SOUTH ASIA

RESEARCH
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/0262728017725624
Vol. 37(3): 1–19
Copyright © 2017
SAGE Publications
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London,
New Delhi,
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STATE SOVEREIGNTY AND

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
IN PAKISTAN: ANALYSING
THE REALISM STRANGLEHOLD
Ahmed Waqas Waheed
National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan

abstract  In Pakistan, the field of international relations (IR) theory

remains firmly embedded in the ‘realist’ tradition, to the detriment
of a wider range of considerations. This stranglehold, strengthened
by the particular evolutionary trajectory of the Pakistani state as well
as a complacent academia, seems to have created a vicious circle of
knowledge reproduction, reinforced by various bids for power, or
proximity to it. This article scrutinises specifically the dominant
understandings in Pakistan of state sovereignty and security in a
broadly historical perspective, showing how the rise of the military,
combined with security paranoia, has prevented academic creativity
in this field, including scrutiny of recent concerns over rather close
China–Pakistan links.
keywords:  academia, China–Pakistan relations, international
relations, military, Pakistan, security, sovereignty, state, Third World states

Introduction
After the present author had presented a paper at a local university on the state of
international relations (IR) in Pakistan, a senior academic queried: ‘Why do we need
any other theory when realism in its various manifestations answers all our questions?’
Precisely that is the problem. Most Pakistani academics find little or no utility in
developing or researching other IR theories and continue to fix their gaze on some
form of realism as an explanatory framework to analyse the country’s predicaments.
This article argues that the limited and restricted scope of IR theories in Pakistan has
as much to do with the country’s academia as with the evolution of the Pakistani state
and its deep-seated, almost paranoid concerns over sovereignty and security. Pakistan
is a state whose military has emerged as a powerful stakeholder in matters concerning
IR. This has, sometimes overtly and at other times covertly, captured and channelled
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the state’s understandings on foreign policy issues. Coupled with the fact that the
military-dominated state remains in a situation of perpetual insecurity (Fair, 2009;
Fair et al., 2010; Nawaz, 2009), the underdevelopment of IR theories in Pakistan can
be attributed as much to the state’s preferences on matters of IR as it does to academic
complacency and complicity with those in power. There may be more to say about
this, though certainly for the Pakistani military, sovereignty is the ‘abracadabra’ of
IR. Whether it is a matter of its nuclear issue (The National Security Archive, 2010),
a unilateral US raid to capture the most wanted terrorist (Perlez, 2011) or bilateral
terms with neighbouring India, sovereignty seems to be the only official prism for
response; its preservation becomes the overriding concern.
This article argues that without understanding the evolution of the Pakistani
state, its security preferences and academic complicities in cultivating state-centric
preferences, literature on the subject misses an important piece in the puzzle concerning
the underdevelopment of IR theories in Pakistan. While the study takes a distinct
epistemological turn to contribute to understanding why there are no IR theories in
Pakistan, it must not be conflated with other attempts to examine this debilitating
state (Behera, 2008, 2009; Inayatullah, 1998; Inayatullah et al., 2005). Though these
studies provide a comprehensive understanding of the ‘realist’ grounding of IR in
Pakistan, they do not offer a substantive account of how and why realism has come
to dominate the topic to the detriment of other IR theories.
To gauge the predicament of IR theories in Pakistan, it is first of all necessary to
understand how state sovereignty, as enshrined in realism, is conceived in Pakistan.
The dominance of realism is attributed to Pakistan’s doctrinal adherence to sovereignty,
which seems to ignore the country’s internal strife and the postcolonial democratic
environment. Unless other views on state sovereignty are allowed to permeate the
state’s policymaking membrane, alternative IR theories will remain sidelined and
classified as a marginal academic concern. The article builds on detailed study of state
sovereignty in Pakistan, considering the various factors involved in the evolution of
this norm in Pakistan’s policy circles into the shape we witness today and its influence
on academia. The key argument is that a notable complicity of Pakistan’s academia
has resulted in a vicious circle in which the state provides patronage to certain types
of research, while academia in return re-endorses state preferences.
The article first explores the concept of state sovereignty within the wider context
of Third World states. It then draws on existing literature on the evolution of the
Pakistani state to trace the dominance of Pakistan’s military-bureaucratic oligarchy
in its initial few years, showing how subsequently the military emerged as a dominant
force among state elites. Next, certain major issues, both international and domestic,
which helped shape Pakistan’s security-centric perception of sovereignty, are shown
to remain potent explanations today for the remarkable stranglehold of realism on IR
theories. Largely attributed by the Pakistani state to India’s initial belligerence, this
helped create a security-centric Pakistani state. Finally, scrutiny of Pakistan’s academic
contributions to the country’s state’s security doctrine analyses the crossover of former
Waheed: State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan 3

military officers and civilian bureaucrats into academia and policy-advising think tanks.
This demonstrates how the state, due to the presence of a dominant bureaucracy in
these think tanks, has kept IR research aligned with its own perceived interests. To
what extent this stranglehold scenario is a deliberate outcome rather than an accidental
development remains to be seen. Further, all along, the role of the common people of
Pakistan seems entirely overlooked.

