By Dr Subhash Kapila
The single-most striking feature of foreign policy formulations on South Asia of Britain and the United States are their flawed assessments on Pakistan’s strategic utility to their respective national security interests, singly and jointly.
Prevailing overwhelmingly in the strategic calculations of Britain and the United States centring on Pakistan are a number of flawed assessments that Pakistan is of great strategic value for the stability of South Asia and the region and that Pakistan is a reliable Western ally of long standing and strategic value in the furtherance of British and American security interests in South Asia and that Pakistan is an essential partner in combatting global terrorism.
Further, both Britain and the United States have bought the myth sold to them by successive Pakistan Army Chiefs that it is the Pakistan Army that shields the West from global terrorist outfits like the Al Qaeda earlier and now the ISIS as articulated by the present Pakistan Army Chief.
Flawed assessments of Pakistan’s strategic utility by Britain and the United States and imparting an over-sized strategic halo on Pakistan by both of them have encouraged Pakistan to box much above its strategic weight. Basking in this unwarranted strategic halo, Pakistan has pretentions of strategic equivalence with India, and hence its disruptive strategies in South Asia.
Pakistan as a dysfunctional and failing state stands reflected in many of the assessments of British and American intelligence agencies and in business risk-forecasting estimates. These estimates chiefly arise from the explosive mix of disruptive factors that characterise the Pakistan state in 2015. This explosive mix comprises political instability; constant spells of Pakistan Army rule; a Pakistan Army induced ‘garrison state’ and ‘siege mentality’; economic backwardness arising from disproportionate defence budgets dictated by the Pakistan Army; and, more significantly where nuclear weapons are bandied as ‘Islamic Nuclear Bombs’ combined with use of Islamic Jihadi terrorism as an instrument of state-policy; all of these threaten the stability of South Asia and contiguous regions.
Britain and the United States have no cogent reasons to offer to substantiate their strategic fixation that Pakistan is of great strategic value for the stability of South Asia. On the contrary, the historical record of the last over six decades of South Asia amply illustrate that South Asia would have been stable and secure but for the region-disruptive policies of Pakistan.
Strategically ironic is the fact that in British and American Pakistan-fixated policy formulations, there is a policy blindness and irresponsible obliviousness to the prevailing strategic and military delinquencies of Pakistan, the Pakistan Army and its notorious intelligence agency, the ISI engaged in fostering proxy wars on both flanks of Pakistan through its Jihadi militias and terrorist outfits. British and American Forces fighting in Afghanistan against global terrorism were at the receiving end of Pakistan’s strategic delinquencies and double-timing.
Moving to the second point of Pakistan’s strategic utility to Britain and the United States as a staunch Western ally of long-standing and which can be relied upon to further British and American strategic interests in South Asia and the region, again, their policy establishments need to refer to their respective intelligence agencies’ assessments on Pakistan.
In this regard, one would like to first dwell on Pakistan’s record of strategic utility to the United States as its major strategic patron and then dwell on Pakistan’s strategic utility to Britain as the latter flows from the former.
Pakistan has been a rental state of the United States and the Pakistan Army a rental army available for furtherance of United States policy formulations of tactical expediency in South Asia. To this end the Pakistan Army was collusive in drone strikes on its own people, when with its own intelligence agency could have neutralised the terrorist elements nurtured by it in its frontier regions, without massive collateral damage to the rest of the population.
Pakistan moved out of the American strategic-utility orbit soon after 1962 when it exchanged the United States for China as its main strategic partner and military mainstay.
Pakistan Army’s double-timing of the United States post-US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 is well documented and too recent to be recounted. This Pakistani double-timing of the United States occurred despite large infusions of US military and financial aid by to Pakistan in the last fifteen years, not forgetting the earlier billions of aid pumped into Pakistan.
Moving to analysis of Britain’s flawed assessments on Pakistan’s strategic utility to Britain in South Asia and the region, let it be said without further analysis that Britain has no realistic strategic interests in South Asia which Pakistan can be used for furtherance of.
In my assessment, Britain’s strategic interests in South Asia get strait-jacketed into the loyal furtherance of United States strategic formulations on South Asia.
Britain does have legitimate political and economic interests in South Asia centring on the rise of India as an emerging power and the British imperatives to invest politically and economically in India’s potential and its strategically benign rise. In terms of South Asia it is India that is better placed strategically as opposed to Pakistan for Britain to carve a niche in South Asia.
However, for the furtherance of Britain’s above spelt strategic interests, Pakistan has no role to play. On the contrary, Pakistan-fixated British strategic formulations can not only distort British formulations in South Asia but also affect Indian public perceptions of Britain.
Britain’s chief interests in Pakistan arise from the British domestic politics factor where the nearly three million strong Muslim populations in Britain, predominantly from Pakistan, have emerged as a political factor in electoral politics in certain constituencies.
Going by recent reports on rise in Islamist tendencies in Britain and some terrorism attacks in the past, Britain should legitimately hope that Pakistan could be a strategic asset in calming the restlessness that seems to be shaping in the Muslim community in Britain.
In this direction, no evidence has emerged to suggest that Pakistan has contributed in any meaningful way to inject messages of reason and advice to the Muslim community in Britain that they should get assimilated as responsible citizens of the liberal British society. In that case Britain could have then considered Pakistan as a strategic asset to Britain. .
On a wider and higher strategic plane beyond the South Asian confines is the consideration as to what extent Pakistan as the staunch Western ally provided political and military support to British and American security interests and interventions in the Middle East? During the Gulf Wars when other Muslim nations were fighting along with the US-UK coalition in Iraq, where was Pakistan as the “Major Non-NATO Ally”?
Lastly, the myth bought by Britain and USA that the Pakistan Army stands as a wall protecting the West against global terrorist outfits like the Al Qaeda and the ISIS, let the facts available speak for themselves. The horrific 9/11 attacks on USA were conceived, financed and facilitated by Pakistan as per Western published sources. Osama bin Laden was ensconced in the heart of Pakistan Army’s most prominent garrison town for years until liquidated directly by US Special Forces actions.
Concluding, strong strategic imperatives exist contextually for the United States and Britain to revise their assessments of Pakistan’s strategic utility to their respective national security interests. Pakistan’s strategic utility is exclusively reserved for China and no amount of ‘strategic halos’ endowed on Pakistan by Britain and the United States will tempt Pakistan to wriggle out of China’s tight strategic embrace.
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