TRUMP will take over as the President of the US in less than two months from now. New President, new Administration and new policies: That would mean a change in US approach to the global issues which will have implications for countries around the world. Question for us in Pakistan is, what would it mean for Pakistan? It would be wrong to assume that with the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the US will suddenly resume its 2021 policies from where Trump had left them. Reason is simple. World has changed a lot in these four years, and with that have changed the US priorities. Let us recount the major developments in the world since the end of Trump’s first term. US troops have completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Ukraine war has not just started but also continued into its third year putting NATO and Europe in an entirely new perspective. Trump’s policy of Abraham Accords has been overtaken by the Gaza conflict which is running into its second year. That has changed the entire Middle East landscape. An offshoot of the Gaza conflict is a more assertive and aggressive Iran that has had, though small scale, but significant military conflicts with Israel. Besides these hotspots, US adversaries and competitors have stepped up their efforts to erode Washington’s stature as the sole superpower, including by inching towards de-dollarization. That would further US appetite to contain China. Trump has nominated Marco Rubio for the post of Secretary of State. Rubio is known for his firm and hawkish opposition to two countries: China and Iran.
There is little doubt that next four years are going to witness an escalation in Sino-US confrontation which will have two direct corollaries for Pakistan. First, CPEC and its relations with China will come under greater scrutiny. The Trump Administration would increase pressure on Pakistan to scale down CPEC and its relations with China. That would further shrink (the already reduced) space for Pakistan to maintain a balance between Washington and Beijing. That will be a big foreign policy challenge. When space for diplomatic balancing and manoeuvring is occluded, things boil down to making choices. And making the right choices is of pivotal importance. Second, a more charged Sino-US confrontation would bring New Delhi in a better alignment with Washington. India is not only a part of the US led Quad but also a key country in Asia-Pacific Strategy. US policy towards Iran is somewhat unpredictable. Signals are mixed. Trump has a difficult track record with Iran. In 2018 he had ripped the nuclear deal with Iran and imposed harsh sanctions against it. However, in his recent election campaign, he has hinted at reaching a new nuclear deal with Iran. Should that happen, that could possibly ease US pressure on Pakistan vis-a-vis Iran.
Should Washington take a hardline stance towards Tehran, that would put pressure on Pakistan to limit its dealings with Iran and hence make our westward economic projects even more difficult. Like in the case of China, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State position, Marco Rubio is also known for his anti-Iran stance. A prudent way to predict what will come about in the next four years in Pak-US relations is to see the world through Donald Trump’s eyes as the President of the US. Some analysts view the Biden era as a period of low ebb in Pak-US relations; they measure relations with high level visits and Pakistan’s presence in US media, and vice versa. They contrast Biden’s four years with Trump’s first term when Pakistan had a high level of engagement with Washington. Implicit expectation in this assessment is that with the return of Trump to power, that era of Pakistan’s relevance in Pak-US relations would resume.
That is a myth. Fact is that neither the high level of engagement in Trump’s first tenure nor the low ebb in the Biden era was [primarily] because of the person of two Donald Trump or Joe Biden; or the Republican Party or the Democrat Party. It is all about the relevance of Pakistan in the United State’s foreign policy priorities. Trump was President at a time when the US needed Pakistan’ cooperation for withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. By the time Biden took over, most issues related to US troop withdrawal had already been settled. Hence a fading relevance. In diplomacy, relevance is not necessarily a positive notion, nor does it automatically mean friendship. In the case of super-power politics, the two are essentially separate entities.
When it comes to Trump’s transactional foreign policy approach, even NATO is not an exception. In the post Zia era, our high relevance for the US was marked by two characteristics; One, it was transactional in nature linked directly to the situation in Afghanistan and two; it did not serve our long-term interests. So the loss of relevance that we had since the early 1980s is not much to mourn about. As for the future, one could see a bumpy road ahead in Pak-US relations. That would require clarity of thinking and skilful diplomacy. Pakistan needs to gear up for increased challenges in its relations with Beijing, a more entitled Modi and ‘possibly’ a more restrained Iran. Amidst all that, we need to be clear on our own priorities and red lines. Areas that we need to carefully guard include our traditional stance vis-a-vis India, our relations with China and commitment to CPEC and our interests in relations with neighbour Iran.
—The writer is a former Special Secretary, Pakistan Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador to Nepal and South Africa. (mazharjavedlahore@gmail.com)