Sovereignty and the Third World State

Sovereignty has quite an ambiguous and elusive character, compounded by various
definitional and theoretical conundrums (Mishra, 2008). As a concept, it is ‘fuzzy’
and complex (Jackson, 2003). Conceptually, at least, ‘its protean character has baffled
intellectual pursuits since its inception’ (Mishra, 2008: 65). However, despite its
problematic character, the concept of sovereignty has continued to remain a central
feature of IR and international politics. Jackson (2003: 783) observes that it is still
central to most thinking about IR, and particularly international law. Ayoob (2002a:
81) argues that ‘respect for state sovereignty forms the cornerstone of the global
covenant which, in turn, acts as the foundation for the international order’. It is this
earlier centrality of state sovereignty in the international order, not the post-Cold War
variant of state sovereignty centred around human rights, which this article uses to
conceptualise its key arguments. Exploring the contours of Pakistan’s understanding
of state sovereignty requires an examination of national perceptions of political reality
that is sensitive to the country’s post-colonial Third World character.
Most of the Third World was decolonised around or after the middle of the
twentieth century. This involved expectations of those new states about being allowed
the privilege of equality among other states, independence and non-interference
in their domestic matters, and, consequently, political sovereignty. From a domestic
perspective, this provided such new states a strong safeguard against international
interference in their domestic affairs, while allowing them to use force and exercise
supreme political authority over their domestic affairs. However, as a principle of
IR, the newly decolonised states approached this concept of sovereignty differently.
First, it became a technical term for inclusion in the club of states, which ‘rested on a
tacit recognition by the international system that they should be permitted to enjoy
the formal privileges of membership’ (Clapham, 1999: 524). While for the Western
world, this membership is a historical given, however, for new Third World states,
it is a privilege bestowed by the international system. This evokes the powerful idea
that such a privilege can be taken away, an insecurity that surfaces whenever issues of
humanitarian interventions are at stake. Further, as Clapham (1999: 525) has noted,
the concept is by its nature Janus faced. It looks both to an international system in
which recognised sovereign statehood serves as an admission ticket to the ‘premier
league’ of actors, accorded a status which is denied to non-sovereign entities, as well as
to a domestic political order in which state sovereignty functions as a ‘No Trespassing’

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sign, protecting the new nation’s ownership of its domestic law. Thus, for Third World
states, the concept of sovereignty promotes also an idea of unfettered control over their
internal affairs, and consequently legitimises more or less authoritarian rule over their
domestic population.
Ayoob (1995: 1) captures this development theoretically when he argues that Third
World state behaviour is largely determined by a marked insecurity, aggravated by an
overwhelming feeling of vulnerability, if not impotence, among its state elites. Ayoob
(2002b: 43) portrays Third World preoccupations with domestic order as due to threats
from ‘recalcitrant elements within their population or by those who aspired to replace
the “successor elites” and take over the rein of state power themselves’. In new states,
violence and oppression by the state became justified as necessary to establish effective
statehood. As Third World insecurities are compounded by threats from both external
and internal sources, such states perceive their sovereignty as doubly threatened. Hence,
unlike Western states, concerns of both international and domestic legitimacy remain
the cornerstone of Third World political reality.
Sovereignty then becomes the only shield behind which inept Third World
governments can take refuge against internal challenges and external interventions. A
new state may be not only weak, vulnerable and insecure domestically, but externally
as well. Continued insecurities become a defining feature for state sovereignty. Sturman
(2008: 70) argues:

The external and internal insecurity stems from their late entry into the state system, and
their precarious sovereignty based on colonial demarcations of their boundaries. A shared
colonial legacy is essentially what separates Third World conceptions of sovereignty from
others in the international system […] Newly independent governments found themselves
in the ironic position of having to defend the artificial colonial borders rigorously in
order to establish their own legitimacy at home and abroad.

Using state sovereignty as a powerful shield against foreign interventions, as Clapham

(1999: 522) notes, post-colonial states have emerged as most strident defenders of
Westphalian sovereignty in the international order. This observation holds particularly
true for Pakistan. As Jackson (2003: 782) argues, the old Westphalian concept of a
nation state’s right to monopolise exercises of power with respect to its territory and
citizens is still prized. Since the ‘central elements of state sovereignty are the control of
territory, population and the use of force’ (Cronin, 2002: 194), states such as Pakistan
view sovereignty as manifestation of ultimate political authority. Such partly self-serving
power claims are harboured by those who maintain certain ‘realist’ views or wish to
prevent, sometimes with justification, foreign or international powers and authorities
from interfering in a national government’s decisions and activities.
The above analysis shows that when one begins to disaggregate ‘sovereignty’,
its many dimensions become quickly apparent. Some of these may be invoked to
avoid critical analysis, or to fend off justifications for international involvement in
the activities of a nation state or its stakeholders. States like Pakistan avidly cling to
Waheed: State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan 5

Westphalian concepts because these often artificially created states have to strive for
legitimacy at home and abroad, against domestic dissent and foreign interventions.
Westphalian sovereignty, with its dual emphasis on the equality of states and exercising
supreme political authority over domestic affairs, both operating in an anarchic world,
then provides such states and their elites a perfect apology to justify undemocratic
patterns and actions.

