Critical Triangle continues ......

A few days later when Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar met with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in New York, she was given a
dressing down, on the links between the army, the ISI and the Haqqani Network, as well as the stoking of Anti-Americanism, and the onward proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran. Khar for her part refused to address specifics, focusing instead on requesting more evidence, and the need to avoid scapegoating Pakistan, eliciting visibly exasperated expressions from the US side. After the meeting, Ms Khar opined the meeting had gone off well. This template has dominated US Pakistan dialogue in various permutations and combinations for the rest of 2012 and 2013, despite perpetual optimism in Washington DC.

CONCLUSION

The above narrative has focused on the major diplomatic interactions between the US and Pakistan since 1947. It has specifically avoided focusing on the minutiae of events in Afghanistan (such as from 2005 onwards) as they have been symptomatic of and not causal factors of the relationship. The chapter establishes certain patterns and narratives that have been a permanent fixture of this important bilateral relationship and are listed below.

US-Pakistan relations have since 1947 gone through phases of some ups but mostly downs. As phases go, bilateral ties were closest during the Nixon and Reagan Presidencies, warm during the Eisenhower and Truman presidencies, and cold during the Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Bush (Sr), Clinton, Bush (Jr) and Obama Presidencies with a few sporadic upward blips.

While the narrative in Pakistan seems to be one of an ally that is a serial abandoner, the truth is that US and Pakistani interests have never been in sync and Pakistani attempts at conflating those interests have failed.

To be continued...