Wright aimed to interpret Third World transformation beyond Western ideological bounds.

Evidence

Pakistan has been the fulcrum of international politics in South Asia since its painful birth during Partition in 1947. Beset by territorial disputes, regional rivalries, a religious politics enshrined in the country’s very creation as a homeland for India’s Muslims, and an unstable democracy frequently collapsing into periods of military dictatorship, it has struggled with the contending demands of its own national identity and the pressures exerted by outside forces in pursuance of their own strategic ends. Pakistani domestic and foreign policies have from the start been shaped by a felt need for parity with neighboring India. Specific disagreements with India, such as the dispute about the fate of Kashmir after independence, led Pakistan to search for international relationships that would aid its own security. In the early years after the Second World War, Pakistani anxieties met with the U.S. desire for client states in South and Southeast Asia to combat the regional threat from the Soviet Union. In particular, the United States was concerned over India’s early policy of nonalignment in the Cold War, which in Washington was felt as sympathy to communism. As Farzana Shaikh points out, the United States was especially interested in Pakistan’s location and its “contiguous border with the Soviet Union, which could serve as the site of U.S. bases, and Pakistan’s proximity to the Persian gulf [sic] which could enhance its role in defending vital oil routes.” Thus, Pakistan became an important player in the international anti-Communist alliance of the 1950s and 1960s: a position that—rather ironically for a new nation—set it against that popular anti-imperial sentiment widespread during the period as decolonization and anticolonial nationalist crises in Iraq, Egypt, the Republic of Congo, and Indochina drew popular support across the Third World. Saadia Toor argues that Washington saw the military in postcolonial societies as a Cold War asset and “the institution best able to contain ‘communist expansion and penetration.’ ” At the same time, another tactical prong was provided by Islam, which was seen as potential bulwark against communism. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 385 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Pakistan’s Cold War clienthood aligned it against Third World anti-imperial sentiment (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Eurocentric Marxism could not grasp Third World revolutionary forces #corroborates (0.70)
• Third World peoples powered the critique Western Marxism could not sustain #corroborates (0.60)
• Pakistan’s Cold War clienthood aligned it against Third World anti-imperial sentiment #exemplifies (0.50) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 385