The Pakistani State, Realism and the Military-Bureaucracy Oligarchy

Most analyses of Third World sovereignty argue that these states have continued
to remain staunch defenders of sovereignty as understood by realists. For example,
Bajpai (2009: 126) notes early inclinations of newly independent South Asian states
to conform to certain realist concepts, such as survival, self-interest, anarchy in the
international system and security. While he argues that recently decolonised South Asia
was still learning to handle new-found national identities, a major problem remained
how to maintain independence during the turbulent Cold War. Here, too, Bajpai
(2009: 126) argues, ‘not surprisingly, some form of political realism appealed the
most’. Similarly, Behera (2009: 144) argues that ‘the state has proved to be complicit
in privileging the realist discourses and worldview as the norms of the Westphalian
state system fitted admirably with powerful indigenous impulses for maintaining
national security, independence and frontiers’.
Pakistan, following the asymmetrical distribution of power and resources between
the two new states in 1947, also cultivated perceptions of an existential threat
from India, played out pivotally in deep resentment of dominant Indian regional
influence. This realist impulse was linked to Pakistan’s survival from a very early stage;
consequently, its sovereignty became increasingly intertwined with perceptions of
national security. Independence of the subcontinent from British colonial rule created
two separate nation states inevitably hostile to each other (Wolpert, 2011). As the
smaller of these successor states, Pakistan was disadvantaged, forced to create an entirely
new federal government and administration. Pakistan, too, also immediately faced
serious problems of refugee resettlement and economic and foreign policy (Symonds,
1950: 45). Waseem and Mufti (2009: 23) argue that ‘questions of national identity
were overshadowed by the more basic problems of Pakistan’s survival as a weak state’.
Little commonality between the five provinces that formed Pakistan ‘by way of ethnic
identity, linguistic aspirations, administrative traditions and political culture’ (Waseem
& Mufti, 2009: 23) burdened the state from its inception with thorny issues. Even the
banner of Islam was ultimately not enough to keep the nation together (Alavi, 1987:
22). Thus, unlike European states where nations constituted states, in Pakistan, the
state had to be transformed into a nation (Alavi, 1989).
The failure of the Muslim League, the vanguard of the Pakistan Movement,
to serve as a conduit for articulating the diverse interests and identities into a
democratic framework for politics (Waseem & Mufti, 2009: 23) meant that the

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emerging military-bureaucratic elite increasingly managed to capture the role and

meaning of the Pakistani state. The Muslim League’s failure arose largely because it
was ‘a conglomeration of elite interest groups representing varying regional, social
and economic factions that following partition disintegrated into its constituting
parts’ (Bajwa, 2012: 275). The party’s lack of rootedness in the new territory, the
insufficiency of its national vision and lack of agreement over this vision, led to
ascendency of the military, in alliance with the bureaucracy, for two reasons. First,
unlike the Muslim League, the military was rooted in the new territory. Because
56 per cent of military recruitment during the British Raj was from Punjab, the
major, most populous province of West Pakistan (Chaudhry, 2012), the military
had become an honourable and respectable profession in this part of Pakistan. A
second reason becomes apparent in the 1958 military coup d’état in Pakistan. Wint
(1960: 66–7) reported:

The Pakistan army had gained prestige and the people despised politicians. The army
was conspicuously efficient and incorrupt. Thus, an imbalance developed between
the respected army and the corrupt and inefficient politicians. The army might have
moved earlier to intervene; however, the military desisted from intervening because its
commanders had inherited the traditions from British that it should stay aloof from
politics.

Lack of rootedness of the political parties, coupled with their ineffective administration
and a penchant for corruption, worked detrimentally towards them and benefitted the
military. Rooted in Pakistan due to earlier British preferential recruitment policies,
the military was seen as an effective and incorruptible organisation, which provided
it popular support to supersede the political parties and ascend to power. Thus, from
the beginning, the military became intrinsically relevant to Pakistan’s policies.
While India firmly followed the democratic path, Pakistan shifted in and out of
four dictatorial regimes and continued to suffer constant struggles to identify what the
state should look like. Waseem and Mufti (2009: 24) identify Pakistan as a diarchy
‘comprising two constellations of interests’, state elites and political elites. While the
state elites comprised the military and the bureaucracy, which had since British times
maintained control of power, new political elites representing wider sociopolitical
and economic interests now constituted themselves as political groupings and parties.
Hence Pakistan became increasingly politicised, defined by endemic power struggles
between these two rival constellations. Since the crisis of state building following the
chaos of partition put the administrative institutions firmly in a commanding position
(Waseem & Mufti, 2009: 24), the military-bureaucratic oligarchy came to dominate
much of the political space in Pakistan.
Alavi (1989) and Waseem (2007) argue that while in the formative years, Pakistan’s
bureaucracy had the upper hand, this equation turned in favour of the military after
General Ayub’s coup d’état in 1958. Waseem & Mufti (2009: 24) argue that the
Pakistan Army, initially the junior partner in the military-bureaucracy oligarchy,
Waheed: State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan 7

