The Wrong Ally

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Foreword

This book analyses Pakistan’s state sovereignty in the context of state dependence on the USA, both during the Cold War era and the War on Terror. This is an important issue, not only for historical reasons, but also because this history has influenced the present, not least in the context of recent controversies such as US drone strikes and the killing of Osama bin Laden. Yet, there is little academic analysis of Pakistan’s sovereignty in this context, and this is why Ahmed Waheed’s book is so important and should be welcomed.

As Ahmed makes clear, the book examines three aspects of Pakistan’s state sovereignty. Firstly, it observes US–Pakistan relations through patron-client relations, and the unequal relation between them, which gives the former considerable power and leverage over the latter. But at the same time, this power is not exercised in any simple way, and Ahmed explores this both historically and in terms of present problems for US hegemony. Secondly it does so through an examination of the changing ways that discursive justifications for US intervention have changed, from the (unevenly implemented) principle of non-intervention in the Cold War, to conditional sovereignty in the post-Cold War period. Ahmed pays particular attention to discourses around human rights and the responsibility to protect. This leads to the third, and perhaps most contentious part of Ahmed’s argument, namely Pakistan’s status as a fragile state. In the US’ eyes, this failure has been used to justify so-called humanitarian intervention and even state-building in parts of the developing world, with little success. But what is important here is the fact that the so-called War on Terror has relied on strategic allies, some of whom have poor human rights records and might even be called failed states. Ahmed argues that Pakistan fits into this categorisation, and this can be seen through what amounts to the US’ state-building efforts in Pakistan. Crucially, little of this assistance is really concerned with dealing with Pakistan’s fragility, even assuming that such intervention could actually do very much about this. ← ix | x → More important, US assistance to Pakistan actually is principally concerned with narrow security issues, and specifically military questions. Drawing on elite interviews, Ahmed explores this disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of US policy.

What is perhaps most distinctive, however, about Ahmed’s approach is not its historical account, per se, but the way he uses this account to inform a more subtle, nuanced account of sovereignty than is often the case in the scholarly literature. He asks not only how the changes from the Cold War through to the War on Terror impacted on sovereignty, but also how these international processes led us to understand what sovereignty is in the first place, and how this changes over time. Like all cases, Pakistan has a specific history, but also like all cases, drawing on the lessons of this history allows us to make more informed general accounts of sovereignty. In particular, Ahmed’s account is very useful for understanding the wider transition from colonialism to what Kwame Nkrumah called neo-colonialism, in which an independent state does indeed emerge, but where sovereignty is still conditioned by the wider international order. Most analyses of neo-colonialism and dependency focus mainly on political-economic relations, and some of these tend to see only domination of the new state, as if such a sovereign state has no agency at all. What is distinctive about Ahmed’s account is the following: (i) it focuses on geopolitics as much as, if not more than, political economy, which is different from most accounts informed by dependency; (ii) it shows how this involves relations of subordination and dependence, but equally how such relations have changed over time; (iii) and in doing so, it shows how these changes are in part the product of factors within the national state, and not simply due to changing US strategic interests, central though these may still be. In this way the agency of both dominant and the dominated is considered. Thus as well as a detailed exposition of a particular case study, the book has far wider implications, both for understanding the changing domestic geo-politics of a subordinate state, and the changing foreign policy of the dominant state. This in turn has implications for understanding wider approaches to international relations, for the book combines an analysis of both sovereignty and dependence. The standard IR theory which takes sovereignty as its starting point is realism which, in the absence of a global leviathan, argues that the international ← x | xi → order is one characterized by anarchy. However, although sovereignty is central to this study, the argument is that sovereignty changes over time and that there are some states that are far more powerful than others. Seen in this way, the book can be usefully linked to post-colonial understandings of the international order which argue that the international order is characterized by hierarchy. Thus it is not only Pakistan specialists, or comparative politics scholars, that have much to learn from this study but also international relations scholars as well.

This is a topical and very well-informed analysis of the state in Pakistan and its changing interaction with the still dominant state in the international order, namely the US state. It includes detailed empirical and analytical material and very valuable new material drawn from a range of primary sources. It is highly recommended.

— RAY KIELY
Professor of Politics, School of Politics and
International Relations, Queen Mary University of London

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Acknowledgements

This book is the product of my doctoral research carried out between 2010 and 2015 at the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London. Needless to say it would not have been possible without the guidance and inspiration of Professor Ray Kiely and Professor James Dunkerley, both of whom provided very useful and probing comments that helped me steer the research. I am first and foremost grateful to them, for helping me navigate through tough intellectual terrains. I am also grateful to my PhD examiners Professor Gilbert Achcar and Professor Bulent Gokay whose critical observations and insightful reviews played a vital role in the preparation of this manuscript. Finally I am thankful to the staff at the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, who provided me the institutional support in smoothing the bureaucratic processes of the University.

