US Interventions and the Global South: Can the US influence Pakistan on Russia?

US global policies, during the Cold War, were motivated by its primary concern to prevent the Soviet Union from achieving hegemony.1 Initially, the Cold War was considered to be a conflict between competing ideologies- a view that became the mainstay of the Orthodox school of thought 2 – which argued that Soviet political behaviour was irreconcilable with ‘American aims, for reasons ranging from Russian expansionism…to communist beliefs’ and as such was an ‘aggressive antithesis to American freedoms’. 3This view of the Cold War was later challenged by the Revisionists 4 for whom the Cold War was primarily an American effort ‘to enforce its will (and its economic system) upon a reluctant world’. 5 As such then, by both arguments, the Third World became intrinsic to US policies and became the battleground for the Cold War. By 1970s and early 1980s, the ‘conditions in the Third World and the capabilities of both superpowers had reached a stage that made events in Africa, Asia, and Latin America central to international affairs’.6 As a consequence, Pakistan became the US ‘most allied ally’ in South Asia, since it was the only US ally in the region central to US interests in Afghanistan. This US alliance with Pakistan became of vital geopolitical importance when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Since the US interventions and involvement in the Third World was, amongst other things, a derivative of ‘it’s taking on of the responsibility for a global capitalist system’7, thus consequently, its interactions with the Third World were perceptively understood as ‘defensive interventions, mainly against left wing or Communist movements’.8 This was because the US was fundamentally antagonistic towards the idea of a revolution ‘and its commitment to extensive but non-doctrinaire changes in the status quo’.9 For the US, the capitalist economy was inextricably linked to democracy and US well-being depended on overseas expansion of its economic system, in that case then, states that deviated from democracy were viewed as a threat to US well-being. The US because of it expansionist economic ideology, made it tougher for other states to retain their economic independence.10 Consequently, any move by those states to wrestle themselves from US economic control, was seen as a threat to the US. To inhibit such digressions, the US used various methods of interventions. According to Westad, by the 1970s and early 1980s, the US had begun implementing the “counterforce strategy” in the Third World, ‘meaning an emphasis on supporting whatever opposition could be mustered to Soviet allies in Africa and Asia.11 As a result, US interventions in the Third World took various forms depending on the circumstances.

While some interventions were more overt and military in nature, others involved regime changes, constructing dependent client relationships, supporting dictatorial regimes and at other times involved supporting anti-communist groups within states to counter the Soviet threat. The only thing ‘moralistic’ about the US position in the Cold War, was its view of the Soviet Union as an ‘evil empire’, ‘diametrically opposite to what the US stood for’.12 As a result, Third World interventions were considered as means to purge or counter this evil in the Third World. Indeed, the US in alliance with Pakistan, trained thousands of mujahedeen to fight off the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan by indoctrinating them with the powerful Islamic tenet of Jihad (simplistically and often wrongly described as fighting against infidels). The argument was simple: The Soviet posed a threat to the Islamic state and consequently Islam, and hence were an evil force, thus it was a religious duty to fight off this evil. In pursuing this goal all other considerations of human rights, freedom, and democracy became secondary to this countenance. As Westad observes

To many within the Reagan Administration, in the US neoconservative movement, and on the American right in general, Third World left-wing radicalism was part of a global threat to the United States. It existed, however, mostly because previous US administrations had failed to confront it and standup for American values…It was time, the Americans argued, to strike back against Third World regimes that opposed America’s mission. 13

In the newly formed Third World then, the US sought to influence the outcome of the Cold War, through two different kinds of intervention in the Third World. Firstly, the US sought to cultivate dependent client states in the Third World and harness the ability to alter the foreign policy behaviour of weaker states mostly by using foreign aid to influence the foreign policy of dependent states.14 For instance, Muller demonstrates that during the Cold War ‘Brazil’s high level of dependence on US military aid … afforded the United States substantial leverage for influencing the behaviour of the Brazilian military’.15 In a similar manner, the Pakistani military’s obsession with India became a vital factor in its dependence on US arms transfer and foreign aid. Once a dependence is created, ‘the foreign policy behaviour of dependencies is viewed as partial payment in exchange for the maintenance of benefits they derive from their economic [and military] ties to the dominant country’.16 Once the dependence of a weaker state on a stronger one, is established it allows the stronger states considerable leverage in conditioning the foreign policy of the weaker state by rewarding/punishing the weaker state through providing/withholding economic assistance and foreign aid.17 For this reason ‘aid-giving has been widely recognized by American decision-makers as a key component of American efforts to influence Third World nations’.18 This does seem to be the case with Pakistan, where the US interest in Pakistan during the Cold War ‘was to further US national security interests by strengthening anti-Communist forces in the Third World’: aid was ‘seen as a Cold War tool that could be used to promote political stability, win alliances for the United States, and impede the emergence of radical or Communist regimes’.19

