Consensus-based decision making structures stressed

Islamabad : Whimsical decisions and speech acts of government elites required better planning and delivery in order to act in unison in the face of globally emerging alliances, said Dr Khuram Iqbal, head of the International Relations Department, National Defence University.

Dr Khuram was addressing a roundtable discussion on ‘Emergence of maritime alliances: case study of QUAD, AUKUS and I2U2’ jointly organised by Institute of Regional Studies (IRS) and National Institute of Maritime Affairs (NIMA), here.

Dr Khuram observed that it was high time to analyse if the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) actually bore the potential of evolving into a full-fledged military alliance. At present, he said QUAD was merely a multilateral dialogue platform and was bound to function as such for another few years. He added that lack of formal institutionalisation and socialisation in addition to an increased level of economic interdependence among the member countries were precursors to the fact that it would remain a dialogue platform. He said that China had tried its best to shun down its image as a revisionist power. It was unfortunate that this rhetoric was not reciprocated by the West and that was what fed continued tensions between China and the West.

It appeared as if the West was bent upon creating an adversary for itself. If there was an anti-China force to emerge, it would be AUKUS, not QUAD as AUKUS (trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) had a particular Anglo-Saxon niche to it, he added.

International policy expert Syed Muhammad Ali said that AUKUS had exposed the true expressions feeding on the supremacy of the existing order whilst posing a challenge to the emergence of competing powers. One of the main features of AUKUS, he said, was to ensure defence industrial integration. He added that the US was determined to develop a favourite in the Asia-Pacific and also that the emerging alliance system to contain China had a certain hierarchy.

The nature of alliance that the US was building was fundamentally different from what China could work with. China could not operationalise an alliance of similar nature, he added. He expressed hopes for Pakistan to work along the emerging alliance systems as India had been hedging over the opportunities, making the most of the global power transition.

Dr Nazir Hussain, dean, Social Sciences, University of Wah, said that the American foreign policy was a collection of clearly chalked out policies.