‘emerged as the dominant partner in the institutional alliance after the coup of 1958’.
Many other authors (Jalal, 1995; Rizvi, 2000a, b) have endeavoured to identify the
nature of the Pakistani state, generating a common convergence point in this literature of
a political unit governed by a military-bureaucratic-political elite seeking to preserve
their own interests as an oligarchy to the detriment of the masses. The dominance of
the military after 1958 kept Pakistan confined to a security-centred understanding of
sovereignty, which also became the basis of interaction with other states.
As one military leader followed another, the army’s vision of Pakistan began to
define the state (Cohen, 2002: 112). The Pakistani military has gone through many
phases, from a colonial army drawn from rural elites (Alavi, 1989) to an army with a
wider urban base (Fair & Nawaz, 2010). It grew from an economically sound force
into an economically strong one (Siddiqa, 2007) and turned from a secular liberal
entity to a more religious one (Fair & Nawaz, 2010). However, Pakistan’s emergence
as a security state in the early years of its independence put the military into positions
of power and influence from the beginning, a trend which continues. A consequent
veering towards security-specific definitions of sovereignty resulted in Pakistan
assigning highest priority to defence and security against perceived external threats, to
the detriment of social, political and developmental national projects (Ahmed, 2006;
Jalal, 1999; Rais, 1995; Sayeed, 1964).
India was viewed as the major security threat and Pakistan developed several disputes
at the time of independence and in subsequent years over Kashmir (1947–8), while
belligerent statements of Indian leaders convinced Pakistani leaders that India sought
to undermine Pakistan. Afghanistan’s irredentist claims on Pakistani territory in
NWFP and Balochistan pushed Pakistan’s rulers to assign highest priority to survival
of the state rather than democratisation. As security considerations continued to shape
Pakistan’s political choices, focus on centralisation of power, impatience towards dissent
and strengthening of the military meant that all Pakistani governments assigned more
resources to defence and security than to education, healthcare and social development,
contributing to a marked atrophy of civilian institutions and democracy. Puzzlement
among voters was manifest, since the choice seemed always to be between lesser evils,
not some sense of progressive leadership.
The single point of conclusion from the relevant literature, namely that while
the bureaucracy initially had the upper hand in the military-bureaucracy oligarchy,
continued security centricity made Pakistan’s Army the predominant institution, has
kept the military in power, sometimes directly, and mainly indirectly. Unsurprisingly,
this constitutes a vicious circle. Various existential threats to Pakistan and the
ineffectiveness of the political parties to govern, allowed the military to become
most concerned with defending territorial sovereignty and strengthening itself as
an institution. While most national resources were channelled into the military,
development remained fragile. The weak civil infrastructure became, in turn, a
reason for the military to retain its strength. Pakistan remained caught in viewing its
sovereignty in security terms, because to the military the main risks for the country’s

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sovereignty were existential threats, both from inside and outside, which needed to
be dealt with militarily.

Pakistan as a Security State

The resultant realist focus on security needs no further lengthy elaboration, but
is critical to understand Pakistani approaches to IR challenges. Three issues have
exacerbated Pakistan’s security perceptions from its inception. First, as noted, belligerent
statements by Indian leaders that publicly claimed unacceptance of Pakistan as a
sovereign polity, before and after partition, highlighting ‘the false doctrine of two
nations in India’ (Mansergh, 1966: 2). India’s first Home Minister and Deputy Prime
Minister, Vallabbhai Patel, was particularly vocal in asserting that Pakistan was ‘not
viable’ and would soon collapse (Mansergh, 1966: 16). Leaders including Nehru, the
first Prime Minister of India, claimed that partition would be temporary (Ghose, 1993:
161). Sayeed (1964: 746) cites an interview with Nehru, who declared that Indo-
Pakistani ‘confederation remains our ultimate end’. This continued rhetoric refusal to
accept Pakistan as a viable polity helped reinforce Pakistan’s perceptions of insecurity.
Second, a much-discussed argument, the distribution of resources at independence,
from colonial India to the new state of Pakistan, was not only unequal but insufficient
to maintain Pakistan’s security. The British, rushing to leave, had allotted only 11 days
for the distribution of resources that had taken a century to build (Nawaz, 2009). This
proved detrimental to Pakistan and its security, as authority over resource distribution
came to rest heavily on India, providing it with excessive leverage. Cohen (2004) argues
that India betrayed Pakistan’s trust on three accounts. First, by unjustly distributing
resources, second by colluding with the British in manipulating the international
boundary, and third, by conniving with the princes of Muslim majority states to make
their territories part of India.
At the time of independence, it was decided that the distribution of military
resources would be based on a ratio of 66:34 for India and Pakistan, respectively.
The first problem between the two states occurred when India denied Pakistan its
share of military resources. Out of 46 training establishments, only seven existed in
Pakistan (Chaudhry, 2012: 11), while three out of 17 ordnance factories were located
in Pakistan, whose requests to dismantle the proportionate machinery were rejected
by India. Much-needed military ammunition, tanks and other equipment were
withheld by India. When the first Indo-Pak war broke out over Kashmir in 1948,
Indian transfers of resources became even more stringent, forcing Pakistan’s military
to fight with depleted resources. Even today, Pakistan remains focused on building a
sizeable strong military against India.
Third, internal and border-related threats to Pakistan required formidable
military action. In the formative years, these threats were mostly secessionist. Sayeed
(1964: 764) commented on early Pakistani allegations that India was promoting
subversive activity in East Pakistan. Indeed, the dramatic loss of East Pakistan in 1971,
Waheed: State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan 9

