Pakistan, power play and a new South Asian paradigm

Pakistan is a country much in focus today. This is not just because of the myriad challenges it confronts. It is also because of its immense potential. A nuclear armed nation, with an overwhelming Muslim majority population, it is often in the news, but, alas, almost always for the wrong reasons. With an area of nearly 800,000 square miles and a population estimated at 196 million, it has a GDP of US $885 billion, and natural resources not yet fully ascertained. It straddles the Middle East and South Asia, and is a conduit between two volatile and politically significant regions. It borders India and Pakistan, Asia’s two foremost protagonists, and also Afghanistan, a cauldron of incendiary politics. Pakistan itself has its own state of political uncertainties, rocked often enough by civil commotion. Its strategic location, untapped resources and domestic inscrutabilities render it a field for power play for the world’s most powerful nations, which in return demands an intricate global role for that country to perform three basic foreign policy roles: first protection of its sovereignty, second accessing resources for its own development, and third ensuring for itself space for policy manoeuvrability. • Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore; former Foreign Minister of Bangladesh and Member of the UN Security Council. This paper was presented at the Pakistan Summit: Disentangling the Politics of ‘Crisis’: The Pakistani State(s), Governance and Culture from Within, International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, Adelaide, 6 July 2015