By Farzeen Nadeem
Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential elections as the 45th President of the United States can be termed transformative, even though the change is followed by much uncertainty.
This change resonates strongly in the US- Pakistan relations which has seen its fair share of challenges and achievements since the inception of the partnership. After the election, results have announced another era of the great American dream, experts, policymakers, diplomats, and citizens are left with one burning question: What shall be the impact on an already fragile bilateral relationship between the two countries with Trump’s new presidency? The implications of this cluttered political transition are far-reaching and strongly interconnected: from the marketplaces in Karachi, all the way to corridors of power in Washington DC. In this article, I try to take a deeper look and examine how the rise of Trump to the Oval Office might change the dynamics between Pakistan and the US across four key areas:
Economic Cooperation: Boom in Trade Agreements or Protectionism?
The USA and Pakistan are at the crossroads of their economic relationship. The repercussions of the ‘America First’ Trade policy that he is most likely to push in his second term would be enormous, given that Trump successfully reduced US trade Deficits in his first tenure through this policy.
Signs suggest tariffs might be on the rise again, that isn’t the best news for Pakistan. A tweet from Trump in 2018 has been highlighted recently ‘For the past 15 years or so, people have been talking about how aid has just become a way for Pakistan to Siphon money from the United States.’ This gives a threshold on how the economic ties between the two countries would unfold. The last tenure of Trump was not bad enough as Pakistan was the United States’ 56th largest good trading partner, with $6.6 billion in total (two-way) trade in 2019.
This time, I expect an era of ‘Conditional Trade’ agreements between the two states where the US would not consider Pak-US trade as companionate and would buy things through ‘market-driven’ deals. For better trade relations, Pakistan can use its geopolitical positioning as leverage and offer honest attempts to deal with all the US concerns, mainly fighting terrorism, calming things down in Afghanistan, and possibly revisiting the dynamics of its relations with India.
Another US concern could be the change and shift in geostrategic position. With a drastic change in global trade paradigm and diplomatic norms along with shifting grounds of regional powers, Pakistan might be asked to play its crucial role in any deals between the US and China (remember Ping Pong Diplomacy of the 1970s).
Security and Counterterrorism: What will the national defense against extremism look like with a new president?
US-Pakistan relations have traditionally been marked by a long-fought war against extremism for decades. That could acquire a new dimension under the Trump Administration. The aftershock of Afghanistan could be the possible scenario in this case and more pressure on Pakistan for taking a bigger role in Afghanistan’s stabilization can come from Washington.
Critics have also pointed out Trump’s policy towards Pakistan to be often punitive as opposed to much effort being devoted to diplomatic engagement, while his foreign policy as a whole sought to lessen US involvement in overseas conflicts.
Only time will tell whether Trump persists with a pressure-based strategy towards Pakistan or whether he adopts a more practical approach to the US-Pakistan relationship to ensure stability in South Asia.
A blueprint for a reset is in fact in store on the US-Pakistan diplomatic chessboard. Without his unpredictable approach to diplomacy, things may go quite differently for Trump. An example scenario is the ‘Kashmir Puzzle’ Pakistani focus on Kashmir could overlap with Trump’s inclination to mediation on Kashmir.
The sane elements suggest that Pakistan and the US have no choice but to invest in long-term strategic thought while being proactive in defining their bilateral ties with China and responding to emerging international power shifts, directly impacting how well they can play their roles within a more interconnected world. Whether they will succeed or not depends on whether they balance out their mutual interests and keep their eyes on common long-term goals in an evolving global order.