leading to a sovereign Bangladesh (Choudhury, 1993; Jahan, 1972), represented a

major blow and reinforced Pakistan’s security concerns. On the Western side, where
the 1947 independence plan had made Balochistan a part of Pakistan, the Balochi
leader and Khan of Kalat, Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, refused to join Pakistan and seceded
to Oman. After many negotiations, the Pakistan Army intervened and forced the
Khan to join Pakistan. The Balochistan insurgency continues, in various forms, with
Balochi nationalism seen as a significant internal threat for Pakistan (Khan, 2012–13).
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, earlier known as Northwestern Frontier Province,
the Pashtuns, the indigenous population of the province, were looking towards
Afghanistan instead of Pakistan, forming another secessionist movement. Afghanistan
did not recognise Pakistan as an independent state and did not accept the validity of
the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rizvi (2000a: 5) notes that Afghanistan
began to manifest interest in the future of Pashtuns living east of the Durand Line
when it became clear that the British were leaving India and instigated an insurgency
in the Pakistani regions bordering Afghanistan.
Thus from the very beginning, Pakistan’s adverse internal circumstances became
intertwined with external security, constantly requiring military alertness and focus on
security-centric policies. Since Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty became the foremost
concern, strengthening defence and use of military force rather than political effort
became a pattern. Instead of viewing these insurgencies as internal political problems
that could be negotiated, they were viewed as proxies of other states working within
Pakistan’s territory against Pakistan, further militarising such conflicts.
Nothing shows the security centricity of the Pakistani state more clearly than the four
wars that Pakistan has fought with India since 1948. Sayeed (1964: 764) compared the
main concern of the Christian West over the containment of Chinese communism to
Muslim Pakistan’s agenda over containing a militarist and militant Hindu India. Three
decades later, Hewitt (1992: 15) comments on Pakistan’s continuing refusal to concede to
India the role of regional hegemon, demanding to be treated as India’s equal. Fast forward
another 20 years, and the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, General Kayani, in a speech at
the Sri Lankan Military Academy, proclaimed a desire for regional stability, ‘based on a
balance of power that promotes respect for each other’s sovereignty and discourages any
form of quest for dominance and hegemony’ (Inter Services Public Relations, 2013). The
obvious linearity in this security-centric consciousness of the Pakistani state is remarkable.

The Pakistani State and Academia: A Vicious Security Circle

Pakistani academics remain complicit in conforming to such security-centric policies.
Behera (2009: 137) shows that publications on strategic and military issues ‘tend to
peak whenever Pakistan is under military rule’. Analysis of various publications and
think tanks demonstrates that their top echelons are occupied by ex-bureaucrats
and former army officers. What follows, almost logically, is a tightly knit pattern of
knowledge reproduction.

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The Higher Education Commission of Pakistan classifies journals, published by

Pakistani think tanks and universities, into four categories of W, X, Y and Z. Of these
four classifications, only publication in categories X and Y merits consideration for
academic tenure. These journals represent the qualitative niche in research that any
institute or researcher should aim for. Only three IR and political science journals
qualify for category X, while eight IR, political science and Pakistan studies journals
have Y status. Only four of these IR journals are published by academic units,
including a university department and area study centres; the remaining seven are
published by think tanks/research institutes/defence university (Higher Education
Commission, 2016). Except for academic units, all think tanks are presided over by
a former bureaucrat (Institute of Strategic Studies, Pakistan Institute of International
Affairs, Institute of Regional Studies and International Policy Research Institute) or
a military officer (National Defence University). The top hierarchy of these institutes
almost always comprises of journalists, military officers and bureaucrats. Unsurprisingly,
most of the research produced in these think tanks and institutes is focused towards
area studies and claims to be policy oriented.
There is of course nothing wrong with policy-oriented research or thematic studies.
Yet the problem is that the presence in the top hierarchy of ex-state officials, indoctrinated
into following state preferences by the very nature of their work, results in most research
from these institutes following state policy preferences. The very narrow corridor through
which the understanding of IR in Pakistan traverses means almost all IR research is a
positivist enterprise, taking two sets of ‘givens’ for granted, the infallibility of the state,
‘modelled after the Westphalian nation-state and a thorough internalization of the
philosophy of political realism’ (Behera, 2008: 19). Skewed towards producing realist
narratives, such research reinforces state preferences, ‘justifying government policies’
rather than presenting well-researched alternative options (Behera, 2009: 148). Thus the
research community, operating under a paradigmatic hegemony of positivism (Acharya
& Buzan, 2007), is complicit in assuming rather than challenging state preferences.
Such complicity does not go unrewarded and is recognised by the government
through allotting funds and research grants, making information available, and
according state patronage. Proximity to power not only becomes the goal, it is also the
means of research. It remains the only viable incentive for a resource-starved academic
community, and this constitutes the vicious circle highlighted by this article. Research
institutes do not compete over the quality of knowledge they produce. Rather, in their
pursuit of closer proximity to power, it becomes more important to be recognised
within foreign policy corridors rather than in the broader, more international academic
community. This could also be one explanation why the Pakistani state’s outlook
remains more ‘realist’ and state sovereignty remains so narrowly defined by a security-
centric worldview.
It hampers critical investigations that research in Pakistan is concentrated in think
tanks and policy institutes, headed and directed by military/civilian bureaucrats and
journalists, which have no bend towards challenging state narratives and are largely
Waheed: State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan 11

