It is not a contradictory statement my friend -- staying neutral does not necessarily mean siding with China or otherwise but keeping the status quot at any given time. If we seem desperate to give one to China than it would be logical to give access to its nemesis in the region to maintain the status quot.
My friend, and this from the bottom of my heart -- diplomacy is not a child's play and there are no absolutes in there - -just interests. US and for that matter China are not our Mamoos or even KSA!!!! They have interest in the region or specifically with us.
China wants to have access to shortest possible route to African oil where it has huge concessions in a number of countries about to go hot. At the same time it wants to have some control on worlds 65% of oil flowing out of this region as a counter balance against possible choke off of its trade routes in and around Straits of Malacca and Singapore.
US while progressively moving away from dependency on gulf oil, still has legitimate interests to ensure access to free flowing oil from the region for its allies, globally. While it squarely sits inside the gulf (Bahrain) it is in danger of being bottled-up once a flare -up with China happens. It requires a facility near the mouth of the gulf to monitor or if this is not possible than deny everyone else the chance to do the same. It is a classic chess game.
Coupled with concerted effort to replace China as its largest global trading partner in the long run with India, it is developing India as a classic "Rope-a-Dope" patsy against China.
China on the other hand is fast gobbling up all and any rare earth resources around the world (95% known rare earth deposits are in the control of China) to ensure US dependency on China remains as it is. To counter balance the Patsy game, China is developing Pakistan as an irritant against India to keep them off balance.
There is nothing wrong with this if the players in question are happy with their roles.
However, the question is should Pakistan again dabble in a global game or for that matter can it afford to at this point in time or can it take that kind of pressure from both India and US come crunch time. Can it depend upon China to come to our real aid and not just send us some planes or boats. After all they did not deploy their forces against India in 71' nor did they back us in Kargil.
I have tried to explain here the " The New Great Game" and the role of China -- it is a lot more complicated and has a number of variables that can not be discussed at this point in time as it would require a lot of time and effort. But I have tried to put forward the basic crux/essence of the situation panning out today.
Do we want to form another alliance based upon the use of Pakistan as a patsy yet again but this time from our friends from the east. I guess thrice is not enough to whet our appetite for such a role or maybe we are a dutiful lot of soldiers destined to click our heals for the highest bidder.
We keep on playing from the same play book -- what I am suggesting is more out of box, a more imaginative approach to get what we want out of this Great Game without burning our fingers this time around.
BTW have we thought of the Mullah and his views on going east????
Interesting! What is the criteria of being a think tank on this forum? There are others and then I get to see this post of you. Please take it as a complement..
Seeing your post in broader prospective, many questions stay unanswered.. but if I take the bottom line, you are suggesting to play neutral and act as a field for others to play on..
Chess? I guess you are suggesting Pakistan to rather act as a chess board, not a player or even a bead.. symbolically speaking, if a bead is taken, its the board which feels the bang.. the end result? Board just gets banged till the game finishes.. hope you get my point
You cannot be more right in stating that currently a global chess game is being played, if you dig my previous posts I have stated this many a times since I joined this forum few months ago. USA was the sole super power after the demise of USSR, but now the sleeping giant is waking up and mara haathi (dead elephant) is helping it out, so we are looking at a possible bi-polar (maybe tri-polar, if Europe managed to deal with their financial crises) world again.
Question is, what should Pakistan as a country do? There are four possible scenarios..
1. Act as a puppet for current master USA
2. Select a new friend (read master) China
3. Create a ring for both giants to wrestle China & USA (your suggestion)
4. Look purely for Pakistans benefit Pakistan
Following is a brief look at the four scenarios:
1. USA
I will not go into the history pre-9/11, I will only discuss current (and possible future) scenario.
Since 9/11 USA has acted more like an enemy of Pakistan, not because Pakistan was not cooperative, but because its interests and future plans had India as the centre of its policies. Destabilising Pakistan was in greater good for USA. We have seen its systematically destructive approach towards Pakistan, both militarily and media lead campaign to portray Pakistan as a hostile nation.
We can sing the friendly songs as much as we want but the facts are that Pakistans importance in this region for USA has long gone. With the destruction of USSR the fear of white bear vanished.
Next on the list (possible super power) is China, Pakistan being close ally of a possible rival does feel uneasy, and to be honest with you, Pakistan going against China is not probable. This leaves India as the only option for USA to pursue friendship with, the only problem with India in the eyes of US is that it had (has?) close ties with Russia, so work on that aspect is also in progress (offers, defence contracts, praises, support etc.), this has not had a good impact on Indo-Russia relationship, it has started deteriorating (cancellation of few deals for a start).
Consolidated and stable Pakistan is a threat to USs (read Indias) interests in the region as USA (India) wants to be the leading power of the region.
As far as oil is concerned, you obviously have mentioned Bahrain, let me add the major player KSA to the list for you. Iraq is already in their control and now work on Syria and Libya is under process. I suggest you pick the map and look into the chain of countries which are under attack (and look for next possible ones).
Bottom line, USA will not need to even come to Arabian sea in few years time in regards to oil.
In short, USA has lost its interest in Pakistan and whatever strategic importance it had to offer. Being continents away, it doesnt matter to them if this region is in turmoil or peaceful anyways. They only play for USA and that stays safe either way.
