The US and us

Pakistan’s relations with the US are facing their moment of truth. Surely, this is not the first time such a moment has arrived; nor shall this be the last. But be sure – and make no mistake about it: this is a very critical one. After US Vice President Mike Pence’s statement from the Bagram base, in which reiterated the do-more or pay-more stance of the Trump Administration, it is abundantly clear that Washington is proceeding with a game plan that is not subject to change despite the recent intense diplomatic, military and intelligence interaction between the two countries.

The game plan may even have its own deadline or cut-off point after which Washington might take unilateral action across the Afghan border into the Pakistani territory. In fact, Pakistan’s informed intelligence circles believe that this deadline is already carved in the stone of the US goal of punishing Islamabad for not paying heed to its warnings. They believe that the implantation phase of the game plan has begun.

Such assessments are borne out by the pattern of vocal threats that the Trump Administration has hurled at Pakistan repeatedly, punctuated by skimpy praise of actions that Islamabad has taken against terrorists groups on its own land. There seems to be a threat-alarm fixed in Washington’s conversation with Islamabad that goes off every four weeks and each time blares louder than the past. VP Pence’s addition to the usual jingoism was the sentence about Pakistan being put on notice. (And of course the concurring applause in the room full of uniformed officers at the military base.)

These are dangerous developments and it was this context that defined the rare appearance of Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa alongside intelligence heads at the Senate in-camera briefing. Other than fast-deteriorating ties with Washington and the looming possibility of the Trump Administration planning strikes inside Pakistan or taking other equally damaging measures against Islamabad following its militaristic rhetoric, not much has changed in our strategic environment. The army high command’s extraordinary rush to orient the civilian setup towards the clear and present dangers hovering on the horizon was focused on getting some debate started on the subject.

So the core issue here is not what the Trump Administration is planning to do but how Islamabad intends to deal with the plan that Washington seems to have taken out of the folds and has begun to wear on its sleeves for everyone to see. So far, Pakistan has done what any country of its size and problems can do when confronted with a superpower that is geared up to mess around. Islamabad has engaged with Washington diplomatically; it has spoken to its friends; and it has kept a calm public posture in the face of extremely provocative statements without mincing its words in reminding the US of its failures in Afghanistan.

That of course has not rolled back or slowed the verbal onslaught from Washington, which is what the Pence statement attempted to highlight: the US is relentless in pushing Islamabad against the wall of compliance to its demands. The coming months, therefore, will require an urgent upgrade in the way Islamabad has so far dealt with Washington’s gunboat diplomacy. Unfortunately, the scope for this upgrade is extremely limited. This is partly because of the fact that when a large state is bent upon locking horns with a relatively small state, the path to avoiding a costly skirmish becomes exceedingly narrow.

The US under Trump is particularly prone to arm-twisting its way ahead. The man and his mannerism has made it impossible to reason and argue – except when the opponent happens to be the size and significance of China or of the business interest of Russia or Saudi Arabia. For Trump, every other country is game in terms of power-punching.

The other reason for which Pakistan’s reaction to Washington’s threatening posture remains limited to making the right kind of noises and polite protests is the fact that the Trump Administration’s excuse to talk tough has resonance in an international community beset with violence and fears about terrorist turbulence in its backyard. When Washington points an accusatory finger towards Pakistan and uses words like ‘criminals’ and ‘terrorists being harboured’, it finds many ready listeners in the world. These listeners don’t have the discretion to detach the stereotypical image of Pakistan as a haven of trouble from the new reality of the gains the country has made against terrorism at great human and material cost. They see a country that has been in the grip of negative news for a long time and co-relate their own fears with the blame that Washington seems bent on fixing at Pakistan’s doorstep.

But even against these heavy odds we perhaps could have changed the world’s receptivity level to our advantage had we spent the last couple of years wisely. We spent them foolishly. We spent them pursuing small-minded PR goals and in fighting useless domestic battles. This led to systematic destruction of serious decision-making that hinged on stable civil-military ties. This made it impossible to imagine, pre-empt, and prepare for real security concerns that some of us were pointing out repeatedly but without anyone paying attention to these call-attention notices.

Amazingly, in the last one-year when the signs had become unmistakable that the Trump Administration was moving full-steam on encircling Pakistan including a nefarious focus on its nuclear weapons, our domestic cat-and-mouse game peaked. Last month’s siege of Islamabad (imagine this happening when Washington was already in hyper-action mode to dent our image as a stable, sane country) was an exemplar of the benighted agendas that completely cut off national debate from the realities facing the country. It is this time wasted in promoting regime-change in Islamabad through command performers like Qadri, Khadim Hussain Rizvi and Sheikh Rashid that is now catching up with the country.

Now civil-military ties are ruptured so deeply that even the most sincere efforts to mend them are bound to be of limited use. The endless tug of egos, turf wars, and Twitter competition at home has made focused debate on strategic issues well-nigh impossible. It is good for national nerves to see the army and the intelligence chiefs in the Senate, but little of consequence can come out of such exercises since the divide and distrust at home is spread far and wide.

Dealing with Washington at this particular point requires a whole-of-nation response but when politicians are hounded, belittled, demeaned and destroyed at will – which continues even today through known paid-pipers and clowns in the media circus – then the goal is really an idle pursuit. A government on its knees, a political class on the run and a judiciary defining rules as it goes along, is hardly the stuff with which to sculpture solid policy.

Washington-Delhi-Kabul is a three dimensional challenge that had always existed but which mutated into an existential threat just when we were playing domestic games that took up all our attention and energies. The terrible triumvirate on our borders is now firing from all sides, and that is not going to change. In fact, it is going to get worse. We don’t control their design and there our choices are limited. But we do control our internal events.

Have we learnt anything from the follies we committed against ourselves and the country in the name of political cleansing? Have we realised how damaging and wasteful these pursuits have been? VP Pence would have thought twice speaking the language that he did had he not seen Pakistan’s managers caught in a bruising war against each other, bleeding themselves by inflicting a thousand cuts – but pretending to be champions.

The US under Trump is a rampaging bully, but we did not have to be so badly cornered as we seem to be now if, instead of trampling upon ourselves all this time, we had been thinking about Washington’s threatening stomp. Will the domestic puppet show end? Will the puppets be locked in the store room they have been unlocked from and unleashed upon this country? Will we let sanity come back? This and not Trump or Pence will determine how well we deal with Washington.

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12