It had always been a love-hate relationship between Pakistan and US. The foundations were weak and tenuous from the word go. The relationship, that of un-equals with a post-WW II super power on one side and a fledgling new-born ‘ideological’ state on the other, lacked solid foundations of a genuine and grass roots relationship.
The two countries had an infatuation of each other triggered by their respective needs. Washington, flushed with victory over forces of reaction, was looking for militarily sound countries in the developing world to fill in the gaps in its chain of alliances to contain the threat of communism.
John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under President Dwight D Eisenhower, was smitten by the smartness of the Pakistani army; his soldier-boss couldn’t agree with him more. Pakistanis were the ‘smart’ and communism-hating guys the two were looking for. For Pakistan, the American overtures were god-send. Starved of resources to equip its forces against a much bigger ‘enemy’ neighbour, India, Pakistan just couldn’t resist the Dullesian advances.But the marriage of convenience, anchored in crass expediency on both sides and endemically weak on trust, suffered periodically from strain because of divergent interests.
The strains tested Pakistan’s nerves in 1965 when it was involved in a war with India and Washington flatly refused to bail out its defence ally. Pakistan was tested again, in 1971, when its eastern half was chopped off in a civil uprising that Pakistan blamed on India’s collusion with the rebels of East Pakistan that soon became Bangladesh. Pakistan got little succour, if any, from its principal ally. The stale relationship warmed up, however, once Washington got itself involved into pushing back the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
US couldn’t have sucked oxygen out of its Cold War adversary in Afghanistan’s ‘grave yard of empires’ without Pakistan’s fullest support and assistance.But the Pakistanis once again had a reason to cry foul and remonstrate when Washington pulled out of a bleeding Afghanistan, summarily and feeling no pinch of conscience to staunch its wounds, as soon as the Soviet might had been snuffed out, warts and all.
The ghost of mutual distrust of each other’s agenda, spawned and nurtured by their experiences of the Afghan Jihad episode has haunted the relationship ever since. The Americans have routinely blamed Pakistan for being covert mentors of the Taliban, their nemesis in Afghanistan. Their finger-pointing at the Pakistanis for allegedly plying on both sides of the street and constantly badgering them to ‘do more’ has had the Pakistanis fuming in anger.
The Pakistanis, on their part, fault the Americans for being ungrateful. Islamabad never tires of reminding its ‘ally’ in the endless ‘war on terror’ that Pakistan has fulfilled its part of the bargain with thousands of lives and losses running into billions of dollars. But with Donald Trump’s induction into the White House, not only the trust deficit between the two ‘allies’ seems to be growing by the day but the relationship is in a free fall.
An unconventional Trump, rewriting practically every rule of civilised inter-state diplomatic conduct, has singed Pakistan with his new South Asia Strategy, unveiled last August 21, which accords India the status of a virtual ‘ally’ in the latest American agenda for Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, in Washington last week, minced no words telling his hosts that Pakistan felt “genuinely concerned” at the role Washington wishes to endow India with a country with which it shares no border. It could only come at the cost of Pakistan.
But as if the injury inflicted on Pakistan by an uncaring and insensitive President Trump was insufficient, his Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, has quickly followed suit on his heels to administer further insult to an already grieving Pakistan. Appearing before the Senate and House armed services panel in Washington, earlier this week, Mattis sounded openly critical and hostile to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which Pakistan sees as the key to its ambitions to become a dynamic and growing industrial economy.
Mattis picked on, in particular, on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s much-ballyhooed slogan of One Belt One Road (OBOR). Mattis said US opposed the scheme because it passed through disputed land in Pakistan. The Pakistani pundits were quick to jump to their feet over the ire in Mattis’ hostility to OBOR. He had the disputed lands of Gilgit and Baltistan, on the Pakistani side, on his mind while intentionally glossing over Kashmir under India’s sway.
Pakistan looks at the increasing American hostility to its basic interests in the region—vis-a-vis India and its role in Afghanistan—under a flippant Trump administration as an upshot of Trump’s predilection for India, his total insensitivity to Pakistan and his penchant to take on China, perceived by him as an adversary. Trump’s unveiling of his new South Asia strategy, with India as its lynchpin, and his bellicose warning to Pakistan to end its flirtation with terrorists is, to most Pakistani ears, the tone of an obituary to more than six decades of an uneven and tenuous relationship that has had the feel of a roller coaster ride.
The numbing of what, for years, has at best been a tepid relationship with US has triggered a debate in Pakistan whether there’s any more shelf life left to it? Curiously, partisans of the well-entrenched ruling elite are also among those saying, wrap it up; it has run out of steam. We can do without it. Can Pakistan, really? But as we all know, in US-Pakistan relations, anything can happen.
Karamatullah K Ghori
Former Pakistani diplomat
Email: K_K_ghori@hotmail.com