A spectacular display of strategic autonomy in world politics appeared on Sunday at the United Nations Security Council emergency session after the US-led strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Pakistan joined hands with Russia and China to propose a resolution demanding an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire”. While the draft resolution did not explicitly name the US or Israel, it condemned the attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.
To pass, the resolution requires the backing of at least nine members— which it has reportedly secured—but also not attract any veto by the permanent members. That proviso makes it a non-starter, since the US won’t censure itself. Nonetheless, it is an astonishingly assertive display of strategic autonomy by Pakistan within a week after the lunch hosted by US President Donald Trump for Pakistan’s army chief General Asim Munir at the White House and their one-on-one conversation.
Trump has a way of intimidating people positively or negatively. He could not find time to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of G7 summit last week, but instead invited him to the White House. Trump probably intended to get Modi and Munir together, which would have been a feather on his cap as a ‘mediator’. So typical of Trump! But Modi preferred to visit ‘Mahaprabhu’s land’, Odisha.
How does Gen Munir get away with such blatantly provocative ‘multi-alignment’—to borrow External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s coinage? The answer is that the exceptional hospitality Munir received at the White House did not cloud his firm judgement about the highest importance of Islamabad acting—and be seen as acting—as Iran’s best friend in the neighbourhood at such a time of trial and tribulation in that country’s 2,700-year history, when it faces an existential threat from the US-Israel juggernaut.
Alas, India lacks such clarity of mind about the importance of Iran. Some 30 years ago, the UN arena in Geneva witnessed another diplomatic pirouette involving Pakistan and Iran, when Iran killed an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation resolution sponsored by Pakistan at the UNHRC condemning India’s alleged human rights violations in Kashmir. Iran was responding to an Indian request made personally by Jaishankar’s then predecessor, the late Dinesh Singh. I had accompanied Singh on that historic mission—‘historic’ because Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had ordered such a diplomatic initiative on the basis of a meticulous assessment that the OIC resolution had a good chance of getting approval at the UNHRC, which, we feared, might lead to the reopening of Kashmir file at the Security Council in New York. Neither Boris Yeltsin’s Russia nor Bill Clinton’s America was a dependable friend at that time.
Rao, our only statesman who draws comparison with Jawaharlal Nehru in sheer erudition, took that audacious decision since he was a scholar-politician-diplomat himself who spoke Persian and was deeply immersed in Iran’s history to comprehend the subtlety and sophistication of the Iranian mind—and its intense desire for a close relationship with India. Fortunately, in Singh, too, we had a rare foreign minister who genuinely believed in India’s independent foreign policy and strategic autonomy. Indeed, Rao and Singh made a great combination as statesmen. Although neither wasted time spinning airy geostrategies to educate their peer groups in western capitals, they were real practitioners of what Joseph Nye would call ‘smart power’ in politics.
Suffice to say, not only did Iran support us, but they also arranged an impromptu meeting for Singh with China’s foreign minister Qian Qichen, who happened to be in Tehran on that day. To our great delight, Qian, who was a politburo member too, told Singh that Kashmir was a backlog of colonial history and a purely bilateral issue between India and Pakistan that ought to be resolved by the two countries directly, without external interference—effectively rejecting the OIC’s locus standi in the matter. Thus it was that India, Iran and China synchronised their watches over the Kashmir question on a fateful day in 1994 in Geneva.
India has come a long way since then. Today, India finds itself in deep embrace of Israel—Iran’s sworn enemy whose principal credential is that it is a Trojan horse of American interests in the West Asian landscape. There are question marks over Iran’s medium- and longterm prospects as a Zionist entity. Unless a radical rethink takes place in Israel to create the propitious conditions necessary for its regional integration, it faces an uncertain future. But there are no signs of a rethink under Israel’s present leadership.
Delhi’s performance has been dismal—India’s strategic ties with the US have been virtually hollowed out. After desperately seeking an opportunity to meet up with Trump, four months later we find it expedient to spurn his invitation to lunch with him. India’s relationship with China remains frozen; the time-tested friend Russia feels alienated as we fraternise, as if intentionally, with Russophobic countries of Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean that makes no sense. Iran, of course, cannot be happy with the centrality we ascribe to Israel in our West Asian strategy.
As for Pakistan, it is on excellent terms with all three superpowers today as well as Iran, which is destined to be a hugely important regional power overlooking several surrounding regions. Pakistan teaming up with Russia and China at the UN Security Council in support of Iran signifies not only a display of bold thinking, but a sign of Pakistan’s coming of age to position itself as a key player in the emerging multipolar world order.
Certainly, one factor that attracted Munir to Trump would have been his perceived familiarity with Iran’s key decision-makers. Indeed, Pakistan-Iran relations are passing through a period marked by warmth, mutual trust and mutual respect. Munir even accompanied Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to Tehran recently and they were received by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
If only India had stuck to its independent foreign policies in West Asia, it would have had a significant role today in the historic transformation of its extended neighbourhood that we are witnessing. It is a sad situation when Iran’s surge is on the cards and Pakistan hopes to create synergy out of it.
M K Bhadrakumar | Former diplomat
(Views are personal)
