Compulsions of grand strategy

Pakistan’s leaders and policymakers generally suffer from thinking in tactical terms with short-term considerations in dealing with national issues at the expense of a sound strategy which can guide on a long-term basis in grappling with the momentous challenges confronting the country both on the internal and external fronts.

Many of our internal and external problems can be traced to this serious flaw in our national mindset. This shortcoming limits the mental horizon of our policymakers to the urgent to the neglect of the important.

Further, over-compartmentalisation of policymaking in various sectors overlooks the need for a sound grand strategy, defined as a synthesis of political, economic, diplomatic and military policies, which alone can prevent various branches of the government from working at cross purposes and give positive overall direction to our internal and external policies in pursuit of realistic goals.

Our Kashmir and Afghanistan policies of the 1990s are prime examples of tactical approaches to policymaking at the expense of sound long-term national strategies. Both these policies, which unfortunately were also supported by our incompetent political leaders and a submissive Foreign Office, led us to disastrous results.

Our Kashmir policy of the 1990s drew wrong conclusions from our Afghanistan policy of the 1980s which led to the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. While a lot of credit for the Soviet defeat must go to the Afghan mujahideen who fought valiantly in Afghanistan, power realities in the form of the overwhelming support of the US-led West and the Muslim world including, of course, Pakistan weighed heavily against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The realpolitik situation in Kashmir in the 1990s, despite the political and diplomatic advantage of UN Security Council resolutions, was not propitious for a movement for the liberation of Kashmir from the Indian occupation because of India’s international political stature as a stable democracy, its economic and conventional military superiority over Pakistan, and lack of adequate support of the international community to the Kashmir cause. Our failure to get resolutions on Kashmir passed in the UN General Assembly and the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1993 and 1994 respectively exposed our weakness on the diplomatic front.

But our powers-that-be simply were not prepared to see the writing on the wall leading the country ultimately to the ill-planned Musharraf-led Kargil operation, which derailed the peace process between Pakistan and India set in motion by the Lahore Declaration of 1999 besides destabilising Pakistan politically through the imposition of military dictatorship on the country for about nine years. The disastrous consequences of our operational Kashmir policy of the 1990s and its sequel continue to haunt us today.

Our Afghanistan policy of the 1990s, again driven by the military establishment and supported by a submissive Foreign Office, proved to be an abject failure. Following the fall of the Najibullah government in Afghanistan in April 1992 and the establishment of the Mujahedeen government in Kabul, we should have allowed the political dynamics in Afghanistan to take its course while taking necessary steps to safeguard our national security. 

Instead, in pursuit of a flawed interpretation of the concept of ‘strategic depth’, we actively intervened in Afghanistan’s internal affairs on the side of the Afghan Taliban.

Our policy led to a proxy war in Afghanistan between Pakistan and Iran, which was supporting the Northern Alliance, encouraged obscurantist tendencies both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and badly damaged Pakistan-Iran relations as personally witnessed by me in my position as the Pakistan ambassador to Iran from 1997 to 2003, and tarnished Pakistan’s image internationally.

My numerous dispatches to Islamabad from Tehran recommending reconsideration of our flawed Afghanistan policy and coordination with Iran were to no avail. The American ultimatum after 9/11 changed our pro-Taliban policy overnight and we joined hands with the Americans in bringing about the Taliban’s ouster from power. 

In the process, we lost the trust of both the Taliban and anti-Taliban elements in Afghanistan. It is against the background of this deeply flawed policy pursued by us over the past three decades that we are now grappling with the challenges of a Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Besides sound sectoral strategies, Pakistan needs to formulate and pursue a well-thought-out grand strategy rooted in ground realities at national, regional and global levels. 

Grand strategy is the outcome of the synthesis of a country’s political, economic, diplomatic and military policies for the achievement of specified national goals. When these policies are in sync with one another, the country can make smooth progress towards the realisation of its national aims.

Failures and tragedies are the destiny of those nations whose policies in these four critically important fields are out of sync as has been Pakistan’s case during most of its history. The tragic events of 1971 resulting in the dismemberment of the country and the Kashmir and Afghanistan policies of the 1990s are prime examples of the absence of a well-formulated grand strategy leading to disastrous results. In fact, it would not be wrong to claim that the subject of grand strategy is terra incognita among Pakistan’s policymakers.

The history of the modern world is a testament to the critical importance of economic and technological strength in the rise and fall of nations. Paul Kennedy, the highly regarded American scholar, in his seminal work, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, emphasised that “there is detectable a causal relationship between the shifts that have occurred over time in the general economic and productive balances and the position occupied by individual Powers in the international system.”

China learnt this lesson much earlier and under its great leader Deng Xiaoping assigned the top priority to the goal of national economic development in its grand strategy leading to its phenomenal economic growth since 1980. On the other hand, the Soviet Union suffered a defeat in the Cold War and disintegrated because its weak economy failed to provide a solid foundation for its heavy military superstructure.

Pakistan’s grand strategy, in the face of the enduring security threat posed by a hegemonic India, should assign the top priority to the goal of rapid economic and technological development through the maximum possible allocation of resources to this supreme national objective while maintaining a credible security deterrent at the lowest level of armed forces and armaments.

This would be possible only if we have peace in our neighbourhood by pursuing low-risk and non-adventurist foreign policy, that is, by avoiding the high-risk policies of the 1990s and Kargil-type adventurism. Over-ambitious foreign policy goals should be avoided so that we do not fall into the trap of strategic exhaustion in which we are caught at present.

We will also have to strengthen our security by entering into alliances with likeminded countries besides building up our strategic partnership with China. The pursuit of such a grand strategy, of course, would require wise and mature political leaders within the framework of a stable political system.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer's own and don't necessarily reflect Geo.tv's editorial policy.

The writer is a retired ambassador and author of ‘Pakistan and a World in Disorder – A Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century’. He can be reached at: [email protected]

Originally published in The News