Naya Pakistan?

Abstract

Naya Pakistan? The Selected Issues of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy in View of the Transformations in the Regional Security The Islamic Republic of Pakistan faces many internal and external challenges and remains a major point of reference in contemporary international security analysis. This article examines selected issues relating to Pakistan’s foreign policy contextualized within the transformations in the security dynamics of South Asia. The specificity of the security environment in South Asia, the least politically and economically integrated region of the world, engaged in the protracted Kashmir conflict, serves as the starting point for the multi-dimensional study of the key objectives of Pakistan’s foreign strategy towards its neighbouring states, such as India, China and Afghanistan. Methodological approach for this research is based on offensive realism, which seems to present the appropriate explanatory tool for studying the South Asian securityrelated specificity. The naya (new) Pakistan narrative, promoted by the Prime Minister Imran Khan seems hardly a game-changing chapter in the history of the state. Analysis of Pakistan’s current policies, persistent domination of the army over the state’s bureaucracy, increasing dependency on external loans and bailouts provokes rather opposite conclusions. Pakistan’s strategic goals vis-à-vis Afghanistan and India exploit its own resources and strongly affect the regional security system whilst the country has no adequate means to achieve them. Consequently, there is a vital need of a paradigm shift in Pakistan’s regional security calculus from ideologically motivated, unfeasible claims to a more cooperative posture, supplemented by campaigns for de-radicalization. This research study was conducted during seven trips to Pakistan during the last decade; the results and conclusions of this study were discussed and debated with academics and other South Asia experts both in Asia and in Europe.