concerned with policy and thematic studies. It makes it even tougher to engage in
research that is not policy relevant because the officials running these organisations are
or have remained practice focused participants in Pakistan’s foreign policy. They find
thematic and area-centric ‘realist’ research more relevant, while innovative theoretical
research is viewed as a waste of time and effort. Since, for these practitioners, the
infallibility of state sovereignty is unquestionable, no studies critically analyse how
the internationally changing norms on sovereignty affect Pakistan. This, specifically,
constitutes a stranglehold on knowledge production, designed to cater to the state’s
need and demands (Behera, 2009: 149). The result is much literature within Pakistan
on themes like poverty, terrorism or nuclear issues, centred on area studies concerning
relations with China, India or the USA, for example. However, no article has been
published in any journal in the last five years around topics like state sovereignty,
state failure, humanitarian intervention or state building. However, even within area
studies, including the increasingly prominent arena of Pakistan–China relationships,
Pakistani research avoids being critical of any policy aspect that may involve debates
on Pakistan’s state sovereignty.
With most literature on Pakistani IR positioned in area studies, research on China
and Pakistan–China relations maintains a substantial presence in the literature,
reflecting the significance accorded to each other by both states. However, research
published in Pakistani leading journals remains largely uncritical of this relationship.
The recent announcement of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was
widely heralded as a ‘game changer’ for the region (Abid & Ashfaq, 2015; K. M. Butt &
A. A. Butt, 2015; Javaid, 2016) and is considered a ‘great leap forward’ (Ahmar, 2014:
35; Ramachandran, 2015: 1) in Pakistan–China relations. Many Pakistani lawmakers
(Raza, 2016), the wider civil community (Jamal, 2017; Shah, 2016; Shams, 2016)
and international scholars (Wolf, 2016a, b) have voiced concerns over the colonial
potential of the CPEC project, the ambiguous distribution of resources through this
project and the political instability in civil–military relations this project will breed.
Yet, as is evident from the publications within prestigious Pakistani research journals,
until now Pakistan’s academia has not produced any critical analyses.
This strategic silence may exist for two reasons. First, the extent of Chinese assistance
to the Pakistan military in maintaining its security (Curtis, 2009; Small, 2015a, b)
and consequently helping Pakistan defend its state sovereignty against India and the
USA (Waheed, 2017), have helped create a special relationship between China and
Pakistan’s military. This has earned China the praise of being Pakistan’s ‘reliable ally’
(Lavoy, 2005: 56), while China considers Pakistan as its ‘Israel’ (Aljazeera, 2010) and
an ‘irreplaceable all-weather friend’ (Ahmad & Singh, 2017; Economic Times, 2015).
Since Pakistan’s understanding of state sovereignty is so narrowly based on a militaristic
view of security, any critical exploration of Pakistan–China relations, specifically the
colonial potential of the CPEC project (Raza, 2016; Shah, 2016), opens doors to
investigative scrutiny which those in power would rather prefer shut. Such avoidance
of unwelcome debates on Pakistan’s changed handling of state sovereignty, considered

