Pakistan’s foreign policy has been incoherent and inconsistent since its inception. It has suffered from a chasm between policy and strategy, xenophobic tendencies, domestic politics interfering negatively with the foreign policy process, and vice versa – including the unsettling influence of the military on civilian politics and the outsize impact of religious groups.
Policy-makers, rather than focusing on the policy process and the outcomes, serially succumb to socio-religious pressures, intensifying policy volatility, and that volatility, read as vulnerability, opens Pakistan up to manipulation by stronger world powers.
The result is that on the issues that Pakistan flags as central to its foreign policy principles – the Kashmir issue and the rights of Palestinians – Islamabad’s achievements have been barely discernible.
While Pakistan ventured into the marshlands of jihad – a tryst with international terrorism which began in the 1980s and brought home a perpetual religious radicalization, sectarianism and Kalashnikov culture that continues to this day – India was laying the ground for diplomatic ties with Israel, a process which sped up after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Around the same time, unrest began in Kashmir, and Pakistan became involved with a new aspect of the on/off conflict with India. Militants were strategically rerouted to Kashmir to keep India at bay.