DRONES are a problem, but so is Pakistan’s drift towards international isolationism — that is the essence of what Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif warned on Saturday, echoing the words a day earlier of the Foreign Office spokesperson, who rightly asserted that there was more to foreign relations than just one issue. The problem though is twofold: when the government speaks sensibly, it speaks too timidly; and there is little apparent effort to find a sustainable solution to the drone conundrum beyond accepting both drones and the political heat they bring as faits accompli. Mr Sharif in particular seems to be perfecting the art of saying the right thing, but then doing little or nothing to back it up. And while words matter, so does the venue. A few words about Pakistan’s drift into isolationism at the inauguration of a new Foreign Office building is neither enough nor the right venue.

The problem with drones is that all sides involved are showing little understanding of or consideration for the complex big picture. The CIA, obsessed as it is with retribution or just preventing another 9/11 after missing the first one, has taken killing from the sky to extremes without caring much about the political and diplomatic ramifications on the ground. The White House has backed the CIA in a myopic and misguided continuation of Bush-era policies, perhaps also because no US president wants to be the leader who let the next 9/11 occur, and the other options in Fata are much less palatable. The security establishment here was, and perhaps still is, content to play yet another variation of a double game — this one of private support and public criticism. The civilian governments at the centre have been unable to offer a policy on drones that bridges the gap between US demands and domestic opposition. And then, perhaps looming larger than anyone else on this issue in recent times, there is the PTI and sundry right-wing parties who seem to believe that everything other than militancy itself is the problem in Pakistan.

Troubling as the misdeeds and inaction of the other sides are, what is particularly disturbing about the PTI approach is that it has mistakenly conflated US drones in Fata with the international coalition of troops in Afghanistan. They are not US supply routes that the PTI is bent on disrupting through Pakistan, they are supply routes that many other countries use and will want to rely on as they pull their troops out of Afghanistan. In fact, had it chosen a more patient and mature approach, the PTI may have found that many other countries are also uneasy about drones and want new rules of the game drawn up.