DECISIONS and policies are best analyzed if stripped of all hindsight wisdom; travelling back into the times when these policies were made. On 14 August 1947, Pakistan assumed the status of a sovereign state. Questions on Foreign Policy started to rise. Soon after the World War-II, that was the time when world was going through its most defining phases of 20th century. New global political and financial structure was taking shape. Rules of the game were being decided. The two-year-old United Nations Organization (UNO) was beginning to take charge of its affairs, while the three-year-old Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF and the World Bank—had started to influence the global monetary landscape. While the UN and IMF had come into existence, trade rules were still a work in progress, culminating a year later in GATT-1948. Interestingly, all three—the UN, IMF, and GATT—were predominantly negotiated by two countries, the US and the UK. Some of today’s major players, like the People’s Republic of China, Japan, and most of Europe, did not have a voice at that time. The US was at the height of its power.

Japan, nuked twice, was a political non-entity and so was most of the continental Europe which presented the scene rubble with most of the nations awaiting Harry S Truman to sign the Marshall Plan for reconstruction. Large chunks in Asia and Africa were still under colonial rule. Huge China –........

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