Pakistan’s Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy towards Afghanistan

Afghanistan is one of the important cornerstones of the international great game among important regional and international powers. There are tense debates on the causes of instability and crisis in Afghanistan. What is common in all these ideas and factors, is Pakistan's role as a neighboring country with numerous ethnic, cultural and religious commonalities of which the Army has played a very prominent role in different political and social spheres of Afghanistan during last four decades.  While inspecting differnet elements of Pakistan’s Strategic Culture. This article tries to answer the question of what/ how has Pakistan's strategic culture been guiding its foreign policy toward Afghanistan? The hypothesis of the article is that the Pakistani military has institutionalized its strategic culture in this country’s foreign policy in such a way that it sees its national security and survival in controlling and influencing Afghanistan. The findings of the paper suggest that Afghanistan and India are two key elements in Pakistan's strategic culture that Pakistan needs to manage due to its characteristics and shortcomings since its inception. This article is explanatory and the required data is collected by library method. The theoretical framework of the article is based on the concept of strategic culture.