The relations between the US and Pakistan are currently in focus, as they have always been, whenever a new administration is about to take office in Washington. The interest is particularly high whenever there is uncertainty about the nature of the impact of this change on bilateral relations. This is the case this time given the radical nature of Donald Trump’s unreadable policy agenda, made all the worse by his unpredictability.
Traditionally, Pakistani expectations and apprehensions about the change in relations on such occasions have largely depended on how they have historically thought about US-Pakistan relations. Here is what has changed in recent decades which is not generally well understood in Pakistan. The relations continue to be defined either by anti-Americanism or a sense of disbelief that we have fallen from the status of being the most allied ally.
The 21st century’s shifting power balance, economic opportunities, geopolitics, and post-9/11 security threats have changed South Asia. It is no longer a battleground for ideological conflicts as during the Cold War, but it is becoming an arena for a new great power competition as well as regional dominance. To meet these challenges and opportunities, overlapping coalitions among regional and global players are emerging in which Pakistan and the US find themselves on the wrong side of each other. And they are trying to correct that by keeping some semblance of relations. After all, they were allies once. But the relationship has changed. And we need to understand that.
We need to change the baseline from which we evaluate our current state of relations and presage what the future holds for them. For most people, including much of the strategic community, the baseline is Pakistan being the most allied ally. And from that vantage point, they see the relations in decline. And question what has happened. Has the US moved to India? Have we lost our strategic value? Can America be trusted? And they end up with wrong answers because the questions are based on a reluctance to see the history-making changes.
As part of this effort to understand the relations, we need to clear up some long-held myths and misperceptions. To begin with, we must understand the role of the Pakistan military (basically the army) in the relations correctly rather than holding on to beliefs that do not stand up to scrutiny. If Washington appears to have worked better with the army, it is not because it preferred it to the politicians. Nor is the corollary true that the army may have been brought to power by the US.
The fact is whenever the US needed Pakistan, whether in the 1980s against the Soviets in Afghanistan or the war on terrorism, the army was already in power. General Ziaul Haq's regime was already there before the Afghan jihad but had a pariah status because of the coup, the execution of an elected prime minister, and Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Pakistan was under sanctions. US-Pakistan relations were at a very low ebb despite the army rule. But with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Zia became a celebrated leader in the West. By the time he died, Washington's support for him was already wavering, yet his regime lived on.
The reality is that the US has had both good and bad relations with Pakistan during army rule depending on its interests in South Asia
Earlier, when Ayub Khan had challenged American interests in South Asia by opening up to China and the 1965 war adventure, he fell out of favour with President Johnson. But he continued to rule for another four years. Yahya Khan was an untouchable for Washington till he helped set up the US, and China rendezvous. President Musharraf had been terribly isolated for a good two years before 9/11.
The reality is that the US has had both good and bad relations with Pakistan during army rule depending on its interests in South Asia. The US connection no doubt enabled such a rule to prolong itself as economic and military aid and international support enhanced it's staying power. You can put the blame but not the responsibility on the US for the military rule with the possible exception of the Ayub Khan martial law which may have got a wink from Washington.
The second misperception is about Pakistan’s strategic value. Yes, Pakistan has an important geo-strategic position. Analyst Raja Mohan writing in the Indian Express had observed: “Pakistan occupies a vital piece of real estate that sits between the subcontinent, Iran, Arabia, Central Asia, Russia and China,” and is too important to be isolated.
But the fact is geopolitical position is an asset only for a politically stable and internally secure Pakistan. Otherwise, it becomes a liability inviting negative attention. Secondly, this importance has varied. If this value was fixed and permanent, as many people in Pakistan believe, why did Pakistan have alternate periods of good and bad relations with the US?
The truth is it is not Pakistan so much but its services that have been important. And that need was not permanent. During the Cold War, it may have been important to the US but now it is more relevant to China in whose sphere of influence Pakistan finds itself. These are what you call “natural partners”.
When its services were not needed the relations became normal and subject to sanctions because of contradictions in the relations between the US and Pakistan- due to conflict of interests, policies, and perceptions- and between the relations of each with other countries notably India and China respectively.
For decades, Pakistan’s leaders, strategic community, and the public believed in the centrality of Pakistan-US ties to US policies in South Asia, largely because of the high-profile aid relationship. However, the misperception among the public, as well as the strategic community, remains pervasive that in the early years of the Cold War, the US found Pakistan of important strategic value and entered into what Pakistanis believed was a strategic alliance that was to last forever. They are now disappointed the US has “abandoned” an ally and ‘switched’ to India.
In Pakistan, the US is seen to have committed the ultimate sin of having ditched Pakistan and moved over to India. It has shown how unreliable Washington is. Overall this has become a part of the anti-American lore.
It is a misperception that the US had a strategic relationship with Pakistan. It was not until the rise of China, the onset of globalisation, the advent of information technology, and the emergence of religious extremism that America started seeing certain lasting strategic, economic, and security interests in South Asia. Through its relationship with India, it hoped to contain Chinese influence in the region and beyond and sought Pakistan’s cooperation in meeting security threats.
