It is a tribute to President Ayub Khan’s public relations that his ten-year rule has generally come to be regarded as a great success story, both at home and abroad. In fact, it has been nothing of the kind. At best his performance has been mediocre, as in the fields of administration and economic development. At worst, it has been rather inept, as in the field of foreign policy.
The impression regarding the “success” of Pakistan’s foreign policy is so widespread that this summing up is likely to provoke a sceptical smile if not outright ridicule. It is necessary therefore to deal with this facet of President Ayub Khan’s rule first.
On a surface view Pakistan’s diplomacy has paid good dividends. Pakistan has good relations with the two super-powers as well as China. It has recently succeeded in persuading Moscow to sell it military hardware. It has made itself acceptable to radical and non-aligned regimes in Asia and Africa. President Tito has suggested that it should be invited to the next non-aligned summit. Thanks to its improved relations with the Soviet Union, it need not worry about Afghanistan’s nominal support to the demand for an independent Pakhtunistan. Pakistan has also convinced itself and others that its friendly ties with Peking ensure the security of East Pakistan against “Indian expansionism.”
But Pakistan’s foreign policy cannot be adjudged a success just because President Ayub Khan and his ministers can visit Washington, Moscow and Peking and get arms and economic aid from there. The cost has to be taken into consideration and on any reckoning it has been pretty high.
A Comparison
This point is best appreciated if Pakistan’s performance is compared not with that of India but with that of Iran and Turkey. Like Pakistan, these two countries have been America’s allies, but unlike it they have not jeopardised their military relations with Washington for the sake of Soviet friendship and aid. It does not need to be emphasised that Moscow is far more solicitous of Teheran’s goodwill than Rawalpindi’s.
Different figures have been given regarding America’s total military assistance to Pakistan. It is difficult for an outsider to say which of these figures is accurate. But the more material point is that for 12 years Pakistan’s total requirement of sophisticated military hardware was met free of cost, that even its rupee expenditure was largely reimbursed through defence support aid amounting to 75 million dollars a year on an average, and that Rawalpindi was able to determine the level of its armed forces as well as the location of its important airfields and cantonments.
It would have been a different matter if President Ayub Khan, himself one of the principal architects of the policy of alliance with the United States in the early fifties, had on a cool and careful calculation come to the conclusion that it no longer served his country’s interests or that the cost of the alliance with America was too high. In fact he did not come to any such conclusion. He just drifted into a course of action which led to the loss of US military aid.
This does not mean an endorsement of Pakistan’s original policy of military alliance with the United States. That issue is not germane to the present discussion. The point I wish to make is that President Ayub Khan has not shown great acumen in the field of foreign policy, that in the second half of the ‘sixties he could have established good relations with Moscow and Peking without jeopardising military aid from Washington, and that the decision of Russia as well as China to cultivate Pakistan can be explained entirely in terms of their own interests.
Not Creditable
It is even more pertinent that, given the choice between two alternatives, President Ayub Khan has at least on five occasions adopted the more harmful course. It is an open question whether he did so on his own or allowed himself to be led by his advisers. But even if the more charitable explanation is accepted as most liberals tend to do in this country, it does not reflect much credit on his judgment and capacity for leadership. Let me cite the five instances in question.
First, when President Ayub Khan came to power in 1958 as the leader of a military junta, it was open to him to make a break with the sterile anti-Indian policy of his predecessors and initiate a more constructive approach. He was strongly inclined to do so because his mind had not been poisoned by the legacy of the Muslim League’s bitterly communal politics of the pre-partition era and because he tended to take the view that he was responsible solely for the well-being of the people of Pakistan.
He gave up the constructive approach just as it was beginning to pay dividends. Within a fortnight of the signing of the historic agreement on the sharing of the Indus waters in September 1960, he made a bitterly anti-India speech on the issue of Kashmir and thus jeopardised the gains that were beginning to flow from the earlier policy. New Delhi refused to ratify the agreement on the proposed railway link between Dacca and Lahore. It was on the cards that India would soon have agreed to convert the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir into a “soft frontier” allowing freedom of movement and trade. Combined with the Indus Waters Treaty, this would have secured all of Pakistan’s legitimate interests. President Ayub Khan destroyed that hopeful prospect with his Muzzaffarabad speech in the first week of October 1960.
