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Thomas Keith @iwasnevrhere_ on x 45.9K followers
Created: 2025-07-23 14:17:46 UTC
Pakistan’s early foreign policy, especially from 1947 to the mid-60s, was sharp, assertive, and often way ahead of its time.
Pakistan was born under siege: partition trauma, economic deprivation, and military vulnerability. Yet by 1952, it had asserted itself diplomatically in a way that defied its material constraints:
🔸Shaping decolonization in Libya and Somalia.
🔸Supporting Indonesia against Dutch colonial return.
🔸Fighting apartheid South Africa in UN committees.
🔸Opposing Israel’s admission to the UN in 1949.
Pushing for Muslim bloc solidarity before the Arab League could fully get its act together.
And while India played the neutral arbiter, Pakistan often took unapologetic moral positions, on Palestine, Kashmir, Algeria, Eritrea, because it framed these issues as part of a post-colonial Muslim revival, not just diplomatic gamesmanship.
Even the military-civil imbalance we see today wasn’t always the default. For a brief but critical period, Pakistani diplomacy was being steered by jurists, idealists, and legal minds (like Zafarullah Khan) who understood leverage without needing GDP or nukes.
If you trace the archives, UN debates, Bandung speeches, declassified cables, you’ll see a state that punched way above its weight, often irritating the U.S., snubbing Europe, and siding with oppressed peoples across continents.
XXXXXX engagements
