Pakistan-US Alliance: Towards a Framework for Strategic Gap Analysis of Foreign Policy Interests (2001-2014)

Abstract

A review of the literature on security alliances reveals the fact that scholars have devoted more attention to issues concerning the formation of alliances with a scant focus on the management and termination of alliances. Yet the large number of constraints and failures suggest that the practice of alliance management is not always in synch with the understanding of alliance formation which points towards a serious knowledge gap between the two. The purpose of this research was to narrow that gap with a focus on issues which arise as a result of conflicting vital national interests of partners in an alliance that create serious constraints in effectively practicing the management of the same with the Pakistan-US alliance post 9/11 as a case study. Although the incidents of 9/11brought Pakistan and the US into the fold of yet another military alliance where Pakistan remained a front line ally of the US in the war on terror but there seemed to be a fundamental difference in the way the two countries viewed their alliance relationship. This research, therefore, is primarily concerned with the gaps that may occur at the management stage of an alliance between what is promised and what is actually delivered by the partners in a security alliance in a situation where tiers of national interests of partners in a bilateral alliance setting are involved. It is suggested that the idea of “expectation-delivery gap” in the backdrop of conflicting national interests provides a number of insights into the complex nature of modern security alliances without which the management of the same may not be effective. At the conceptual level, a conceptual framework – the Alliance Interest Management (AIM) framework – is developed based on various concepts including the newly-developed concept called the “Role Dilemma” to serve as a guide for the analyst to comprehensively go about studying different areas vital to the understanding of issues involved in the management of an alliance within the parameters of attempts to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on alliance scholarship for better management of alliance relationships. At the methodological level, this research seeks to import the concepts of “strategic gap analysis” from the organizational studies and the life-cycle approach which are built into the AIM Framework and explores their implications for helping scholars and statesmen understand the gaps between the alliance formation and the actual practice of alliance management in their foreign policy endeavors. At the empirical level, the AIM framework was used to collect data by conducting In-depth Interviews (IDIs) with members of policy community, think tanks and academia. The Pak-US alliance is mainly considered an ‘Uneven Alliance’ because of having different and clashing alliance interests. The US objective was to eliminate Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan but its strategic shift to eliminating Taliban, one of the strategic interests of Pakistan, and other militant groups in Pakistan’s territory disturbed the harmony of the alliance. The expansion of the alliance scope from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency became the stumbling block for Pakistan because of its military’s lack of capacity, competency and experience to handle and manage an unfamiliar terrain. The expansion of alliance scope resulted in a clash of interests as well between the two countries where the US kept insisting on the ‘do more’ mantra while Pakistan was not willing to pursue the ever-expanding alliance objectives with the new US demands and expectations from Pakistan in areas which involved its vital national interests. Moreover, joining the alliance as a convenience/compulsion, not having the common adversary as alliance partners, the absence of institutionalized alliance governance structures and written alliance agreement, the expansion of alliance objectives (scope) together with a host of other issues paved the way for the expectation-delivery strategic gap/s which erupted into non-cooperation, discordance and a lack of coherence in the alliance. The alliance between the US and Pakistan suffered from these ailments. Both the countries entered the alliance with different sets of skills, competencies and expectations due to which they estimated and measured net-gains and values of alliance differently. Problems arose when partners’ expectations differed from each other and they were perceived to be unrealistic. This generated different levels of commitment to alliance relationship.