By Sardar Khan Niazi
The US is accustomed to pressurize Pakistan to take sides, may it be the question of airbases against the Taliban or our relationship with China.
The Trump administration’s point person for South Asia one time, former Senior Director at the National Security Council and Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security, Lisa Curtis addressing a seminar on US-Pakistan Relations after US withdrawal from Afghanistan said that strategic partners need converging strategic interests and currently Pakistan and the US disagree on Afghanistan and China.
A professor at the School for Advanced International Studies Joshua White who served at the White House in the Obama administration while delivering a speech stated that the US once again found itself with a growing dependency on Pakistan while withdrawing from Afghanistan but this time Americans did not want to rush in with financial incentives to get Pakistan’s cooperation.
The specialists like Lisa Curtis and Joshua White perhaps forgot the meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his Pakistani counterpart Moeed Yusuf in Geneva. Both sides discussed a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues of mutual interest and discussed ways to advance practical cooperation.
Several people say well Pakistan is in one camp or the other. The US experts should be clear in their minds that Pakistan is not in inter-camp politics. Not because of this reason or for that reason, it simply does not suit Pakistan. It does not make sense for Pakistan to say that it is with one and not the other.
Neither, honestly, the Chinese ever asked Pakistan that, or the US for that matter because ultimately, Pakistan is one of the very few countries that can play a helping role for the US and China on areas where they do converge and want to work together.
For Pakistan, the goal is very simple. Pakistan is available to facilitate peace in Afghanistan and ultimately, does not want any violence or terrorism in its region. However, Pakistan does not want to be seen as the potential solution for all problems and when the solution does not come then Pakistan is seen as the reason for all evils.
Pakistan would be better off trying to come to some form of modus vivendi a feasible arrangement: one that bypasses difficulties with the neighbors and the US.
Pakistan had no alternative option. It simply had to remain neutral in the Afghan civil war with a constructive approach towards its peace and stability, as it wanted to forge good neighborly relations with the future government in Kabul. In the meantime, it proactively engaged with the regional states and the US to hammer home political, economic, and security compulsions in the region.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan had made it clear while telling The New York Times that his country sought a “civilized” and “even-handed” relationship with Washington, like the one that existed between the US and the UK after the US would leave war-torn Afghanistan.
Imran recalled that Pakistan has had a closer relationship with the US than other nations in the region such as India, and was a US partner in the war against terrorism. We would like to improve our trading relationship with the US, as the relationship during the war on terror was a bit uneven.
The prime minister said that his government wanted a future relationship based on trust and common objectives, including a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.
Whether Pakistan’s wish to expand relations with the US is likely to materialize or not, is a case between the two states and not between the American specialists. As a result, they must alter the focus of their views.