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12 South Asia Research  Vol. 37(3): 1–19

a ‘no-go’ area for academics, opens spaces for privileged discretions on the part of those
in positions of power.
For the Pakistani military, building and protecting the CPEC is now presented as
a matter of national security. The military views CPEC as a strategic game changer
in the region and portrays Pakistan’s strategic and security interests as a ‘national
undertaking’ (Zaafir, 2016), a matter of regional security, rather than defining and
analysing it in terms of economic interests. Considering how the Pakistani military
is set to take advantage of the CPEC project, it is not difficult to see why any critical
debate on Pakistan’s national security is portrayed as a challenge to Pakistan’s state
sovereignty. Any musings of ‘pseudo intellectuals and so-called analysts’ critical of
CPEC are seen as part of a ‘propaganda campaign’ (Jamil, 2017), a threat to Pakistan’s
security, and are consequently dubbed as anti-national.
Considering the dominance of the Pakistani military over other state institutions,
it is unsurprising, then, that intellectuals vying for proximity to power would eschew
publishing research that may not only offend the powerful military establishment but
might also potentially find them labelled as ‘anti-national’ and ‘traitors’ (Shah, 2015).
On the other hand, public sector research centres and institutes, directly funded by
the government, that publish a predominant majority of prestigious political science
and international journals in the X and Y categories, are motivated to filter and
censor critical content that might put them in confrontation with the tentacles of the
government they serve. Being part of the state and accruing economic benefits from
this, these institutes and their research staff find themselves in a stranglehold.
A comprehensive analysis of journals in the X and Y category, from 2010 till 2016,
confirms the absence of any critical literature on the Sino-Pakistan relationship.
As noted, 11 journals in IR and political science, rated in the X and Y categories,
are published by various policy think tanks and universities. A total of 35 articles
were published between 2010 and 2016 in these journals. Most of them conform
to the state’s preference and military rhetoric on Sino-Pakistan relations. One may
infer that this is so because the directing bodies of these journals mostly comprise
of former military or bureaucracy personnel. For example, the Chairman of the
Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), the former Foreign Minister of Pakistan,
Mr Inam-ul Haque (2016), has argued that Pakistan can rely on diplomatic support
from China and friends in the Islamic world. This statement unveils his policy leaning
and in return is representative of the policy prescriptions found in the IPRI journal.
Similarly, the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) publishes the Y-rated
Journal of Strategic Studies. Its Chairman, Ambassador Khalid Mahmood, having
earlier served as an Ambassador to China, is known to be an ‘old friend of the Chinese
people’ (Weidong, 2016). The academic subservience of Pakistani intellectuals and
research centres to the state, more specifically the military’s preferences, is indicated
in the framing of China–Pakistan relations, as most of the literature pursues the
state’s narrative and avoids being critical.
Waheed: State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan 13

Second, given how intrinsically the CPEC project is tied to the ostensible security
needs of Pakistan, data on the project remain vague and inaccessible. The two sources
of authentic data on the CPEC project, the governments of China and Pakistan, are
notably secretive about CPEC planning aspects. Considering how the Sino-Pakistan
relationship is built around ‘some of the most sensitive areas of the two sides’ national
security policies’ (Small, 2015b: 5), both states are circumspect when releasing
information. For instance, Small (2015b: 6) observes that ‘one Chinese academic
complained that virtually every time he requested a declassified document from
the foreign ministry archives they treated his interest as reason enough to classify it
again’. In Pakistan, the state has not placed much of the data and information about
capital structure, detailed sources of financing and project sponsors pertaining to
the CPEC project in the public domain, so that details are said to be shrouded in
‘intriguing secrecy’ (The Nation, 2016) and ambiguity. This lack of transparency
has been raised as a pressing concern, even by government officials and lawmakers
(Usman, 2016). The Second Interim Report prepared by the Senate Special Committee
on the CPEC expressed serious concerns that until now a shroud of secrecy hangs
around major decisions taken by the Joint Coordination Committee of China and
Pakistan (Haider, 2016: 4). In such a heavily policy-guided field, even academics are
cornered into publishing ‘sellable’ books and writing ‘readable’ articles. As Behera
(2009: 148) explains:

A near-universal trademark of these institutes is their privileging of ‘policy-relevant’

research, which further shrinks the space for basic academic research in IR. Most look
down upon the latter as a ‘waste of time’ partly because there is no ‘clientele’ for the
consumption of basic research. In other words, the ‘saleability’ of research ideas tends to
determine their research agendas.

Most scholarship on Pakistan, studied from an IR (read foreign relation studies)

perspective, is thus largely concerned with extremism, Pak–US relations and the War
on Terror. This, too, reflects that Pakistan’s academia is complicit with the state in
keeping the state’s policies narrowly defined by a security-centric view. Subjects like
state sovereignty, and state failure and theoretical frameworks that seek to discuss them
are ignored. They are considered too sensitive subjects for a state concerned about its
securitised national outlook. Moreover, ex-state officials, having spent long periods
of time within state organisations, are by default indoctrinated to follow a worldview
that closely follows that of the state.
Given that academic and policy think tanks as intellectual sites are places where
policies are to be debated and feedbacks given to the state, the complacency of these
organisations and their staff thus allows the state to tightly control any research on
security and sovereignty. While changing discourses on norms of sovereignty and
intervention have recently been incorporated into the UN charter and have been

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14 South Asia Research  Vol. 37(3): 1–19

rigorously debated in alternative IR theories (Behera, 2008; Pogge, 2010; Shafique,

