All states have core interests, and these generally revolve around security and prosperity. There are often trade-offs between these imperatives as a certain country might assign greater importance to one over another, depending on its threat assessment, as well as the importance its citizens and governing consensus place on their wellbeing.
Examples abound, but let’s take two extreme ones: North Korea is militarised to the extent of keeping its people on a starvation diet. Isolated by its own paranoia and ideology, constantly fearful of attack, and prickly to the point of insanity, it is a tightly controlled dictatorship run by a delusional kleptomaniac. In such a state, prosperity is restricted to a handful of the ruling elites.
At the other end of the spectrum is Switzerland. Traditionally a neutral state, it has escaped the devastations of the wars that have ravaged much of Europe over the centuries. While it does have compulsory military service, its expenditure on defence has not impeded its steady economic progress. Indeed, the one thing visitors hold against this Alpine paradise is that it is boring. (If only people would apply this description to Pakistan.)
Between these two ends of the scale are scores of countries that make their choices and run their cost-benefit analyses. However, for most of them, it’s not a simple prosperity/security model: all too often, ideology and personality intervene to skew the equation. Decisions are taken based not so much on rational calculations as on considerations of manmade or divinely inspired belief systems. In authoritarian states, personal preferences play a large role in decision-making.
It is precisely when irrational factors come into play that nation-states start behaving in unpredictable ways. This introduces a random factor in international relations that all too often results in misunderstandings and armed conflict.
To reduce friction, organisations like the United Nations provide a platform for the peaceful resolution of differences, and states enter into alliances to enhance their security. Similarly, they form regional groupings to promote prosperity.
The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, although driven by competing ideologies, was a carefully managed conflict. Given the vast nuclear arsenals at the disposal of both superpowers, leaders on each side took great care not to provoke their adversary beyond a certain point.
Ideology often translates into blindness when it infects state policy. Take the Iranian nuclear programme as an example. Clearly aimed at acquiring the know-how to make weapons, this policy has placed Iran in a needless confrontation with the major powers. Further sanctions will lower the living standard, despite the oil wealth the country possesses. Nevertheless, President Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs seem determined to push ahead at the risk of an armed conflict. Far from enhancing security, the nuclear programme threatens to undermine it further.
In the Indo-Pakistan conflict, a mixture of hard-nosed calculations and personal, as well as ideological, factors have kept the region on the brink for six decades. Imagine for a moment that Jawaharlal Nehru had not been a Kashmiri Brahmin: would his government have taken a different set of decisions in the early days of the Kashmir conflict?
Pakistan’s first generation of leaders has been much criticised for joining western alliances in the first decades of the young state’s existence. But decisions should be judged in the context in which they were taken. Faced with an existential threat from its much larger neighbour, a virtually bankrupt Pakistan had few options but to sign on as a member of Cento (Central Treaty Organisation) and Seato (Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation) as a way of acquiring arms.
Over the years, however, the country has imparted a distinctly ideological edge to its foreign and defence policies. Although created as a homeland for Muslims, it became what Gen Zia called “the laboratory of Islam”. Unfortunately, all the experiments conducted in this laboratory have ended as spectacular failures.
First in Afghanistan, and then in Kashmir, the Pakistani establishment has used jihadi groups as proxies, with Islam as the rallying cry. The Kashmir cause has become an article of faith for Pakistani hawks in and out of the army. This victory of emotion over logic has resulted in our Kashmir policy that has bankrupted us, apart from causing huge internal distortions.
In a mirror response, India too has imbued Kashmir with an emotional dimension over the years. From a disputed state, Kashmir has now become the glue that holds the Indian Union together. If India makes any concessions over autonomy here, the popular mantra goes, other states will make similar demands.
Both Pakistan and India have thus invested inordinate amounts of blood, treasure and political capital into this one issue without a proper cost-benefit analysis. But when raw emotions dictate policy, reason flies out of the window.
Other examples of ideology and emotion dictating policy include much of the Muslim world’s refusal to recognise Israel. Considering that most of them do not have common borders with the Zionist state, and thus do not have any territorial disputes with it, this is difficult to justify by logic alone. Over the years, I must have written scores of articles critical of Israel’s expansionist policies, as well as its unacceptable treatment of the Palestinian people.
However, Muslim states cannot hope to influence Israeli behaviour unless they engage with it. Recognition of a state does not imply approval of its policies: had this been so, not too many countries would have been recognised today. If Muslim states bordering Israel can exchange embassies with it, why can’t we, who live thousands of miles away?
Whenever I have made this suggestion, I have been reviled, and accused of being a Mossad agent. This just proves how difficult it is to have a sane, logical debate about a subject that has taken on an ideological dimension.
It is true that human beings are not cold, calculating machines who base their actions solely on reason. Emotions play an important part in defining the human condition. However, while individuals can (and do, more often than not) take decisions on the basis of intuitions, emotions or sheer ignorance, nation-states must move with greater deliberation as their policies and actions can affect millions.
When all is said and done, ideological states have fared poorly: witness the ruinous wars fuelled by communism and national socialism in the last century. And as a parting reminder, Pakistan isn’t doing too well either.
Mohammed Abbasi 