Uncle Sam: talking tough

Pakistan’s foreign minister finally made the trek to Washington DC earlier this week. But as luck would have it, the trip, which took more than a month in the making, couldn’t make headlines in the US media. The immediate reason could be that Khawaja Asif met his counterpart, Rex Tillerson (US Secretary of State) on the day the latter was fighting to keep his job. Earlier that day, NBC News reported that Rex had called his boss (President Trump) a ‘moron’ few months ago. The US media had a field day with that.

And the other, more potent reason could be the ‘Afghanistan fatigue’. A war that has been running for sixteen straight years without an end in sight doesn’t excite popular opinion and capture mainstream media attention the way containing North Korea and countering ISIS currently do. President Trump didn’t seem to want anything to do with America’s longest war. But he also didn’t want to pull out of Afghanistan ala Iraq. So he ended up rubber stamping his generals’ desire to remain engaged in Afghanistan.

Yet, it’s good to see that the US and Pakistan are talking again. Since Trump announced his ‘South Asia Strategy’ in August, Pakistan’s civil and military leadership both have taken a hard line in public opposing the US approach. The reaction has been like this: making Pakistan a scapegoat won’t do; no more mantras of do more; Indian involvement in Afghanistan is a big no-no; instead of blaming Pakistan, go after the Afghan militants and sanctuaries attacking Pakistan.

In private, though, Pakistan seems willing to revisit its regional security policy. China, for all its diplomatic support for Pakistan, also seems to be urging Pakistan to work it out with the US. The diplomatic ice is apparently melting. PM Abbasi met both US President and Vice President during his UN visit in September. The COAS visited Kabul to meet Afghan leadership earlier this week. And now the FM’s Washington visit, for what it’s worth, may further help get the pointers across.

It isn’t clear what kind of attitude Trump administration would have in its Pakistan relationship going forward. On one hand is the diplomatic corps, which has a less hard-line approach. In the same press briefing that Secretary Tillerson used to clear up his Trump comments, the former Exxon chief called the US-Pakistan relationship “extraordinarily important regionally”. He may also visit Pakistan soon.

But the hawks in the administration are upping the ante. Appearing before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees earlier this week, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis gave a bumper-sticker for Pentagon’s Afghan strategy: regionalize, realign, reinforce, reconcile and sustain (R4S). Mattis seemed to suggest that the US government alone won’t be able to bring about behaviour change in Pakistan. Rather, he hinted that a multilateral approach, which involves the NATO countries and regional countries in South Asia, is in the works to convince Pakistan of the “benefits and penalties”.

“We need to try one more time to make this strategy work with them, by, with and through the Pakistanis, and if our best efforts fail, President Trump is prepared to take whatever steps are necessary,” Mattis warned. At another point, he said, “I think that right now with the growing consensus against terrorism, they’ll find themselves diplomatically isolated, they’ll find themselves economically in increasing trouble as countries that are damaged by this terrorism coming out of there say enough is enough and take steps.”

If Pakistan has been playing hardball, so is Uncle Sam now, it seems. The threat of Indian military role in Afghanistan – which has now been ruled out – perhaps got Pakistan on the table. But now the US and its NATO allies fighting in Afghanistan seem willing to work up the pressure to achieve what Secretary Mattis has called as “diplomatic isolation”. This is uncharted territory for Pakistan, which is already facing rising political instability at home along with apparent disharmony among state institutions.