Reorienting Pakistan’s Foreign Policy: From Multilateralism to Bilateralism

Pakistan’s threat perception has overshadowed its foreign policy. Since independence, Pakistan has adopted a security-centric foreign policy.¹ Another feature of its foreign policy has been the fixation on multilateral diplomacy. This preference for multilateral diplomacy over strengthening bilateral relationships has not served Pakistan’s security interests. Pakistan joined Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in the hopes that in containing communism, it would seek the backing of the West against a hostile and much-larger neighbor. Pakistan’s active diplomacy to bring the Muslim countries together under the banner of OIC for the joint purpose of freeing Palestine and Kashmir did not turn out well on either fronts. Pakistan’s single-issue based, transactional and ad-hoc relationship with US failed to blossom into a strategic partnership and did nothing for Pakistan’s security interests concerning India.

Pakistan’s multilateral engagement with the export control regimes related to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) has not helped Pakistan in either getting a waiver for conducting trade in proliferation-sensitive technologies or the membership of these regimes. India received a waiver to conduct trade with Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) member countries in 2008 and received full membership of three other export control regimes (Australia Group (AG), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA)) in subsequent years. As a non-party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), did India receive this special treatment because of its multilateral engagement? The short answer is “No”. United States took it upon itself to “work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India”.² This was part of the Indo-US nuclear deal whereby, India made efforts to improve its compliance with international nonproliferation standards and US pledged to give India a seat on the nonproliferation forums. Indo-US nuclear deal in itself was part of a broader strategic partnership between Washington and Delhi. Pakistan, despite being the frontline state in US-launched Global War on Terrorism and “the most allied-ally” was left out in the cold as Pakistan-US relations remained transactional and single-issue based. Pakistan did not capitalize on its decades long relationship with US which witnessed Pakistan assisting US in containing communism and fighting the proxy war against Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Pakistan took several steps to improve its nonproliferation credentials and engaged with all export control regimes but its efforts were all in vain. It did not have the patronage of US behind it. US had twisted elbows of staunch nonproliferationist countries to get India in but it refused to do the same for Pakistan. It is also worth pointing out that it was India, which had made the nuclear deal a center point of the strategic partnership with US. The question is why Pakistan did not made recognition of its nuclear weapons status key to its alliance with US in the War on Terrorism.

In a strange twist of facts and spin doctoring, Pakistan, as one of the worst affected victim of terrorism, was itself blamed for supporting terrorism. Pakistan lost $123.1 billion and more than 60,000 Pakistani citizens since 2001 until 2017.³ Pakistani state or even any Pakistani citizen was not directly or indirectly involved in the 9/11 attacks. Pakistan supported US in its Global War on Terrorism. It provided logistical support to US for its two decades long war in Afghanistan and suffered the repercussions of this decision in myriad of ways. Pakistan played a key role in multiple dialogues between Afghan Taliban and US Government. Despite these contributions, the only country who heard demands of “Do More” and was considered responsible for the counterterrorism campaign in Afghanistan was Pakistan. This was a failure of both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. Pakistan’s narrative on terrorism is not heard, let alone accepted in the West.⁴ Pakistan’s absence was conspicuous in the multilateral conferences about future of Afghanistan in Bonn (2001 and 2011) and was glaringly obvious in the August 2021 meeting of the UN Security Council. To add insult to injury, US conducted drone strikes in Pakistan on multiple occasions, which not only called Pakistani sovereignty into question but also cast doubt on its capacity of counter-terrorism. One reason for the failure at diplomatic front was the overemphasis on a military response to tackle terrorism. Dealing with terrorism was a two-front war with military and diplomatic battlegrounds. Pakistan focused primarily on the military response and led successful counter-terrorism operations in the trouble spots. However, the same cannot be said for the diplomatic front. At multilateral forums, either Pakistan was absent or was not given its due place. As Pakistani experience suggests, the country may be pulling a herculean effort in addressing a challenge but if it fails to communicate these efforts to other states and is unable to create acceptability of its narrative then its efforts are in vain.

