For decades, Pakistan’s foreign policy has been shaped by the quest for security in a hostile neighborhood. Central to this was the notion of “strategic depth,” a doctrine rooted in the idea that Afghanistan should serve as a buffer and friendly rear base in the event of conflict with India. This thinking, which gained traction during the Cold War and crystallized during the Soviet–Afghan war, reinforced Pakistan’s reliance on asymmetric instruments of power, including non-state actors, to advance national interests. Yet, as the regional landscape has shifted, the very doctrines designed to shield Pakistan from vulnerability appear to have become liabilities. Today, allegations of Indian involvement in Balochistan suggest that New Delhi has found ways to mirror and exploit these historical precedents, framing them as justification for its own actions. The outcome risks perpetuating a dangerous tit-for-tat cycle, deepening instability in South Asia.
Historical Context: Strategic Depth and Its Evolution
The concept of strategic depth became central to Pakistan’s defense thinking during the 1980s, when Islamabad sought to ensure that Afghanistan would not fall under the sway of hostile powers. A sympathetic regime in Kabul was considered vital, both to avoid encirclement by India and to secure operational space in the event of full-scale war. This imperative informed Pakistan’s support for mujahideen factions during the Soviet invasion and later shaped its cautious relationship with the Taliban.
Beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan’s willingness to engage with non-state actors in regional disputes—whether to counterbalance Indian influence in Kashmir or to project leverage abroad—became a feature of its strategic culture. Following 2001, as U.S. forces entered Afghanistan, Islamabad continued to calibrate its Afghan policy with the aim of ensuring a favorable outcome, even as it bore the brunt of militancy at home. Domestically, the doctrine drew criticism: critics argued that seeking depth abroad came at the expense of stability within, creating long-term vulnerabilities that adversaries could exploit.
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India’s Perception and Proxy Response in Balochistan
From an Indian perspective, Pakistan’s historical playbook offers a ready-made precedent. If Pakistan could justify the use of proxies in Afghanistan and Kashmir as legitimate tools of statecraft, then India, too, could claim similar latitude. This framing, whether or not it reflects actual policy, provides a narrative scaffold for alleged Indian involvement in Balochistan.
Indian officials have often pointed to cross-border militancy emanating from Pakistani soil as a rationale for adopting proactive measures. In this view, supporting dissident voices in Balochistan—or at least amplifying their grievances through diplomatic and media channels—can be cast as symmetrical to Pakistan’s actions elsewhere. Pakistan, however, rejects this justification, framing it as illegitimate interference in its internal affairs. Islamabad argues that Indian intelligence agencies are not merely observers but active enablers of violence through outfits it labels as Fitna al Hindustan (FAH), a category that includes separatist groups like the BLA.
The result is a narrative clash: India positions its alleged actions as deterrence and counterbalance, while Pakistan views them as aggression and subversion. This tit-for-tat logic entrenches mutual mistrust and creates fertile ground for escalation.
The Security Dilemma and Regional Security Complex
This dynamic reflects the security dilemma at its starkest: measures taken by one side to enhance security invariably appear threatening to the other, leading to a cycle of reciprocal action. Pakistan’s reliance on depth and proxies was meant to deter encirclement by India; India’s alleged involvement in Balochistan, in turn, is presented as deterrence against Pakistan’s cross-border policies. Neither side may intend escalation, but the structure of their rivalry makes it all but inevitable.
South Asia exemplifies what scholars call a regional security complex—a system in which the security of states is tightly interlinked and largely insulated from outside stabilizers. Unlike Europe, where institutions like NATO mediate conflict, South Asia lacks strong regional mechanisms. Nuclear weapons have introduced a fragile balance, but they have not resolved the deeper mistrust. Instead, they push conflict into the sub-conventional domain, making provinces like Balochistan arenas for indirect contestation.
Strategic Culture, and Normative Spillover
Strategic culture—the historically rooted ways in which states interpret security—plays a crucial role. Pakistan’s emphasis on asymmetric leverage and depth stems from its experience of partition, wars with India, and persistent fears of encirclement. These formative traumas encouraged doctrines that privilege flexibility, deniability, and low-cost tools of power projection.
Yet strategic cultures rarely exist in isolation. India has adapted its own approach, citing Pakistan’s precedents as justification for similar behavior. This is what scholars call normative spillover—where one state’s methods become perceived as acceptable by its rival. Unlike in Western Europe, where norms of restraint eventually solidified, in South Asia the opposite risk emerges: a cycle of normalized interventionism. The danger is that such practices become entrenched, narrowing the space for de-escalation and reinforcing narratives of equivalence—“if they did it, we can too.”
Lessons, and the Way Forward
The central irony is that doctrines designed to protect Pakistan may now undermine it. By shaping regional norms of behavior, “strategic depth” has created a template that adversaries can invoke for their own ends. Balochistan, with its volatile mix of underdevelopment, ethnic grievances, and geostrategic significance, provides fertile ground for exploitation.
Breaking this cycle requires rethinking strategy in two ways. First, Pakistan’s foreign policy must prioritize transparency and restraint, signaling clearly that destabilization abroad will not be matched at home. Second, regional diplomacy—however fraught—must seek to build norms of non-interference. Confidence-building measures, dialogue on intelligence practices, and efforts to strengthen economic interdependence could help weaken the appeal of proxies as policy tools.
Ultimately, the lesson is sobering but clear: doctrines cannot be divorced from their long-term consequences. A policy born of insecurity may, decades later, sow insecurity in new and unintended forms. Only through reflection and recalibration can Pakistan hope to prevent its strategic depth from hardening into a strategic threat.
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