ZAB and his foreign policy

Much before Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was linked to an irked America for Pakistan’s foreign policy choices it was the late President Ayub Khan who first agitated an unreliable ally in America. His tome, Friends not Masters, lamented American fickleness as a partner — the relationship has been increasingly termed transactional in recent decades. Ayub’s book resulted from the US sanctioning both India and Pakistan after the 1965 war claiming evenhandedness in South Asia. This despite Pakistan being squarely in West-led blocs, CENTO and SEATO, as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. India had conveniently bided the dilemma of a choice by initiating what was known as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) instead. Nehru, a committed Socialist, despite claiming credentials for non-alignment, found a way to cozy up to the Soviet Union. That the US despite such inclinations of India chose to treat both equally was the rub.

ZAB wasn’t the first Pakistani leader to initiate relations with China; Mohammad Ali Bogra was. Bogra first visited China in 1954 as the prime minister in a state initiative to open up to China, till then a ‘closed continent’. He continued to develop relations with China as the Foreign Minister under Ayub Khan in 1962-63. The dynamics were patently driven by the needs of regional balance of power in Asia. Bhutto succeeded Bogra as the foreign minister and in late 1963 signed the Boundary adjustment and demarcation agreement with China which ceded the contiguous Aksai Chin to China pending a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. Pakistan gave away approximately 800 square miles of territory over which China held its claim. India contests such a settlement and has a much larger part of the contiguous Aksai Chin over which both sides frequently skirmish and remain in a state of near-war even today.

ZAB did deepen relations with China both as the foreign and then the prime minister modeling his person and his policies along similar lines under an increasing influence of the Chinese leadership. He mimicked both Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong in a cult-like domination of a nation devastated by a loss of its eastern wing to India in 1971. The economy was in tatters after the war and reduced to subsistence level following idealistic innovations of Bhutto reversing the economic model which had brought Pakistan unmatched progress and development under Ayub Khan.

There was another brief interregnum with its own peculiarity under Yayha Khan who arrogated power from a beleaguered Ayub Khan in 1969 and imposed a martial law. With his uninhibited personal disposition for the good life the general was feted both in the US and in Moscow. Under him Pakistan’s plans for a Steel Mill found implementation with the help of the Soviets. Podgorny and Kosygin were household names and frequented Pakistan repeatedly with their visits. Soviet Union had also been instrumental in helping finalise the ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan after the 1965 war. We haven’t been as close to Moscow ever as we then were. At the same time we weren’t coy to offer the Americans their window into China. Henry Kissinger travelled to China from Pakistan under our arrangement when Yahya was in power. These were consequential foreign policy initiatives of the time in a bipolar world. In the 1971 war Americans openly tilted their support for us against Indira’s India while the Soviet Union signed a Friendship and Cooperation treaty with India before the 1971 war and distanced itself from Pakistan. Essentially, global balance of power dictated the alliances of the two superpowers.

When President Nixon made his landmark visit to China in 1972 ZAB was already the President in Pakistan and hence the primary beneficiary of US gratitude for opening up China to the US which could now play off one communist power against another. Both China and the US are now tied into unparalleled levels of trade and commerce if not political congruence; something we claim was enabled by Pakistan’s good offices. Closeness to China, hence, was never the reason why Bhutto began to fall out with the Americans. In his hatred of the moneyed industrialist who he felt stood against his political primacy he moved away from the capitalist market economy to a nationalised economic structure similar to the communist model. He nationalised most of banking, industry and services opening the floodgates of government-sponsored jobs more as a populist measure than economic sense. It led to a dismal economic culture which became the country’s bane generating widespread unrest against him.

What really proved the final straw on a camel’s back was Bhutto’s relentless pursuit of a nuclear programme which he put in place in the very first year of assuming power. He set forth a committed plan for the country to develop a nuclear weapons capability and began what was to become in the decades ahead the ‘pride of a nation’. Without a doubt he and the country were subjected to numerous coercions beginning with isolation to ‘making an example’ (though Kissinger, the alleged articulator of the phrase, denies ever having used it) to threatening to eliminate (a conjecture more in line with CIA’s known practice) in an effort to dissuade Pakistan from choosing the course. That Pakistan stuck to the task and achieved it in a short period of twelve years is a testimony to the commitment and sacrifice that leaders, governments and those involved showed in the face of multiple threats.

That Bhutto was finally ousted was subsequently touted to have carried financial support from the USA for the agitating PNA, his political opposition. What ensued was paralysing political instability and the threat of internal unrest engendered by PNA’s opposition to Bhutto giving cause to Zia’s martial law. That Bhutto was finally hanged by a military dictator was another sad episode predicated on ill-thought counsel of some political hands. Pakistan continues to be bedeviled by the long shadows of those tragic moments in our political experience. The US may have been only superficially concerned about Bhutto’s hanging but to principally blame it on the US is an exaggeration with little basis.

Imran Khan’s reference to a demarche from the US claims similar antecedence from the past as a no-confidence motion awaits him in the Parliament. One, the making of the no-confidence began some months back; IK visited Moscow only in February. Two, a visit to Moscow, howsoever ill-timed, is not something the world cares much about in today’s geopolitics except that it became embarrassing for IK to be in the capital when Putin declared war against a smaller neighbour — a dangerous precedence. That Pakistan failed to unequivocally condemn the attack per international sentiment and covenants was at best an itch though she was asked to abide by the norms and stand with the international community. Three, Pakistan is hardly in a position to alter the global power dynamics by siding with one or the other — already an anachronistic enigma in a complicatedly interdependent world. Fourth, nations don’t announce to down one government or another. To embellish a missive for political gain is only opportunistic. Taking it to public a convenient diversion.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2022.

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