But in Pakistan, the US is seen to have committed the ultimate sin of having ditched Pakistan and moved over to India. It has shown how unreliable Washington is. Overall this has become a part of the anti-American lore. And anti-Americanism is largely behind the allegations that it brought down the government of Imran Khan. No doubt, the US still acts to gain and maintain influence in other countries where its vital interests are at stake but it is contestable if it is still in the business of secretly making or breaking governments. Instead, it has gone to war, used the weapon of sanctions, and supported mass movements for change like the so-called colour revolutions, all in full view.
Where its interests are not critical but still important, as in Pakistan, the US also tries to influence and sometimes manipulate policies. But it does so by established diplomatic messaging, often in coercive language that comes naturally to Washington. It also exploits the vulnerability of a regime without having to change it or holding out written threats of change.
Then there is a myth related to America’s historical security commitment to Pakistan. Contrary to the general perception in Pakistan, Washington NEVER committed to come to Pakistan’s help in the event of India Pakistan war. If anything, it emphasised many times it won’t.
A close scrutiny of the US treaty obligations to Pakistan leaves no doubt that the historical US commitments were essentially in the context of a Communist threat to Pakistan’s security. As far as the Mutual Defense Agreement of 1954 is concerned, it deals primarily with the supply of military equipment to Pakistan on a grant basis. The US was of the view that Pakistan violated Article 1 paragraph 2 of the agreement by using the weapons for purposes other than those provided in it.
As far as the 1959 Agreement on bilateral cooperation is concerned, it says that in case of aggression against Pakistan, the government of the United States by the constitution of the US, will take such appropriate action including the use of armed forces, as may be mutually agreed upon, and is envisaged in the Joint Resolution to promote peace and stability in the Middle East to assist the government of Pakistan at its request.
The Joint Resolution on the Middle East referred to in this Article speaks of only one eventuality of the US coming to the aid of a country under aggression and that is in the event of Communist aggression. Besides, the commitment of support was not automatic, and was nowhere comparable to the NATO commitment.
Regarding the US attitude towards CENTO, it never looked upon the treaty as a military alliance. Washington took it more as an instrument for radiating political influence and countering Soviet expansionist policies. The US' refusal to become a formal member underlined its ambivalence to the treaty from the very beginning.
The US, therefore, did not break any treaty commitments by not coming to Pakistan’s aid in 1965. But this is not how the majority of Pakistanis saw it. And it led to the first stirrings of anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
In fact, the “alliance” commitment was ambiguous and narrowly focused, and the substantial US aid was not equivalent to a substantive relationship. And, nor did the US have a South Asia policy. However, it found Pakistan’s services valuable in meeting specific and sporadic geopolitical and security challenges from time to time. That is why it found no contradiction between relations with Pakistan and its support to non-aligned India following the 1962 Sino-India War.
America’s relations with India were not prompted by Pakistan’s shortcomings or loss of its strategic status nor are the U.S.-India relations at the expense of Washington’s relations with Islamabad
But somehow most Pakistanis cannot forget those halcyon days of the US-Pakistan relations of the fifties and sixties when Pakistan was called the most allied ally. For them that is the baseline by which the quality of the relationship should be judged at any given time especially when the administration changes. They may not know that the reason for successive US administrations to have praised Pakistan the way they did, and for having an extraordinary aid relationship with it where it saw no lasting economic or strategic interests, was that there was more than just a critical foreign policy issue at play for America. The issue also had big importance in domestic politics like the two Afghan wars and the war on terrorism.
It disturbs them that we are not their favourites anymore, a status which has gone to India. So, contrary to what most people in Pakistan believe, it is not that America has moved over to India because Pakistan had ‘lost’ its strategic value. The fact is, the US has not just MOVED over to India —it was always there. America did not have to choose between India and Pakistan. These were two different streams of relations going to different destinations.
The reality is that US-Pakistan relations have come a long way from its glory days of the early period of the Cold War. So much in the world and indeed in Pakistan and the US has changed.
Pakistanis have to stop comparing the US relations with India and Pakistan. The comparison of the current state of relations with the old times when Pakistan was the “most allied ally” is not valid. For the same reason, the comparison between the US relations with India and Pakistan is not only irrelevant but misleading. America’s relations with India were not prompted by Pakistan’s shortcomings or loss of its strategic status nor are the US-India relations at the expense of Washington’s relations with Islamabad.
Yes, the US-Pakistan relationship has brought as much harm to Pakistan as benefit, but you cannot hold only Washington accountable for that. It was the partnership between the US and Pakistan leadership that led to policies that brought harm. Pakistan may have lost, but the regimes gained.
Yes the US is an unreliable partner but its on-again off-again relationship with Pakistan is not a sign of its unreliability but the temporary nature of its interests in Pakistan. In any case, what we call unreliability has foundations in the history of US foreign policy which was isolationist till 1941. Remember George Washington’s words that we do not want any permanent alliances
Pakistan can still have a good relationship with Washington without being a “most allied ally”, a mythical status we would do well to forget. There is potential for cooperation in addressing issues like climate change, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, energy technology, and IT. Pakistan, with its strategic location at the crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East, could become a natural partner for the United States in promoting regional connectivity and economic integration, provided of course it achieves internal security, political stability, and economic sustainability.