Difficult choices

Pakistan belongs to the eastern or the western camp is an irrelevant debate. The country is off and on unnecessarily dragged into an altercation over it, and is compelled to make its stance clear. This is so because of two primary reasons: one, Pakistan sits at the crossroads of a geo-strategic conclave; and, two; it is too important to be ignored by major powers, as well as the movers and shakers in the region and beyond. So is the case again, as leaked classified documents titled ‘difficult choices’, show how the men at the helm of affairs are struggling to put in a narrative that does not come to infringe upon the largesse of either the US or China. The cables, published by a leading US daily, puts across the conversation between the prime minister and the minister of state for foreign affairs, purporting an abstract as how to be seen as a goody with Washington, and at the same time not to alienate Beijing.

There is nothing wrong if Pakistan, like any other country, is inclined towards one major power or the other. After all, it is national interests that derives such a policy, and definitely it is substantiated with a plethora of do’s and don’ts. Islamabad’s new synopsis in its foreign affairs is a sense of neutrality, but with the express intent of being alive to new realities in inter-state relations. There are few fundamentals such as taking a stance against aggression and repression, upholding each state’s sovereignty and the principle of non-interference that is dear to heart. This benchmark apparently goes on to justify a shift in stance, if any, at any stage of bilateralism. Thus, if Pakistan had tried to stay aloof from the crisscross of Moscow-Kyiv row, and the US meddling in the region, it has every reason to do so. Likewise with China, Pakistan has a long-term strategic as well as an imminent neighbourhood bondage that spans economic, military and geopolitical spheres, as is the case with the US in counterterrorism and extra-regional security affairs. Thus, no point in making Pakistan draw the soft lines of engagement and estrangement.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2023.

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