2. China
I am not going to sing the songs of Pak-China dosti here, so please consider what comes in the following lines.
China has been developing itself for quite some time now, economically as well as militarily (as you have so rightly stated already), it held itself together and watched the event turn in front of it, kudos to them for being logical and factual.
You asked why they did not helped Pakistan in 71 and in Kargil? They are not as stupid as our politicians and civilians, they calculate, that is the best thing about Chinese people, had they helped us at that time, we might have succeeded but then China would had gone back a couple of decades, which was not in their best interest. On the other hand, 71 was pure stupidity of our political system (has there ever been anything not stupid in Pakistans politics?), so we were bound to take the heat for that, so was Kargil.
As I said before, Im not going to talk about friends or friendship, Im going to talk about interests.
Moving on, at that time, the world was not uni-polar and the balance of power was there, there was nothing for China to play for, except destruction. Emotions are good but they make you weak! Chinese played smart and are now in totally different league.
Coming to the recent times, China holds a good deal of wealth, is on the verge of becoming the alternate super power (they might not want to, but they will have to), so they are
bound to play in global politics now. You might say that bound is a strong word, they can just walk out, they cant, because once a country comes to this level, it is considered a possible threat and other powers will try to destabilise it. Self defence? Well whatever suits you, you can call it that.
Coming to Pakistan, China shares borders with Pakistan, has had good and mutually beneficial relations with it since beginning and stood up for Pakistan on many critical situations, though there were Chinas own benefits in that too. At the moment, Russia is supporting China and so are the other countable countries in the region except India and Afghanistan (for obvious reasons).
The only possible threat to China is from India (USA?), there cannot be friendly relations between China and India in near future, Indias reluctance in problem solving is historic. On top of that, another player has been added to ensure that this friendship never happens. It is not in the greater good of the world (USA).
To tackle this foreseeable threat, China has started its movement, recent augmented support of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma, and Bangladesh shows its approach, together with stance to defend Pakistan and the slogan of
Any attack on Islamabad will be considered an attack on Beijing shows that China no longer wishes to stay neutral and is up for a chess game (as you have said). Please bear in mind that this, in no sense, means that China will give financial aid to Pakistan or its corrupt political leaders. Neither will it start a war on behalf of Pakistan, but it will surely respond if an active war is imposed on Pakistan to protect its own interests. This is one of the reason along with Pakistans nuclear deterrent why US and NATO forces have not invaded Pakistan yet, when they have done so on comparatively less reasons (or no reasons at all) on other countries.
3. USA and China
I honestly dont know why and how you came up to this conclusion, there cannot be two masters of same land, if there are, then a clash is bound to occur as interests will clash, and when both have nothing to lose of their own, they will go all out. I am not talking about war here, I am talking about stability and personal interests, with the corruption level already at its peak, this will allow the corruption to achieve new heights, the ones never seen before.
No sir, your suggestion is placing the nation in direct line of fire, I would rather have you explain clearly what you meant by the following:
what I am suggesting is more out of box, a more imaginative approach to get what we want out of this Great Game without burning our fingers this time around.
Because not only fingers, may Allah forbids, we might end up distributed in small fractions. Forget about Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, we might end up with Karachi, Haiderabad, Sukhar, Multan, Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar etc.
4. Pakistan
Now this is the approach I want to suggest, look for what is best for the country, without fear, without prejudice, without biases. Think central, think Pakistan!
At the moment, we are fighting the war of someone else, yes I know youll say that it is the direct reaction to what we sowed in 80s but quite honestly, at that time also we were in same kind of situation. It was either do or die (please do not come up with USSR never intended to come towards Pakistan, why did it invaded pro-USSR Afghanistan then?).
Pakistan needs to straighten its Qibla, it needs to break through the chains of slavery, and the biggest threat to its existence is financial/economic crisis. This has forced our live nation to act as puppets. We need to get rid of it first.
Secondly, WoT has a profound negative effect on infrastructure, human life and living standards in Pakistan, funny thing is, we cannot quit it because the master wants it to carry on when they are sitting and dining with the same people to whom they are asking us to fight. We need to quit this WoT and the only way to do so is by stating our intention, and then acting on it. I agree that the backlash would be severe but we can survive it, and I am not talking about full fledge war, there is no chance that US will wage a war with Pakistan (see China).
A systematic approach to reduce the debt can be taken, priority can be given to debts from hostile nations such as USA.
To nullify the pressure of breaking out of friendship with USA, Pakistan needs to balance itself out by preferring China as it shares strategic and long term financial benefits for both countries. The God given corridor to hot waters can be used to generate revenues.
There are many other steps that we need to take, but priority should be given to getting out of WoT on ASAP basis along with steps to pay off external debts.
As the old saying goes, when there is a will there is a way.
The Problem
It is neither the resources, nor it is external or internal debt.. Our problem is political!
The sooner we get rid of these American stooges, these traitors, the better it would be for the country.
I have no clue why people still follow these jokers and try to defend them, I have no clue what is making my nation blind to realities, why are we in denial of realities?.
If you have an answer for my question, please let me know. You are the think tank after all.
Mullahs do not come in equation, bring stability to economy, make education free and available to everyone, your next generation would not be under these people.
Just my two cents..