Foreword

South Asia Research, 2017

In Pakistan, the field of international relations (IR) theory remains firmly embedded in the ‘realist’ tradition, to the detriment of a wider range of considerations. This stranglehold, strengthened by the particular evolutionary trajectory of the Pakistani state as well as a complacent academia, seems to have created a vicious circle of knowledge reproduction, reinforced by various bids for power, or proximity to it. This article scrutinises specifically the dominant understandings in Pakistan of state sovereignty and security in a broadly historical perspective, showing how the rise of the military, combined with security paranoia, has prevented academic creativity in this field, including scrutiny of recent concerns over rather close China–Pakistan links.

2014

The United States (US) and Pakistan developed a relationship during the Musharraf era of simultaneous cooperation and coercion against each other. Pakistan helped both the US and the Taliban in their war in Afghanistan. The US aided and reimbursed Pakistan, but also violated its sovereignty on a sustained basis. Realism, Liberalism and prominent varieties of Constructivism do not explain this interaction. The explanation offered here is that each state had certain persistent concepts it applied repeatedly as new situations arose. The concepts are drawn empirically from the policy discourses of the two states after the Musharraf coup, the 9/11 attacks, and during the middle 2000s when Pakistan's focus on Kashmir diminished but Taliban attacks in Afghanistan intensified. These concepts highlighted some aspects of these situations and occluded others. These descriptions of situations using these concepts formed episodes in situational narratives. The situational narratives do explain the observed interaction.

Despite having poured billions of dollars of aid into Pakistan's economy and its military over the years, there is a general acceptability among scholars and policy-makers that the United States exercises limited leverage in Pakistan. Although India remains the centrepiece in US–Pakistan policy divergences, US frustrations often stem from the ineffectiveness of its aid-for-leverage policy, especially given Pakistan's dependence on US military assistance. The limited US influence in Pakistan can best be understood within the framework of patron–client relationship and arms dependence. If the theory suggests anything, it is that various factors including US and Pakistan's behaviour contribute in channelling the relationship towards its apparent demise. Most important within these is China's central role in helping Pakistan indigenize its military production and diversify its arms supply. In that sense, then, China has colluded with Pakistan in indirectly limiting US influence in Pakistan and the trend suggests that this collaboration will further reduce US leverage over Pakistan.

Pakistanis of nearly all ideological, economic, and political stripes are wrestling with a fundamental question: is their state sovereign? Today, the state is a fiscal wreck. It is unable to pay its bills, create jobs at a pace needed to keep up with its burgeoning population, or invest in its people. Its security arrangements are shambolic, with foreign terrorists ensconced in its military cantonment areas, sprawling metropolises, and tribal areas alike. While the Pakistani state targets some of these terrorists, it harbors and protects others. Pakistani terrorists have attacked major military installations, intelligence offices, and police facilities as well as a diverse array of civilian targets with impunity. Worse, the attacks on major military installations and personnel have often involved members of the armed forces facilitating the attacks. Since 2004, some 35,000 Pakistanis have been injured or killed by domestic terrorists, who have turned their guns on Sufi Muslims as well as long-established targets such as Shias, Ahmediyas, Christians, Hindus, and anyone who opposes their bloody plans for the state.

Deconstructing Pakistan-American relation relationship, 2019

Pakistan established an alliance with the United States of America soon after independence, the relation from then is problematic. Pakistan-U.S. relations comprises of mutual trust and distrust. Pak-U.S. relationship has passed through many Ups as well as Downs, along with the era of convergences and divergences. Further Pak-U.S. relations are often amalgamation of conflicting interests. So this is an attempt to de/construct the various dimensions of Pakistan-U.S. relations. Pakistan aligned with United States of America since its inception as an independent State and this relation comprises of Mutual trust and mutual distrust by supporting each other on one side and pulling each other down on the other. This paper examines the problematic relationship and its impact upon Pakistan as well as the challenges and opportunities for Pakistan

Margalla Papers-2020 Issue-I, 2020

The foreign policy of Pakistan as a part of South Asian milieu and one of the significant Muslim states always remained characterized by the various regional and global restrains which not only made it vulnerable to the external pressures but also substantially affected its strategic choices. Currently, Pakistan is facing multiple internal and external constraints ranging from its domestic economic problems to continuing with CPEC as a real game-changer strategy at the operational level while not upsetting the US. The prime focus of this study is to have an insight into diplomatic coercion faced by Pakistan and its consequences on her foreign policy decisions as Indian-centric approach throughout history left limited options for policy-makers. This research examines why Pakistan is being challenged about strategic choices in response to vigorous Indian attempts to isolating her in the international arena.

Research Journal for Societal Issues

This article illumination on Pakistan-US relations and various aspects of their common history. There have been many vicissitudes throughout history, which have led to the phenomena of trust and mistrust as well as perceptions and misperceptions. An outline of this research has been prepared with regard to the relations between convergence and divergence of interests. Due to numerous and complex factors, the history of relations between Pakistan and the US has often moved in a roller coaster pattern. The two state’s bilateral relations affected by this multifaceted relationship, which has two distinct co-dependency and trust deficit methods. This article aims to highlight the issues of miscellaneous opinions and policies between Pakistan and the US over the distinctive national and international contexts that directly link the interests of the two parties and outline causes of interaction between them to survive during essential times of vicissitudes. This article described the conv...

Government and Opposition, 1999

Assessing the prospects of democracy in a country that has recently crossed the nuclear threshold but is struggling to avoid defaulting on its international obligations calls for an understanding of the elemental fault line underlying the state structure in Pakistan. Unable to square its strategic perceptions with the narrow economic resource base it inherited at the time of the British withdrawal, Pakistan has paid a hefty price in both economic and political terms trying to keep India at bay. The early stifling of democracy flowed from the state's inability to meet the financial requirements of a military establishment whose strategic doctrines were influenced by the political leadership's stated intention of wresting Kashmir from Indian control. Starved of resources, the Pakistani centre had no qualms strapping the provinces of funds and, in the process, gagging all expressions of opposition. The press was curbed and the judiciary utterly compromised by its dependence on the executive. As early as the 1950s the political process was aborted in the regions and the centre, paving the way for military and bureaucratic dominance. Extended periods of military rule after 1958 only served to widen the gulf between a centralized authoritarian state and a regionally and economically differentiated society with dire consequences for democratic politics. Reversing structural imbalances emanating from clashing security and economic considerations has proven extraordinarily difficult for successive Pakistani governments, irrespective of their ideological stripes or their elected or non-elected credentials. The return to parliamentary democracy since 1988, following the most extensive phase of military rule, aggravated the internal tensions which have made Pakistan's search for stability such a singularly elusive goal. Short of altering the state's security perceptions, an unlikely proposition given India's political and strategic compulsions, there is no prospect of a Pakistani government daring to repudiate the inheritance of a

Written shortly after 9/11 and the rapprochement between Pakistan and the United States, this paper argues that both countries have a clear understanding of what constitutes their national interests. That the relationship between Pakistan and the United States has been transactional and subject to undulation is a clear manifestation of the unwillingness of either side to fundamentally alter its strategic calculus to accommodate the other. Even in the context of the war on terror, conceptions of national interest on both sides would remain at odds, subject to tactical flexibility but not strategic alteration.