Contested Allegiances: Pakistani World Politics during the Bandung Conference, the Baghdad Pact, and the Suez Crisis

Abstract This article challenges the image of Cold War Pakistan as a passive client state, arguing instead that Pakistan’s early international history was shaped by friction between a pro-Western elite and a domestic polity animated by anti-imperial solidarity, socialism, and Muslim internationalism. Examining the 1955 Bandung Conference, the 1955 Baghdad Pact, and the 1956 Suez Crisis, the article shows how domestic contestation shaped Pakistan’s foreign policy, introducing the concept of agency-in-effect to argue that polities lacking formal diplomatic power can influence states and, through that influence, help shape world events. These social forces, preconditioned by Bandung and the Baghdad Pact, erupted during the Suez Crisis, provoking a domestic legitimacy crisis and contributing to broader anti-imperial struggles that rendered European colonialism untenable. Together, these events reconceptualize world order from below, revealing the contested role of Pakistan’s domestic polity in the transition from British-French colonialism to American hegemony in West Asia during decolonization.