WASHINGTON: Elections are unlikely to produce a wholesale change in Islamabad’s thinking, but might enable a shift in how Pakistan conducts its foreign policy.
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The competing political parties in Pakistan have defined their foreign policy priorities only vaguely, and the likelihood of coalition building will further dilute each party’s ability to enact its preferred policies.
These views have been expressed in a detailed analysis of the present pre-elections situation in Pakistan by the influential think tank, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Titled “How Will Elections Impact Pakistan’s Foreign Policy? the analysis authored by Frederic Grare and Reece Trevor states that if the mainstream parties win an overwhelming majority, their task will be easier in foreign policy.
“But if the election produces a divided Parliament with no clear majority, the demands of coalition politics will grant more marginal parties - with more extreme views - a disproportionate role in policy making.
This will also allow the military and the intelligence agencies to more easily manipulate the decision making process.”
It says the upcoming Pakistani elections are unlikely to fundamentally change the country’s foreign policies, but the next civilian government could be more cooperative.
“Foreign policy rarely decides elections anywhere in the world. Pakistan is no different. The country’s upcoming polls will most likely reflect disappointment in the current government and hopes for a better one, but the result is unlikely to serve as a popular mandate on foreign policy.
And because long-term national interests and structural factors generally determine foreign policy, such policies often persist regardless of who holds political power. Decision-making on Pakistan’s foreign affairs is an increasingly complex process reflecting a growing number of interest groups and external factors. Elections therefore affect foreign policy mostly on the margins, but they can and do influence decisions and set the trend for future developments.
Civil-military relations and how they influence threat perception and the definition of national interest will likely remain the biggest variable in Pakistan’s foreign policy. And the elections will help determine how much space civilian leaders have to operate.
Depending on the results, Pakistan’s next government could be more cooperative in its foreign relations and even show less tolerance for state-sponsored terrorism in order to help pursue its regional and global objectives. Such a result could, over time, change Pakistan’s relations with its neighbourhood and help define a new South Asia.
“The Pakistani military deserves its reputation for political engineering. Often operating behind the scenes, it has been known to make and unmake majorities and governments to maintain its primacy and impose its will. Most analysts see the army as the real decision maker in matters of foreign policy and defence, even when a civilian government is in office.
“Historically, the military has undoubtedly imposed major political constraints on the definition and implementation of Pakistan’s foreign policy. But it still bears noting that some high-ranking civil servants and major political parties have traditionally shared the military’s views on foreign policy. Nonetheless, in recent months the civilian government has enjoyed slightly more political space on foreign policy.
The analysis says the military’s influence on foreign policy has clearly changed over the past five years. Before 2011, the military professed its loyalty to the democratic system and the elected civilian authorities, but it showed a complete disregard for the government’s opinion on defence and foreign policy matters.
For example, only a few weeks into President Asif Ali Zardari’s term in 2008, Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani slammed the new government over Zardari‘s remarks on a nuclear no-first-use policy on Indian television. Similarly, Zardari’s hopes of a rapprochement with India were dashed after the Mumbai terrorist attacks, which were allegedly engineered largely by Pakistani security forces. And the military had almost complete autonomy in determining Pakistan’s policy on Afghanistan.
However, a series of serious incidents that characterised 2011 marked an inflection point in the relationship between the military and civilians over foreign policy. Prior to this point, the dominant perception was that the United States and the international community needed Pakistan much more than Pakistan needed them.
Things changed in 2011. The raid against Osama bin Laden and the resulting suspicion that Pakistan might have provided shelter for years to the most wanted man in the world contributed to Islamabad’s international isolation. But things changed most significantly after U.S. forces mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a border checkpoint near Salala. Islamabad’s retaliatory closure of overland supply routes for U.S. forces in Afghanistan certainly increased Nato’s costs, but it also produced the unintended consequence of demonstrating that the United States was capable of operating in the region without Pakistani support.
A growing economic crisis and the prospect of a “divorce” from the United States forced Pakistan’s security establishment to rethink its posture and opened up new opportunities for the civilian leadership. For instance, the Zardari government has been able to begin a gradual rapprochement with India. While this policy shift would likely have been impossible without tacit military acceptance, it was nevertheless engineered by the civilian government on its own initiative, convincingly suggesting an expanded role for elected civilians in foreign policy.
Even with greater space for civilian leaders to operate, the impact of public opinion on foreign policy is surprisingly absent from most debates on Pakistan’s external affairs.
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