Much has been made of Mr. Nehru’s reaction to President Ayub Khan’s offer of joint defence in 1959 and the latter’s disillusionment with the former on account of his alleged refusal to make any “concession” whatsoever on the Kashmir issue during his visit to Pakistan for signing the Indus Waters Treaty. But that cannot even explain, much less justify, the change of course on the part of President Ayub Khan who abandoned the policy of conciliation just when it was beginning to be most fruitful. Why he did so is still a mystery.
Secondly, Pakistan’s national interests were not adversely affected as a result of the adoption by the United States of a more rational approach towards non-aligned countries, including India, in the wake of the death of Mr. John Foster Dulles, and Rawalpindi could have profitably gone along with the new approach. Instead President Ayub Khan acted as if it was within his country’s power to keep America’s foreign policy on the Dullesian course.
When Mr. John F. Kennedy was elected President and showed an inclination to cultivate India, President Ayub Khan’s Government inspired a hysterical anti-US campaign in the press. The exercise was as futile as it was in bad taste. President Ayub Khan might have calculated that he could use this artificially stimulated popular anger to blackmail Washington into increasing its aid to Pakistan. If he had been more realistic and better informed regarding the expendability of Pakistani bases for the United States he would have acted with greater discretion. As it turned out, the officially-inspired press campaign damaged Pakistan-US relations with no compensating advantage for Rawalpindi.
Hypnotised
Thirdly, when India suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of China in October 1962 and asked for and accepted military aid from the United States and the United Kingdom, it opened itself for the first time to pressure from Washington and London on the question of the power balance in the sub-continent. Rawalpindi could have effectively used this opportunity to its advantage because both America and Britain were terribly keen not to offend its susceptibilities; in fact they were wholly predisposed towards exerting the maximum pressure on New Delhi on the questions of Kashmir and arms limitation. President Ayub Khan and his advisers frittered away this opportunity. They were hypnotised by their own extravagant statements regarding the Indian arms build-up. Thus started the drift which culminated in the armed conflict of September 1965.
Fourthly, it is incredible that President Ayub Khan should have convinced himself or should have allowed himself to be convinced that he could organise a massive infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir and threaten to bottle up Indian troops there by cutting off the vital road link without attracting an Indian response in the plains and that he could openly use American equipment in an effort to seize Kashmir without running the risk of forfeiting American military assistance. As the events proved, he acted like a gambler.
Finally, it is only common sense that in its own national interest Pakistan should have taken the fullest advantage of the Tashkent agreement to normalise relations with this country. The resumption of trade would have been highly welcome in East Pakistan where Rawalpindi has been facing a rather awkward situation. Normalisation of ties with India would have won for Rawalpindi the goodwill of both Washington and Moscow. Pakistan could have secured even Soviet arms more easily if it had adopted a more rational approach towards New Delhi. The latter’s objections also would have in that event lost at least some of their force.
The present posture of unremitting hostility towards India could make some sense if Rawalpindi was acting in collusion with Peking to keep up the maximum pressure on this country in the expectation that it would not be able to put up with that for long and begin to crack up. In fact there is little evidence of such collusion. That the policies of the two countries in regard to India happen to be running parallel to each other for the moment is another matter.
Pathetic
In spite of all its bravado, there has been something pathetic about Pakistan’s foreign policy in recent years. Rawalpindi developed a “passion” about Afro-Asia when the concept was visibly becoming outmoded; it awoke to the cause of anti-colonialism long after the passion had spent itself and most newly independent countries had begun to adjust their relations with former imperial powers on a realistic basis; it began to indulge in a display of anti-Americanism when the cold war had passed its peak and the Soviet Union itself was looking for areas of agreement and co-operation with the United States; and its friendship with Peking has coincided with China’s lapse into irresponsibility, slogan-mongering and finally into incoherence as a result of the so-called great proletarian cultural revolution.
The absence of a creative impulse among Pakistan’s policy planners has been altogether staggering. The brightest among them has been a phoney character. That so unbalanced and volatile a person as Mr. Bhutto should have wielded a decisive influence on Pakistan’s foreign relations at a critical time speaks for itself.
President Ayub Khan himself has been regarded, perhaps rightly, as a man of solid common sense. Unfortunately, he has not displayed that quality in dealing with foreign policy issues. If his country is not too badly placed it is largely due to the world situation and not to his leadership.
(To be concluded)
The Times of India, 30 October 1968