Question

Critically analyzes the PAK-Russia Relations and suggests how to make this relation more sustainable and balanced?​

Answer 1

Answer:

The partition of the British India into two separate states (India and Pakistan) coincided with the beginning of Cold War. The newly independent nation-states—emerging from colonialism and fracture with structural weaknesses—faced the dilemma of choosing an alliance between the two superpowers (the United States and Soviet Union) in the emerging bipolar international system. India inherited the colonial political structure of the British Raj, and New Delhi preferred strategic autonomy to military alliances; however, it also consciously collaborated with the Soviet Union while officially maintaining a nonaligned policy. As the weaker, more vulnerable, and more economically struggling of the two states, Pakistan joined the US-led military alliances that lasted until the end of the Cold War. Pakistan benefited economically and militarily from alliances with the West but not without paying for its choice. For most of its history, Pakistan suffered from the Soviet Union’s retaliation and antagonism for Islamabad’s pro-Western choices.

There were three distinct periods during the Cold War wherein Pakistan’s proactive role in pursuance of US strategic objectives laid the basis of historical distrust between the Soviet Union and Pakistan. First, Islamabad provided the United States with air bases and intelligence assets on Pakistani soil that facilitated reconnaissance on and monitoring of the Soviet Union in the pre-satellite era. A major example of when the Soviets threatened retaliation was concerning U-2 flights from PAF Camp Badaber, near Peshawar, especially after the infamous Gary Powers incident in May 1960.2 As a superpower in the Cold War, the Soviet Union frequently voted against Pakistan’s interests in all international forums, and in particular, against Pakistan’s position on Kashmir in the United Nations.3

Second, in the 1970s, Pakistan facilitated Pres. Richard Nixon’s geopolitical summit that brought rapprochement between China and the United States.4 The Soviets retaliated by signing the India–Soviet Mutual Friendship treaty in August 1971, which provided India with political and strategic support during the 1971 Indo­–Pakistan War. Pakistan suffered a humiliating surrender in East Pakistan that resulted in the birth of Bangladesh. Pakistani intelligentsia consider the dismemberment of a united Pakistan as the heaviest price Islamabad paid for Pakistan’s role in facilitating US–China rapprochement.

Finally, in the 1980s, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States and Pakistan realigned to wage an asymmetric war to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan. Moscow’s involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s contributed to the Soviets’ strategic overextension and eventually the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Arguably, US involvement in in Afghanistan the 1980s was American payback for the US defeat in Vietnam (a proxy war the Soviets supported against United States) and Pakistan’s revenge for its dismemberment at the hands of Soviet-supported India in the 1971 war. In other words, both Pakistan and the Soviet Union played an indirect role in each other’s disintegration during the Cold War. This historical baggage casts a shadow, even as Russia and Pakistan are fostering a new relationship.