with a Marxist country.
Too importantly, in this purview, twin principles of regionality and complementarity were slighted away while handpicking US over USSR. In present, no any regional organization exists in the world to which both USA and Pakistan are associated in tandem. To the contrary, Pakistan and Russian are working in a unison under the rubric of SCO; this fact disapproves the possibility of any regionality between USA and Pakistan.
Whereas, the second principle “complementarity” is so far unseen. Such an unequal partnership engenders unwieldy image in the mind of a viewer. Despite all these sizeable divergences between USA and Pakistan, trend-setters of our foreign policy retired to the bosoms of Capitalistic super power only for “transactional benefits”.
Currently, an eccentric Gentleman is on the helm in USA. He takes no scruples in scathing Pakistan and in meanwhile glorifies the stature of India. Only previous week, US state of department told out its futuristic policy about Pakistan. Increase in the incidence of drone attacks and fairly large cut in aid, are the two points which US is within the ace of pursuing against Pakistan.
In this scenario, the only inviting option for Pakistan is to catch the favor of Russia and undergo a gradual disaggregation from the trap of USA.
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