Reading of the euphoria in Pakistani official circles over the announcement that Clinton after all will be making a brief stopover in Pakistan too when he visits India and Bangladesh later this month, it is hard not to be struck by the obsequiousness which often surfaces in our dealings with the United States. A few crumbs of comfort thrown our way, that too as an after-thought, and the entire national security establishment is pushed into a state of rapturous delight.

Clinton, we need hardly remind ourselves, will be coming to Pakistan for a few hours after spending full five days talking, feasting and sightseeing in India. And when he comes here we can bet he will read us a lecture, the main points of which will be democracy, terrorism (Osama bin Laden) and non-proliferation (CTBT). But there is no end to our delight because we think we have trumped the Indians (correct to an extent) and because the military government thinks Clinton's arrival, no matter if only for a few hours, will seal its legitimacy (a doubtful proposition).

Suppose for a moment that Clinton had winged his way past Pakistan. Pakistan would have survived the outcome - because Pakistan, despite what moaners say, is not a castle built on sand - but the military government would have felt like the emperor in the story without his clothes. Therefore a strong, almost a desperate, pitch was made for Clinton to stop here, howsoever briefly. Now that he is coming we are relieved and grateful and in no mood to see the implicit insult that a people with slightly more pride than we seem to have, would have read in the brevity of his halt.

Would Fidel, great Fidel, have put up with this? Forget Fidel, a constellation beyond our reach. Would Mahathir Mohamad have danced with joy because an American president was spending a few hours in Malaysia? But being without the one or the other, we are in a celebratory mood with no less than the Chief Executive saying, "It (the trip) vindicates the legitimacy of my government's stand and gives credence to our aim to put things right in our country."

The US is a great power, Pakistan a problem-stricken country on the other side of the globe. Even so, there are areas of common concern between the two countries which would remain intact and valid even if Clinton were not to come to Pakistan. What then are we so excited about? Trying to put the best possible face on the projected stop-over we are stressing Clinton's role as peace-maker and saying that this is an historic opportunity for him to set the ball of peace rolling between India and Pakistan.

Trying to fool others is a legitimate exercise in statecraft. But for self-deception, at which we are rather good, there can be few excuses. Beyond pious words and platitudes what is it that Clinton can do? Can he deliver a settlement on Kashmir? If not, whom are we kidding?

We are also saying Clinton can lower the temperature between India and Pakistan. Perhaps he can but only for the moment because if the cause of tension-- the insurgency in Kashmir--remains, the temperature will rise again and Clinton by then will be preparing to say his farewells from the White House. Whether we pursue war or peace in South Asia, when the crunch comes we will be alone, as we were (barring Chinese help) in 1965 and 1971. And as we were in Kargil just a year ago.

But to go on in this vein is futile. Pakistani rulers, for reasons yet to be adequately discovered by professors of political theory, have always felt heavily dependent on the US. General Ayub Khan was no exception. When he became self-appointed saviour of Pakistan, he was greatly taken with the US. It was only later that he turned to China in large measure because of his disillusionment with the US when it came to India's assistance after the Sino-Indian war of 1962. General Yahya Khan felt inordinately proud of his role as a bridge between China and the US in 1971. But when the same winter India and Pakistan drifted to war, Pakistan found itself helpless and alone. General Zia mortgaged the country's long-term interests by acting as a cat's paw for the Americans during the Afghan war. While the results of that disastrous engagement can be seen all over Pakistan, the US has moved on to other things. But our one-sided love affair with the US continues, partly out of economic necessity but partly for reasons more emotional than pragmatic.

This scarcely means we should make a virtue of anti-Americanism. There is no call for that. But it does mean we should be realistic and not exaggerate our importance in American eyes.

Our nuclear capability is no help in this regard. On the contrary, far from promoting realism it is having just the opposite effect by encouraging us to nurse delusions of grandeur. Deterrence should be kept ready but hidden as Israel has managed to do so successfully. But we have been wearing our nuclear ability on our heart-strings which is a mark of infantile behaviour. What is more, it has already led us into one costly misadventure. If it had not been for our nuclear explosions it is questionable whether we would have walked so recklessly into the Kargil conflict. What a sacrifice of blood and youthful lives and all for what?

Echoes of the Kargil crisis have also reverberated in the hijacking case against Nawaz Sharif and his co-accused. In his statement before the trial court the former prime minister has traced his differences with General Musharraf to that conflict. Who lit the match that sparked it? What were the respective positions of the then prime minister and the army chief? A few privileged people would probably know but the public at large remains ignorant - which is not surprising given the historical record. To this day the contents of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission report on the tragedy of the 1971 war remain hidden from public view.

I think no one has bettered Munir Niazi's description of what is wrong with Pakistan. How eloquent and full of pain his lament when he says that there is a sinister shadow on this country because of which, despite ceaseless activity, our journey is painfully slow. To this some people would add that in our national striving there is no journey at all and that all our ceaseless activity is taking place on the same spot. Let alone everything else, we have yet not resolved the conflict between dictatorship and democracy.

The Urdu columnist Abbas Athar (who writes regularly in the Nawai Waqt) has done well to suggest that in any future governmental setup we should abolish the position of prime minister altogether because of the misfortune attached to it: one prime minister murdered at a public meeting, several others banished from political life after the first martial law in 1958, another taken to the gallows, one currently in exile facing charges of corruption, another undergoing trial on charges which carry the death penalty. In truth, misfortune dogs this office.

Nawaz Sharif's statement in court makes sad reading. Whatever his sins, did he deserve to be put in a cold and dark cell in the first few weeks of his imprisonment? Even if the power clashes which periodically break out in Pakistan have an overwhelmingly mediaeval or Byzantine colouring, it would do us no harm to conduct them in a more civilized manner. When Bhutto was hanged the Economist ran a cover story with Zia's picture and the legend underneath: "We even hang our prime ministers." Bhutto's hanging did not enhance Pakistan's image. Nawaz Sharif's incarceration and the long line of armoured cars which bring him to court also do not redound to our greater glory.

This does not mean Nawaz Sharif should not be tried for any wrongs he may have done. But two questions arise in this connection. (1) Who is to do the judging? Clean hands or tainted ones? And (2) Why can't justice be less vindictive in Pakistan?

One last thing. Nawaz Sharif may have been highhanded in power (and there is no doubt he was) but hand it to him that he is being brave in adversity, no small thing in a country where strutting heroes all too often turn out to be paper tigers when they fall afoul of fortune.