2011), there has only been marginal mention or research in Pakistani academia on how
this might affect Pakistan. This further reflects that the state has remained confined
to a security-centric definition of its sovereignty, a definition that now runs counter
to globally evolving norms on sovereignty. Since the state patronises these institutions
and ensures that the discourse conforms to its traditionally cultivated security-centric
views, this may be one of the reasons why despite changing global norms of sovereignty
centred on human well-being, Pakistan sticks to its security-centric ideas of sovereignty,
thereby also showing lack of concern for democratic sensitivity.
Most intellectuals agree that Pakistan’s foreign policy is virtually India-phobic
and heavily influenced by the military establishment. Jaffrelot (2004: 97) argues that
Pakistan’s ‘antagonistic relationship with India’ forms the basis of Pakistan’s foreign
policy, centred on ‘strengthening the security and preservation of the territorial
integrity of Pakistan against what is perceived as an Indian threat’. Grounding
his argument in realism, pivoting around statism, survival and self-help, Ahmed
(2010: 322) still traces the Pakistani state’s insecurities and ‘threat perceptions’ to
the country’s genesis. The fact that ‘even during democratic rule, the military has
continued to be the pre-eminent player in formulating Pakistan’s security and foreign
policy’ (Ahmed, 2010: 322), particularly vis-à-vis the USA, China, Afghanistan
and India, may further explain why Pakistani discourses continue to be framed
in realist terms.
While elsewhere, discursive openings are constantly challenging ‘state sovereignty’
from various sources of understanding, such approaches are absent in the IR
literature from Pakistan. Instead, sovereignty is treated as a ‘no-contest feature’
(Mishra, 2008: 67) and proponents of realism in Pakistan see the sovereign state as
a bastion against foreign intervention and interference in their domestic affairs. Any
move away from such rigid ideas of sovereignty means ceding intellectual territory
to those who take a more ‘universalist’ position, for example on human rights
issues. Interference in the state’s affairs, in South Asia generally and specifically in
Pakistan, also reawakens the horrors of British colonial rule and risks being taken
as advocating colonialism, or by extension, imperialism. Again, this would easily
be branded as anti-national.
As Pakistan has, since 1947, been caught in an existential paranoia and
consequently remains largely concerned with policy prescriptions rather than
ontological theoretical debates, theoreticians and scholars find little relevance of
alternate theoretical sites of investigation into state sovereignty. Since the military in
Pakistan has remained a cornerstone in Pakistan’s politics, and especially its IR and
foreign policy, as well as taking over the political apparatus through non-violent coups
three times and ruling the country for more than 30 of its 70 years since inception,
security concerns continue to define the prism through which the Pakistani state acts
among the global fraternity of states. Even if there are evident contradictions that
do give rise to vocal opposition (see Nazar, 2016), and even if recent developments
Waheed: State Sovereignty and International Relations in Pakistan 15

in light of the new Chinese projects give rise to further concerns, the stranglehold
situation identified here continues to prevail.

Conclusions
While many authors and analysts agree on the predominance of realism in Pakistan’s
IR theorising, this article has critically argued that Pakistan’s understanding of realism
often boils down too narrowly to the ways in which sovereignty and security are
perceived as connected and virtually unquestionable. Since for most academics and
policy practitioners, debating and analysing aspects of Pakistan’s sovereignty is a no-go
area, the discourse remains confined to views embedded in realism. This problematic
absence of any form of non-Western IR theory in Pakistan’s academia cannot be
studied without understanding the security centricity of the Pakistani state and the
role academic complicity plays in this context.
The article identified three broad issues which fed into the security paranoia of
Pakistan’s army that explains the current stranglehold. India’s purported refusal to
accept Pakistan as a viable state, the unequal distribution of resources and powers
between the two rival nations and above all the various earlier and ongoing internal
threats to Pakistan have all continued to drive key concerns about the country’s
security establishment policies and have framed its national discourse. Considering
the military’s dominant position, it is no wonder that Pakistan has remained so
narrowly focused on concerns over sovereignty, connected to security. At the same
time, the conformity of Pakistan’s academic and research community to such state
preferences has strengthened this trend, further reducing alternative spaces for
theoretical debates on IR. This complicity, too, remains one of the main reasons
why non-Western IR theories maintain a marginal, almost suffocated presence in
Pakistan. A partly imagined or constructed threatening reality serves, thus, as a
basis for asserting state powers, with little or no consideration of the fact that, in a
democratic context, a state needs to also connect to its people and their concerns.
A power-centric perspective of this kind appears deeply undemocratic and thus
adds to the precarity of the state of Pakistan, a predicament further reinforced by
the ambitious desire to construct and maintain an Islamic state. That, too, ought to
be factored into a deeper assessment of the complexities of Pakistani debates about
sovereignty and IR in the future.

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Ahmed Waqas Waheed is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for International Peace
and Stability at the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in
Islamabad, Pakistan. He holds an MA in International Relations from the University
of Sussex and a PhD in Political Science from Queen Mary, University of London
and works presently on a new book on Pakistan state sovereignty.
Address: Center for International Peace and Stability, National University of Sciences
and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan. [E-mail: ahmedwaqas.pcs@cips.nust.edu.pk]

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