Implementing foreign policy is all about finally choosing an instrument of power to reach out into an environment where the clash of wills between the actors takes place. India finally chose to use the military as an instrument of power, but will it be able to control the environment, and manipulate the context? India is not using power just as a means to an end; it is using power as a context.
Contextual power is the power that frames an actor, whether an individual or a state. The circumstances that frame Pakistan in the current event are all built around the Indian accusations that Pakistan is not just involved in the terrorist attack in Pahalgam but also in previous such attacks at many other places in India.
What makes the context real or unreal is how it is perceived. The Indian context is based on an Indian perspective; the Pakistani perspective is that Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism. This is a different interpretation of the same position, and the big challenge that Pakistani policymakers face is to convince the international audience to take an unbiased position on the interplay between the two actors in the conflict, and in this context.
The Indian preference for framing Pakistan is worthless if it is not supported by evidence of Pakistani involvement. Not the domestic Indian audience, but it is the international audience and its interpretation of the context that matters most in this conflict.
International means different things to different people, and to compete against this Indian contextual power, which is being utilised to frame Pakistan as some kind of rogue state, Pakistan will have to increase its diplomatic efforts on both dimensions of international, horizontal as well as vertical. The horizontal starts with the immediate, and the immediate is the home.
We must set our house in order, as Indian manipulation of the context is possible and more acceptable because the world views India, unlike us as an established democracy. India’s domestic policy enters the implementation phase of its foreign policy in the form of a consensus. In conflictual situations, consensus is more felt than built. The contextual power of the actors can be as good or bad as the world around which it is built and from where it is intended.
So, horizontally, we must start at home, then with our other neighbours and the other medium and great powers in the region. If we can achieve the regional acceptance of not the Indian-framed but the real context, we will have little effort to make to reach out far and away for its global acceptance. If the regional audience sees merit in our context, the global audience will find little reason not to do so.
Our political, economic, military, normative and cultural layers are the vertical extension of the international. We should clearly distinguish and define the importance of hierarchy of these layers. Political stability, economic interdependence and sustenance, and military preparedness go hand in hand, but to win the war of context, we need to invest in the normative and cultural dimension of the vertical extension of the international.
The standard of our norms is what the outside world measures to judge our state’s behaviour. Two simple norms are adherence to the rule of law at home and adherence to international laws as a nation state. For the international community, the most important cultural dimension and the most relevant to global politics these days is religion.
Pakistan was not meant to be a theocratic state. Had there been no Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and no General Zia-ul-Haq who pioneered in introducing religiosity in our society, we could still be a multicultural and not religiously dominated society. For the Afghan jihadist parties that were grouped in Pakistan at that time, it was not a struggle for national liberation but a radical jihadist fight that had a trilateral support of the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
For the Soviets, the question of cost was in the loss of men and material that it could later recover. For Pakistan, the cost was the radicalisation of an entire generation and a society, not easy to recover.
India’s strategic interest has been to create an Afghanistan that was not dependent on Pakistan and which could be used to contain Pakistan. President Karzai led Afghanistan from 2002 to 2014, and this period was effectively utilised by India to promote and export terrorism to Pakistan via the Afghanistan border. Pakistan has already submitted a comprehensive dossier to the UN which, with evidence, implicates India in promoting terrorism in Pakistan through Afghanistan.
Contextually, it is important to recollect that it was from 2003 to 2005 that India was able to build its Anti-Infiltration Obstacle System (AIOS), popularly known as a ‘LoC Fence’ inside the Indian-controlled side of the LoC.
This construction would not have been possible if Pakistan had not agreed to a ceasefire along the LoC following Operation Parakram when India mobilised thousands of troops along the international border with Pakistan. The effect of this construction was that India practically eliminated the possibility of any infiltration through the LoC. Henceforth, any infiltration was to be due to the Indian military’s incompetence and inefficiency.
The world must realise that the Pahalgam incident also speaks volumes about Indian military’s inefficiency and incompetence. The military action against Pakistan is to divert the world’s attention from this important aspect. If India projects Pakistan as the perpetrator of terrorism, then the world must know that India is a bigger perpetrator. If India projects itself as the victim of terrorism, then Pakistan is a bigger victim.
Lastly, the Indian military action, which is the implementation stage of its foreign policy, may push it on a pathway that India may come to regret. After a while, it may not be easy for India to extract itself from it, thus pulling it into what may be termed as ‘implementation trap’. This Indian military adventure may be over soon, but for Pakistan, we must invest in our cultural richness, political stability, economic competitiveness and high-quality education.
Only by investing in these areas will we be able to prevent India from manipulating the context that it utilises to frame us as an irresponsible state. Where you sit is where you stand. Where Pakistan sits today, it can only rise. Where India stands, it can only fall.