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NAWAZ Sharif must be upset that his “fantastic” phone call with Donald Trump has already been overshadowed by the latter’s next diplomatic gaffe — the president-elect’s phone call with the Taiwanese president, which has left Beijing enraged. While the media hype around the ridiculous readout of the Trump-Sharif call may subside, serious questions will remain about Pakistan’s diplomatic capability to manage foreign relations in an increasingly uncertain world.
As Pakistanis, we should be less caught up with the erratic and ill-informed president-elect’s gushing comments than concerned about our third-time prime minister’s handling of them. As Babar Sattar has indicated, the release of the call’s contents stinks of bureaucratic rot: why was the readout issued by the PID rather than the Foreign Office? Why were diplomatic norms regarding the reporting of such exchanges transgressed? Why does the administration thoughtlessly serve Sharif’s tendency to conflate the personal and political?
The backlash against the readout’s release has thankfully sparked circumspection, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has clarified that Pakistan’s “relationship with the United States is not about personalities — it is about institutions”. This is true, and more so for the institutions within Pakistan.
For years, the civilian administration has complained that the US has undermined democracy in Pakistan by directly engaging with the generals. There is an onus on the government to correct this imbalance, but the call debacle is unlikely to help matters. The White House will be wary of Sharif’s ability to engage with the loose-lipped Trump, and GHQ will be loath to trust Sharif to lead on the relationship, fearing he’ll prioritise personal politicking over managing the bilateral relationship.
We should be less caught up with Trump’s gushing words.
In this context, it is welcome news that Tariq Fatemi is off to US to engage both the current administration and Trump’s team; one hopes his trip is more productive than the prime minister’s first call with Trump.
There are key issues at stake for the US-Pakistan relationship under a Trump administration. For all Trump’s praise for Pakistanis and our premier, Washington’s ‘tilt to India’ is real, and not just a Trump vagary — the shift has been under way since the George W. Bush era. Pakistan will need to employ sophisticated diplomacy to prevent Washington’s de-hyphenation policy from becoming a zero-sum game that Pakistan loses, particularly as Trump and Modi connect on their interest in tackling radical Islamists.
Pakistan will also have to sustain its relationship with the US as it draws closer to China thanks to CPEC, and potentially while Washington-Beijing ties hit road bumps. Other issues will be Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan as the US continues its withdrawal from that theatre, and the continuation of military and civilian aid.
Members of the Obama administration are terrified about handing Trump control of the drone programme and ‘kill list’ — there are fears that he would use it liberally as the programme will perfectly balance his non-interventionist instincts with his interest in going after terrorists. Pakistan has already borne the brunt of this programme and may once again find itself in the firing line, a threat that will need to be sensibly managed.
Our ability to manage US-Pakistan ties in transition (along with other foreign policy challenges) will be undermined by the fact that we don’t have a foreign minister, that the prime minister is distracted by corruption allegations and the upcoming elections, and that the establishment’s foreign policy approach may increasingly be one-dimensional, focused on fears of greater Indian diplomatic and security aggression. All this at a time when shifting global polarities call for a more agile approach.
To be fair, the prognosis is not all bad. Pakistan has recently demonstrated maturity, restraint and vision in its handling of certain foreign policies. For example, Islamabad’s openness to dialogue with India throughout this tense summer has been noteworthy, particularly as it has been met with jingoistic histrionics on the Indian side.
It remains to be seen whether Sartaj Aziz is able to connect with the Indians on the sidelines of Heart of Asia summit. But the decision to participate — and our High Commissioner in New Delhi’s careful messaging that Pakistan’s participation is affirmation of its investment in Afghanistan’s stability — shows diplomatic fluency. Just last year, too, Pakistan showed diplomatic prowess while remaining neutral in the mounting Saudi-Iranian rivalry, despite Sharif’s close relationship with the al-Saud family.
One hopes that the government can set aside petty political point-scoring in a domestic context to manage a more deft foreign policy, as the times demand. One also hopes that snafus such as the readout release force a growing number of our senior politicians to recognise the urgent need for civil service reform and capacity building — even the best policies can be mangled by bad bureaucrats.
The writer is a freelance journalist.
Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2016