Intervention through dependence is a two way traffic. While the weaker states in the international system depend on the advantages they accrued by virtue of strong military and economic relations with the stronger states, the stronger states on the other hand, depend on these weaker states to comply with their foreign policy view. As Moon argues,

…weaker states abandon their preferences on foreign-policy matters and instead seek the approval of the United States, anticipating that future American policy will reward and punish states in proportion to their compliance. In turn, American trade or aid is calibrated to the level of compliance, thereby justifying and reinforcing the compliance logic. 20

The compliance logic ensconces two parts; the reward and the punishment. In the former, both the weak and the strong state are engaged in a symbiotic relationship and enjoy mutual dependence. However, in the latter the weak state is unilaterally dependent on the strong state. Given the extent to which a weak state is unilaterally dependent on the strong state determines how drastically it is affected by the abeyance of privileges that it accrues by virtue of its relations with the strong state.

The US has also directly intervened in the Third World states by using military force. Yoon details the extent of US intervention in the Third World internal wars.21 He argues that US interventions in Third World states were quite common during the Cold War. Not only were these interventions selectively considered, they also took various forms such as verbal, economic, political, military etc. to produce desirable outcomes. He further explains that, ‘…of the 82 internal war considered…the United States intervened in 6 wars directly by using force on a large scale, 21 indirectly by sending military weapons and advisors and 10 economically or verbally. It ignored 45 wars, although some of them were much more severe, in terms of fatalities, than wars that attracted US intervention…’.22 Major power military interventions witnessed a slight increase from the Cold War to the post-Cold War, with the US and French activities accounting for most of this increase.23 Interferences and interventions in the Third World states’ sovereignty, were not solely by direct military intervention since considering military interventions to be the only form of intervention propagates a very narrow understanding of the phenomenon. For Yoon then, intervention ‘entails different levels of actions ranging from verbal statements, economic assistance or the withholding of economic assistance, initiation or increase or arms supply, deployment of advisers, deployment of combat personnel into a war zone, to actual military engagement in combat operations’.24

For decades, US and Pakistan were tangled in a patron-client relationship. The US has often used Pakistan’s dependence, on its military and economic aid, as a leveraging tool to exact outcomes that were pursuant of its national interest. Yet even then US leverage on Pakistan had its limits. US policymakers have often expressed their frustrations at their inability to hold some clout over Pakistani decision-making processes despite using aid as leverage. Writing in 1987, Thomas P. Thornton, who was a senior staff member of the National Security Council during the Carter administration, confessed that ‘our ability to alter Pakistani developments, at least in any positive way, is extremely limited’.25 In a hearing on US Foreign Assistance to Pakistan, Senator Chuck Hagel admitted that ‘the US must recognize that our influence in Pakistan is limited.’26 Even academics have recognized the limits to US leverage. Cohen and Chollet argue that ‘for all the talk of the United States’ global dominance and despite considerable US support to the Pakistani military, Washington finds itself with relatively little leverage to influence events in Pakistan.’27 Cookman and French believe that ‘the provision or restriction of aid itself has historically resulted in only limited success in aligning U.S. and Pakistani strategic priorities over time’.28 Weinbaum contends that ‘our policymakers have had difficulty deciding how best to get political mileage … the United States has not received anything like full return on its military and economic assistance to Pakistan’.29

Two major post-Cold War developments have helped further distance Pakistan from its dependence on US political, economic and military assistance. Firstly, the Rise of China and its assistance and support to Pakistan, has substantially contributed in Pakistan’s reconfiguration of its foreign policy away from being tied to US political interests. Secondly, Pakistan’s primary dependence on the US, during the Cold War, was hedged on US military assistance to Pakistan and in that arena not only has Pakistan diversified its military equipment supplier portfolio, a rapid drive towards indigenizing production of military equipment has meant that Pakistan is no longer dependent on the US for the modernization of its army. Thirdly, Pakistan has realised that its national interests are better served through regional alliances rather than transnational ones. The current imbroglio between the US and Russia over the issue of Ukraine, has the potential to snowball into a global conflict, however unlike the Cold War, the US no longer has an ally or a foothold in South Asia.

A crisis similar to the Cold War is now brewing on the horizon. The Ukraine-Russia crisis has rejuvenated the US-Russia antagonistic relationship with both countries turning to their spheres of influence while they are locked in a Cold War-like confrontation. However, this time around, the global South, Pakistan included, is ostensibly reluctant to take sides. This is because firstly, the post-Cold War decades have unveiled Western hypocrisy in its dealings with the South. The prejudicial treatment of non-West immigrants, the rise of white supremacist elements in the West, western apathy towards non-West conflicts and the lies they have spoken to pursue their interests have all contributed, in the South’s reluctance to side with the US in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Secondly, the post-Cold War international system has seen considerable realignments, with regional blocs becoming more formidable and China rising as a global power. Lastly the North-South dependencies have shifted from the West to more multilateral and diverse arrangements, leaving the West little leverage over states in the global South. Given these current circumstances the next Cold War may not be between the West and Russia but between the West and the rest.