I owe gratitude to Ali Sameer for allowing me to tap his unlimited reservoirs of optimism, hope and love. Considering that he has borne the brunt of my final PhD year, this book wouldn’t have been possible without his emotional support and excellent cooking skills. I am also thankful to my wife and my father for always being there, when I have wanted them, throughout the project. There are many others, too numerous to mention, who have been of much value throughout the project; I am also very grateful for their help and guidance.

Last but not the least, I am thankful to the staff and the editors at Peter Lang for their support.

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Abbreviations

CPEC China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

CSF Coalition Support Fund

EFF Extended Fund Facility

ESAF Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility

EU European Union

GoP Government of Pakistan

HEC Higher Education Commission

IAEA International Atomic Energy Association

ICISS International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty

IDA International Development Assistance

IMF International Monetary Fund

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

ODA Official Development Assistance

OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

UN United Nations

US United States of America

USAID United States Agency for International Development

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Appendices

Appendix I: Pakistani Academic Contributions on State Failure, State-Building and State Sovereignty

Appendix II: Pakistan and the Symington Amendment

Appendix III: US Foreign Aid and the Nuclear Reprocessing Issue with Pakistan and France, Part I

Appendix IV: US Foreign Aid and the Nuclear Reprocessing Issue with Pakistan and France, Part II

Appendix V: Consultations in Europe on Pakistan

Appendix VI: Memo from the Office of the Deputy Secretary of State

Appendix VII: Comments on the F-5 Aircraft and the Jaguars’ Night Strike Capabilities

Appendix VIII: The US, PRC and the South Asian Nuclear Dilemma

Appendix IX: Non-Proliferation Policy and Renewed Assistance to Pakistan

Appendix X: Meeting between Ambassador Chamberlain and President Musharraf

Appendix XI: Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage Meeting with Intelligence Chief Lieutenant General Mahmud

Appendix XII: The Seven Demands of Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage

Appendix XIII: Musharraf Accepts the Seven Points

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

State sovereignty

It is commonly understood that, during the Cold War, sovereignty was usually interpreted by states to imply, in theory at least, a principle of non-interference and non-intervention, and more so by the Third World states. However, a series of humanitarian crises during the 1990s reconfigured and renewed the challenges to state sovereignty. The move to rethink sovereignty in the light of modern realities also gained impetus after 9/11, when the US proclaimed that it was threatened more by weaker states than stronger ones. While Cold War interventions¹ and foreign assistance strategies² were known to fulfil geopolitical purposes, these geopolitical purposes were now ostensibly replaced by human rights. Though the debate on the obsolescence of sovereignty as an analytical tool in international relations is not new, it has thus received fresh impetus from recent developments in international relations, pivoted around human rights and signified by the inclusion of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ norm in the UN charter.³ Thus what we have witnessed is a transformation internationally, from ← 1 | 2 → sovereignty as authority4 to sovereignty as responsibility.⁵ Since this transition directly affects the Third World and legitimizes intervention in cases the global community deems necessary, it is important to study how the Third World states have responded to this development. Secondly, it also needs to be seen whether the policies of powerful states are more concerned with human rights now, given the transformation of the concept of state sovereignty.

Pakistan constitutes a near perfect case study to investigate this phenomenon. Pakistan has been consistently ranked amongst the top failed states⁶ and its projected state failure remains a crucial concern of policymakers and intellectuals alike. Given this, the contemporary discourse on state sovereignty, which suggests that weaker states are a greater threat than stronger ones to the security of greater powers, makes the study of Pakistan’s state sovereignty an important exercise. Further, the contemporary logic of foreign economic assistance justifies foreign aid as a means to alleviate the dire conditions of weaker states. This logic has three components: the nature of the threat (terrorism/humanitarian crisis), the location of the threat (weaker/failed states) and the solution to the threat (foreign aid). Amongst other states, Pakistan conspicuously falls on the intersection of these three components.

Though Pakistan has remained a vital US ally in the War on Terror, the extremist militancy within its population and its lack of control of the region bordering Afghanistan has remained a pivotal security concern of the US. Indeed, the assassination of Osama bin Laden from within Pakistan and the continuing drone attacks within Pakistani territory, in the region along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border, are amongst many issues that haunt relations on both sides. This is because these issues highlight US ← 2 | 3 → insensitivity to Pakistan’s state sovereignty. For instance, in the case of the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, the major powers were euphoric while the mood in Pakistan was sombre. In his speech Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yousaf R. Gillani, commenting on the death of Osama bin Laden and US drone attacks emphasized that: