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COMMENT: Our strategic partners— Tanvir Ahmad Khan

Despite President Musharraf’s claim to have outperformed all other countries, and perhaps because of it, a disproportionate part of the relationship with Pakistan still appears to be a case of sub-contracting Bush’s war against radical Islam to Pakistan in this sensitive region. The rest still looks like haggling over the traditional price tag popular with Islamabad’s decision-makers

Over the next few days commentators will inevitably focus on the paradigm of President George Bush’s visit to South Asia and, more significantly, on the different outcome for India and Pakistan. Washington has progressively freed itself from the famous or infamous hyphen that supposedly constrained development of bilateral relations with India in realistic terms, reflecting its political, economic and military power.

Even as spin-doctors work overtime to emphasise the strategic salience of their respective country’s partnership with the sole superpower of our times, the qualitative distinctions in the new configuration of Washington’s South Asia policy would not be missed.

Great powers prefer to adopt a high ethical tone to enunciate their foreign policy. This tendency is rooted deep in history; diplomacy as, indeed, war, which is diplomacy’s extension by other means, are often sanctified with claims of high moral purpose. The protracted contest with the Soviet Union was particularly noticeable for a constant invocation of the core values of Western civilisation. President Bush wages war on what he now candidly describes as radical Islam in similar terms. Friendship with the United States depends on Muslim states embracing the gospel according to his neo-conservative ideologues. India is seen as a natural ally in this indefinite crusade.

It is equally commonplace that high philosophical constructs are designed to camouflage the pursuit of national interest that has over centuries been the most important single determinant of foreign policy. It deserves to be noted that the major address to Asia Society and other remarks that President Bush made by way of a prelude to his current visits combined high rhetoric with absolutely down-to-earth references to the commerce of the nations.

India was important not only in the context of the Global Democracy Initiative and the war against terror but also because it has a 300-million strong middle class that “is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines many of them from American companies like GE, and Whirlpool, and Westinghouse”. Furthermore “younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino’s”. This consumption needs energy.

One has not seen a better version of globalisation-for-dummies than Bush’s rationale for opening the floodgate of nuclear technology for India. For Pakistan, the reasoning is already different.

Consider the contrast with China. For 55 years, it has pursued a policy of friendship with Pakistan that depends neither on a perpetually-audited subordination of its policy to China’s regional hegemony or global interests nor on the consumption of Chinese noodles. The architects of this friendship — foremost among them that great practitioner of realpolitik , Zhou Enlai — ensured even in the infancy of this unique relationship that its foremost objective should be to augment the limited capacity of this struggling nation, beset with huge internal and external problems.

China, at the time, was itself a developing country and what it offered to Pakistan then was nothing compared to what it is doing for it today. The common factor was a solid contribution to Pakistan’s productivity, the extent of Chinese cooperation keeping pace with the trajectory of its spectacular economic and technological progress. No wonder Pakistan’s economic landscape is dotted with landmarks that proclaim this aspect of bilateral relations louder than any flourishes of rhetoric. From KK Highway and Gwadar Port to Chashma nuclear power plant and from Aeronautical Complex to JK-17 Thunder fighter aircraft, it is a consistent narrative of cooperation that was never subject to arbitrary pre-conditions and semi-colonial paybacks.

Economic collaboration is a crucial dimension of Sino-Pakistan relations and will have to be greatly enlarged to sustain them in a fast changing world. The present turnover falls seriously short of the optimum. It was only the other day that Deng Xiaoping embarked upon the policy of dual rapprochement with Moscow and New Delhi and, in both cases, decided to use economic cooperation as the basic dynamic. Commercial and technological cooperation between New Delhi and Beijing is today the main hedge in the United States pitting India against China.

For a country like Pakistan, military security, maximisation of economic opportunities, and the welfare of its people constitute the core agenda of its foreign policy. Perhaps even the Washington-centric elite of Pakistan realises in the heart of its heart that China would still be the more reliable partner for this agenda.

For several years, the Chinese have quietly advised the Pakistani leadership to try to remain on the right side of the United States. They leave it to Pakistan to define the limits of this endeavour. Obviously the limits include an iron resolve that Pakistan will never join what the secretary of state recently described as the strategic context in which China can be constrained.

It can be safely surmised that during his visit to Pakistan, President Bush will urge President Pervez Musharraf to work even harder to help the Karzai government overcome the ethnic and religious insurgency faced by it. Despite President Musharraf’s claim to have outperformed all other countries, and perhaps because of it, a disproportionate part of the relationship with Pakistan still appears to be a case of sub-contracting Bush’s war against radical Islam to Pakistan in this sensitive region. The rest still looks like haggling over the traditional price tag popular with Islamabad’s decision-makers.

Given this role of Pakistan, there was a touch of irony in the deliberate highlighting of India’s role in Afghanistan in President Bush’s Asia Society address. India and the United States, he declared, would continue to work together for the cause of liberty in Afghanistan. India’s work in that country was “a good example of India’s commitment to emerging democracies”. He praised New Delhi’s financial assistance to Kabul, singling out for special praise the help in completing the Afghan National Assembly building.

When it came to democracy, Bush noted the existence in Pakistan of “some fundamental institutions that democracy requires” but readily conceded that “Pakistan still has a distance to travel on the road to democracy”. For the discerning, there is much thought in what Bush said.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

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