Keep investing in the relationship

US President Trump in his State of the Union address thanked Pakistan for the arrest of an ISIS operative believed to have been behind the Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul airport in August 2021 that had killed 13 American service personnel and 170 Afghans.

Since January 2018, suboptimal relations between Pakistan and the United States have adversely affected terrorism operations. The ISIS-K operative’s arrest and extradition might open a new window for cooperation between the US and Pakistan in counterterrorism. High officials on both sides dealing with the transfer have made a new connection and built confidence.

Earlier in February, the Trump Administration cleared $379 million for F-16 sustainment that had been stalled since mid-2022. This too is a positive step.

For the US, the war on terror in the region has come to an end for all practical purposes — but not for Pakistan. Since the American pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, Pakistan has faced a spate of deadly terrorist attacks emanating from foreign lands and resulting in thousands of fatalities of security personnel and civilians. These attacks spiralled last year to more than one thousand, killing hundreds.

What has made things worse is the terrorists’ unhindered access to the sophisticated American arms and ammunition, worth approximately $7.5 billion, left behind by US forces during their withdrawal from Afghanistan. President Trump himself on several occasions has characterised this as dereliction.

What Washington needs to register is that terrorism is a potent threat not only to Pakistan but also to the US and its allies. It would therefore be good to bring Pak-US counterterrorism cooperation back on track to the level where it was before 2018. The relationship, however, should not be confined only to counterterrorism.

The Biden Administration in the final days of its term had slapped lopsided and unjustifiable sanctions against Pakistan’s entities allegedly working on longer-range ballistic missiles. This imperils a delicate strategic balance in South Asia. We urge the new administration to revisit these measures.

Beyond the strategic dimensions, there is an economic, educational and technological infrastructure that underpins Pak-US relations. There are 80 top US conglomerates, most of them Fortune 500, that have been running their businesses profitably in Pakistan for decades. They did not leave Pakistan during the Covid-19 pandemic or the devastating financial crunch in 2022.

Pakistan has been the largest recipient of Fulbright scholarships. The US is the largest export destination for Pakistan. There are nearly one million Pakistani Americans and Pakistani immigrants living in the United States. The US-Pak Agreement on Science and Technology Cooperation has been extended to October 2028. Renewable energy, agriculture, climate change, education, health and minerals offer good opportunities for partnerships. These linkages are powerful and resilient.

Many American leaders on both sides of the aisle understand that Pakistan is the most consequential country in West Asia and a bridge between West Asia and East Asia. Besides, its population of 250 million, with the middle class and human capital growing fast, will be a rewarding consumer market and manufacturing and trade hub. The rapid growth of tech startups in Pakistan shows its capacity to penetrate cyberspace ecosystems worldwide within the next few years.

Now is the right time to upgrade Pak-US relations. The bandwidth of attention and conversations should be broadened to work for peace and economic dividends. The two sides should engage to elevate defense dialogue and restore the rhythm of economic engagement. Pakistan could play its role in peacemaking and peacekeeping in Ukraine and its neighbourhood if Moscow and Kiev agree to a peace deal. More importantly, the two countries should establish a high-level Economic Dialogue Mechanism that should explore new business partnerships, for instance in the extractive industry, and address issues related to intellectual property, ease of doing business, and trade and investment dispute resolution.

Let’s not forget the overall context and the cyclical nature of Pak-US relations. At the time of Pakistan’s independence, our partnership was launched by the exchange of warm messages between President Harry S Truman and Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and cemented by two regional security treaty organisations. Relations peaked in the 1950s and early 1960s.

The two nations fought together in the war against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and in the war on terror for two decades — and yet the US does not consider Pakistan to be a strategic ally. Nor has Pakistan sought such a status proactively, though in the 1950s it did sign agreements with the US on Mutual Defense Assistance (1954) and Security Cooperation (1959). Pakistan is a major non-Nato ally (MNNA), but this does not have much reverberation in official or non-official circles in Washington. The US declared strategic partnership with India and the latter’s membership of QUAD has skewed strategic equilibrium in South Asia.

With this limitative framework, we should temper our expectations and carve and craft a new space for Pak-US ties — neither maximalist nor minimalist but one anchored in realpolitik.

It might take decades before the new world order is reconfigured. For Pakistan’s economic growth and stability, the period between now and 2047, when Pakistan will turn 100, is crucial. It should not be frittered away in a state of strategic wilderness. Pakistan, as a major country, should have friendly relations with all major powers based on mutuality of interests.

Pakistan’s bilateral relations with the US and China are not zero-sum. They do not overlap, and they do not militate against each other. At least not for the time being. These sets of relations have different trajectories, each productive in its own way. Pakistan’s bilateral relations with the US and China are not zero-sum.

Our romance with ‘a shining city on a hill’ should be balanced with hard-core defence and economic priorities that would transform the lives of our people.