After the dramatic event of change of throne concluded in Pakistan, the country is trying to reset its moorings expediently. Former prime minister Imran Khan has exited and the new dispensation is helmed by Shehbaz Sharif. A drastically changed scenario confronts the new regime. Internally, soaring price rise and maladministration plague the country. Externally, Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to reset in Russia-China ties. China attempts being inclined as a bonafide balancer despite its ongoing support to Russia. Americans have exited from Afghanistan, and Indian position has strengthened as a credible balancer where most relevant countries’ viewpoints find accommodation. Pakistan’s dilemmas appear to have increased in similar proportions.
Sharif's articulations indicate his country trying to constrict its quandaries, through rectification of relationship with the US. To visiting US Congresswoman, Ilhan Abdullah Omar, the Pakistani PM insisted that constructive engagement between the two countries would promote peace and development in the region. Sharif is desperately trying to pick up the pieces from the debris of the adversely-affected US-Pakistan relations. Ties between the two countries, traversing a roller coaster pattern for the past several decades, finally hurtled to a new low after the Joe Biden administration virtually discarded Afghanistan to the Taliban. The US had resolved to cut its unremitting losses in Afghanistan. It also meant a striking diminution of Pakistan’s importance to the American authorities, already sore over a belated realisation about that country’s deceitful role in the 'War on Terror' in Afghanistan. Imran Khan’s invective, implying that the US was orchestrating his ouster from power, added fuel to fire.
To add to Pakistani priorities in that direction, the country’s Chief of Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, signalled to the Americans that Pakistan remains a US ally that will not forget past associations. Records from past often influence thought-process and decision-makings in the present, and provide a blueprint for potential future actions. The history of US-Pakistan relations do not portray an unalloyed relationship, characterised by unquestioned mutual trust and friendship.
Despite humongous amounts of financial aid and assistance provide by the US to Pakistan, and men in arms provided by Pakistan to assist giving effect to several American policy decisions, acrimony has more than often eclipsed other traits in relations between the two countries. Pakistanis tend to think of the Americans as bullies. For them, Washington provides desperately needed aid intermittently, yanking it away whenever US officials want to force policy changes.
Americans see Pakistan as the ungrateful recipient of almost $40 billion in economic and military assistance since 1947 till circa 2015; more have followed since. American dollars were taken with a smile, even as Pakistan developed covert nuclear weapons, passed nuclear secrets to others, and recently supported Islamist militant groups.
Soon after Pakistan was formed, its founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was at pains to give interviews to US journalists, the best known of whom, at the time, was Margaret Bourke-White of Life magazine. “America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America… Pakistan is the pivot of the world, the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves,” Jinnah told her. Bourke-White was skeptical. She sensed that behind the bluster were insecurity and a “bankruptcy of ideas… a nation drawing its spurious warmth from the embers of an antique religious fanaticism, fanned into a new blaze”. It is this spurious paradigm which Pakistan skillfully built up to secure huge largesse from US. Rather than utilise it purposefully, the aid is repeatedly put to use in ways to create mechanisms and actions to perpetuate antagonism against India.
A realisation seems to have struck Pakistani authorities that, that paradigm is falling apart. Notwithstanding a strong relationship with China, it has its limitations. The Pakistani establishment feels much more comfortable and content to pursue a strong bonding with the US. To get back some semblance of its former relations with the US, rulers in Pakistan would need to embark on course-correction in various strata and layers in Pakistan’s inflammable society. It is time consuming, demanding of bonafide iron will, and fraught with challenges. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s relations with India will muddle through in the foreseeable future in a mélange of optimism, pessimism, cynicism, and realism.
Ranajoy Sen is an analyst, writing on international affairs, politics, and economy.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
