Pakistan’s relations with the US have improved dramatically since President Trump assumed office early this year. The first sign of a thaw between Pakistan and the US was Washington’s decision to release in February this year $397 million for the use of F-16 aircraft.
Shortly thereafter, while addressing the joint session of Congress on March 3, the president credited and thanked Pakistan for arresting and handing over the mastermind of the Abbey Gate terrorist in August 2021, who had killed 13 American soldiers. Behind the scenes, American and Pakistani ranking officials were in touch to improve relations, and they were making progress.
But it was the May 2025 India-Pakistan war that radically changed the Pak-US dynamics. Pakistan had a clear upper hand in the war imposed by India, accepted US mediation to broker a ceasefire to avert a more catastrophic escalation, and thanked President Trump for his intervention. India botched its aggressive military operation, told its people and the world lies about its losses and declined to acknowledge the constructive role played by the US in ending the war.
Washington was impressed that Pakistan could outperform a much bigger country with precision and dexterity. By contrast, the Indian tone towards the US was defiant and acrimonious – and this did not go down well in Washington. To add to their woes, President Trump put Pakistan and India on the same pedestal and offered help with the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, an anathema to Delhi across the political spectrum.
In parallel, Pakistan was making brisk progress. On June 11, CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla, in a testimony to the US Congress, commended Pakistan as a “phenomenal partner in the world of counterterrorism”. Setting a new precedent, on June 19, President Trump received COAS Field Marshal Asim Munir in the White House for lunch and a two-hour-long conversation.
The wide-ranging agenda put on the table included strategic recalibration, strong mil-to-mil and intel-to-intel cooperation, joint efforts to counterterrorism and expand economic and trade relations encompassing energy, agriculture, new technologies, cryptocurrency and extraction of critical minerals, especially lithium, rare earth elements and copper – crucial for the semi-conductor industry, defense technology and robotics, among others. This agenda was fully endorsed and operationalised by the bilateral meeting on July 25 between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, after which it was made public that Pakistan was “mediating conversations” with Iran.
Secretary Rubio applauded Pakistan's contribution to regional and global security. The US also announced the most favourable tariffs in the region – 19 per cent – for Pakistan’s exports and offered to partner in exploring oil in Pakistan.
In the meantime, India’s relations with the US have deteriorated sharply. The strategic trust has eroded, punitive 50 per cent tariffs were slapped on Delhi and President Trump has asked it to make a clear choice between Russia and the US. America’s blind faith in India as a counterweight to China and the ‘net security provider’ in Indo-Pacific has atrophied.
Improvement in Pakistan’s relationship with the US is not India-centric. It is a stand-alone and broad-based reset, though India would always remain a point of reference. The dramatic swing is not merely of President Trump’s personal predilection; the content of the new policy contours and projects has been absorbed and institutionalised by the American system, assuring their longevity. The agreed agenda and the new partnerships are not being exclusively centred around security. It is also evident that Pakistan will not be forced to make a binary choice between the US and China, because the global transformation underway is fluid.
Realpolitik rules the roost of the changing global order, not a typical ideological idee-fixe. Washington knows full well the strength of Pakistan’s ties with China, and Beijing has always counselled Pakistan to have tranquillity in its relations with the US.
India is both paranoid and in denial about this turnaround, as its ‘strategic autonomy’ has morphed rapidly into ‘strategic wilderness'. Domestically, the ruling party is trying to sell, incredulously, that India won the May war. It is resentful that the US has entrusted Pakistan with a role on Iran and handed the best tariff deal to it. Indians are telling American oil industry leaders that Pakistan does not have proven oil reserves, and even if it does, it would be very costly to explore, extract and refine it.
Even open-source data substantiates that Pakistan’s oil reserves are 353 million barrels and estimated shale oil potential of 9.1 billion barrels. Indians are also imputing that the Pak-US bonhomie may well be due to Pakistan’s willingness to cooperate with the crypto enterprise – World Liberty Financial – supported by the Trump family.
India, for its own sake, wants the growing ties between Pakistan and the US to unravel so that it can recapture the lost space in DC. It is working towards that end. What it refuses to acknowledge is that the US and Pakistan have a decades-old history of collaboration despite periodic turbulence. They share a matrix of time-tested interoperability in multiple fields that should inject new vigour and resilience into the new partnerships that the two countries have started.
That said, the onus is on Pakistan to make the most of this opportunity by involving industry, business, tech entrepreneurs, academia, youth and diaspora community by not only sustaining the relationship but taking it to higher planes.
In the recent past, Pakistan has had many diplomatic breakthroughs in Beijing, Washington, Brussels and the Islamic world. These gains need to be consolidated so that Pakistan emerges as the most consequential country in West Asia and a strategic nexus for regional peace and security, as well as education, technology and entrepreneurship. In that context, let’s work towards making Pak-US relations enduring, not ephemeral.
The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan to the US, UN and China. He is also the former president of Azad Jammu and Kashmir.