Kashmir, one of the oldest conflicts on UN agenda and representative case of right of self-determination of the people, suffered immensely in the post-9/11 reorientation of narratives on security and human rights. The increasing acceptability of security measures in context of counterterrorism and the discourse surrounding the War on Terror led to redefinition of international conflicts like Kashmir. India was able to redefine and project the security situation in India-occupied Kashmir as a case of terrorism from a genuine case of right of self-determination. Under the legal cover of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (POTA), its armed forces adopted a heavy-handed approached in Jammu and Kashmir and carried out the worst violations of human rights. The human rights violations and extrajudicial killings of Kashmiri civilians was justified in the name of counterterrorism. This hurt the cause of the right of self-determination, as enshrined in the UN Charter, of Kashmiri people and has had lasting implications for the resolution of Kashmir conflict. An equally proactive diplomatic strategy by Pakistan could have countered this shift in discourse. The 2019 abrogation of Article 370A and subsequent suspension of special status of Indian-occupied Kashmir was a logical dénouement of the shift in discourse and altered narrative. Lack of realization among Pakistani officials and academia for this eventuality coupled with a dismal performance in multilateral forums made it extremely difficult for Pakistan to register its grievances on the preposterous Indian decision. Pakistan is currently a member of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and has been elected five times since its HRC’s establishment in 2006. As of November 2021, UN HRC has mandated 34 Commissions of Inquiries and Fact-Finding Missions all around the world. The question is why Pakistan has not been able to convince UN HRC and its membership to establish a Fact-Finding Mission or convene a Commission of Inquiries for Indian-occupied Kashmir.

If Pakistan was not able to move UN HRC, it had other multilateral forums where it could present its case and put pressure on India to revert to the original arrangement. The raison d’être for the establishment of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was “to safeguard and protect the common interests and support the legitimate causes of the Member States” and “to respect the right of self-determination”⁵ but Pakistan’s arguments about Kashmir and India’s belligerent actions were largely disregarded. Pakistan could not organize an emergency session of OIC or even manage an issuance of a statement from OIC condemning the August 2019 Indian actions. This lack of OIC action on Kashmir came on the heels of decision by UAE to invite India as a “guest of honor” to the inaugural plenary of 46th meeting of OIC Foreign Ministers. Pakistan subsequently decided to boycott the meeting. OIC’s shift in policy vis-à-vis India was a big blow to Pakistan’s multilateral diplomacy as it has opposed India’s OIC membership on the because of its adversarial relationship and Kashmir Conflict. For a state that was formed on the basis of its Islamic ideology, Muslim Identity plays a key role in shaping Pakistan’s foreign policy and foreign relations. Since 1947, Pakistani decision-making elite in several statements proclaimed Pakistan to be the fortress of Islam. Both besides and through OIC platform, Pakistan raised its voice for issues concerning other Islamic countries playing a mediatory role in Iran-Iraq War during 1980s; supporting the Palestinian cause against Israel, and raising the issue of Islamophobia in United Nations. The multilateral principle of diffused reciprocity took a hit when OIC ignored Pakistan’s concerns over Kashmir and instead renewed its overtures to India. Considering these developments, can Pakistan continue to rely on OIC’s multilateral forum to advance and protect its security interests?

Another facet of Pakistan’s multilateral diplomacy is its engagement with the UN Disarmament Machinery. Considering that addressing the military threat from India is a cornerstone of Pakistan’s disarmament diplomacy, it has not yielded any worthwhile results. India’s conventional and nuclear armament continues unabated. The decades-long stalemate of UN Disarmament Machinery also shares the blame for lack of any concrete action on arms control and disarmament in the first two decades of this century. Stuck in outdated Cold War dynamics when the issues have transformed, UN Disarmament Machinery has to alter its way of working too or it risks becoming irrelevant. Pakistan once tried to introduce new agenda items in the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in 2010 by arguing that the dynamics of international system and the emerging threats necessitate a change in the agenda of CD. “Conventional arms control at the regional and the sub-regional levels” and “Missiles in all their aspects” were the proposed agenda items⁶ as per the Rule 31 of the CD’s Rules of Procedure which gives the right to member states to suggest agenda items which they consider are relevant to the work and mandate of CD.⁷ While several states supported inclusion of these agenda items, India opposed both suggestions on the grounds that CD is an international institution and its mandate is to deal with issues of global concern and the proposed agenda items do not have global application. India also stated that CD has other priorities at the moment and should not focus on these items.⁸ The intervention by the CD Secretary-General Sergei A. Ordzhonikidze to Pakistan’s proposal declared that “it would be a shame for to the conference not to adopt the agenda.”⁹ Secretary General usually does not intervene so this was quite unusual. His intervention on Pakistan’s proposal was that Pakistan is breaking the tradition of adopting agenda on first plenary meeting of yearly session and Pakistan should withdraw its proposal as the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Secretary General and the international community have a lot of expectations from CD.¹⁰ Pakistan in its reply highlighted that as a sovereign state and while following the Rules of Procedure of CD, it is its right to express its view on the agenda and Programme of Work. Also, the CD cannot function in a vacuum and should take into consideration the existing realities and threats facing the states.¹¹ Pakistan withdrew its proposals and agreed to adoption of the old agenda but its representative highlighted the dichotomy

It is an unfortunate fact that when we have tried to raise these issues of conventional arms control in our region we have been informed that these are issues that go beyond the region. Then when we raise them in multilateral forums, we are again informed that these are regional issues and cannot be taken up in multilateral forums. So we are actually at a loss. In any event, I think the rules of procedure of the Conference on Disarmament are comprehensive enough to allow us to state our positions.¹²

This is just one of the instances where Pakistan’s security interests have not been protected in a multilateral forum. This raises the question why Pakistan continues to rely so much on multilateral diplomacy. Joint problem solving, the main tenet of multilateral diplomacy, may be suitable for other issues but bilateral diplomacy is a much better tool to protect vital security interests. As witnessed in the experiences mentioned previously, Pakistan has suffered because of selective practice of nondiscrimination, indivisibility and diffused reciprocity in these multilateral forums. Would Pakistan have secured its interests if it invested in bilateral diplomacy and strengthened its state-to-state relations so that these ties could benefit it in other forums when needed? Is overreliance on multilateral diplomacy a fatal flaw of Pakistan’s foreign policy? The way multilateralism is practiced in different forums affects the way these forums function and how states take positions. States may tend to hide behind the Rules of Procedure or may choose their bilateral relations over multilateral diplomacy when acting in a multilateral forum. In such an eventuality, the objective of joint problem solving becomes to select the lowest common denominator implying that states can choose to satisfy themselves by agreeing to bare minimum conditionalities without making any concrete impact.

If Pakistan’s foreign policy is continued to be framed by using the security-centric lens then it has to lessen its reliance on multilateral diplomacy. Multilateralism leads states with “the strategic propensity to rely on the actions of multiple participants rather than on the actions of a single state.”¹³ This strategic propensity is rooted in the precondition of shared interests of states along with an objective in front of states that prompts them to interact with each other. Coordination of policies is a crucial prerequisite for practice of multilateralism, which in itself demands convergence of interests. This convergence of interests between states must go beyond the setting of the multilateral institutions. Pakistan may act in letter and spirit of the concept of multilateralism in international forums but its actions would not pay dividends unless it focuses on creating lasting and mutually beneficial relationships. A state in a multilateral setting may be choosing to interact with other states in order to find resolution to a common challenge but it does not imply that the national interests of the state in question become secondary to the goals of multilateral diplomacy. Advancing national interests through multilateral diplomacy only materializes when a group of likeminded states lend their support to those interests. This implies that Pakistan’s foreign policy should emphasize on strengthening bilateral relations and then use this engagement for success of multilateral diplomacy.

The formula for strengthening bilateral relations is neither rocket science nor a mysterious secret. Increasing mutual stakes in a bilateral relationship, enhancing trade volume, access to market, increasing investment opportunities, creating a conducive atmosphere for international businesses, capitalizing on geographic location are some of the solutions that have already been put forth by scholars and practitioners. Raising the level bilateral relationship to strategic partnerships helps in creating multifaceted engagements. Pakistan has to move away from security-centric foreign policy formulation. By doing exactly the opposite of what it has done in the past, Pakistan will be able to advance its security interests. By interacting with the world after removing the lens of traditional security, Pakistan can enhance its non-traditional security. An across-the-board strategic partnership with multiple states will help Pakistan in gaining support in multilateral forums. Foreign policy and diplomacy cannot be formulated and acted upon without other elements of statecraft. Myopic policies and tunnel vision will never yield any worthwhile results and would rather increase Pakistan’s paranoia of being left out in the open.

About the Author

Haleema Saadia

The author is a Doctoral Candidate at the National University of Sciences and Technology and is a Lecturer at the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad.