US President Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff remark that he thinks of Pakistan “as maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world” has predictably created uproar in what is perhaps the most America-dependent nation in the South Asian region.
Pakistanis are bristling at the implied questioning of the security of its nuclear weapons. The remarks caught the Shehbaz Sharif government off-guard. And it has played right into the full blown polarisation in Pakistan between those who believe former prime minister Imran Khan is their messiah, and those who are on the side of the Sharif family and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).
Biden was speaking at a Democratic party event ahead of the November mid-term elections. He made the remarks about Pakistan almost in passing, while speaking about the new threats the world faces, and how “the world is looking to us to figure out how we figure this out”. And he said he was confident the US could provide this leadership.
“[Xi Jinping] is a guy who understands what he wants but has an enormous, enormous array of problems. How do we handle that? How do we handle that relative to what’s going on in Russia? And what I think is maybe is one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without cohesion,” Biden said.
A shock for Pak
For Pakistan, the remark came as a shock after months of diplomatic footwork by the Sharif government to repair the damage caused by Imran Khan’s free flowing anti-US rhetoric, starting with the accusation that it had a hand in the no-confidence motion that unseated him in April.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has made at least two visits to the US after assuming office. Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was in Washington earlier this month in what was apparently a farewell call ahead of his retirement at the end of November, to ensure a smooth transition for his successor in ties with the Pentagon, and a reset in relations. The approval of a $450 million F-16 maintenance package — reversing a three-year-old freeze on military assistance to Pakistan — signalled a thaw.
The devastation caused by the floods seemed to have created some sympathy for Pakistan in the Biden Administration. There was much commentary in Pakistan about the “warmth” that the young Bilawal evoked in Washington. The government declared it had managed to salvage a consequential bilateral relationship that Imran had tried his best to destroy.
This is why Biden’s casual putdown has shocked Pakistan. Even before the government could gather its wits to respond, Imran demanded to know on Twitter how the US president had reached this “unwarranted conclusion”, and declared that the statement showed the “total failure of the imported government’s” foreign policy and claims of “reset of relations with US”. Having been PM himself, he knew Pakistan had “one of the most secure nuclear command and control systems”, Imran said.
Without ‘cohesion’
While the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons has been long a matter of concern, Biden’s reference to the absence of “cohesion” may have been more about the political and security chaos that has engulfed Pakistan since Imran’s ouster.
Imran’s term in office was disastrous in many ways and lost him public support, but as seen in Sunday’s byelections, he has succeeded in mobilising more public sympathy over his parliamentary ouster than any previous leader unseated in a coup ever did.
With general elections next year and Imran raging relentlessly, the Sharif government has been on the defensive, both politically and at the policy level. As the “audio tape leaks” controversy showed, managing the backlash appears to have become the government’s full-time preoccupation, with halting, cautious steps on the economy towards fulfilling IMF conditionalities. The political confrontation can only get worse after Imran’s showing in the byelections, which he had described as a referendum on his popularity.
The Pakistan army, meanwhile, has been preoccupied with protecting itself from Imran’s allegations, which have included insinuation that any one appointed chief to succeed Bajwa would be a “traitor”. In focussing on managing the divisions within, the army appears to have dropped the ball on the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan who, in a repeat of 2008, seem to be having a free run of the border areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with an unchecked campaign of extortion and intimidation, and are believed to have advanced as far as Swat.
Last week, a decade after Malala Yousafzai was shot at and wounded by the Taliban for advocating girls’ education, militants fired at a school bus, killing the driver and injuring two girl students.
Over the last few days, Swat has seen massive protests against the army and the government for allowing the TTP to make a comeback, a charge which the military’s Inter-Services Public Relations has refuted.
What now for US-Pak
Just as Pakistan needs American financial assistance and military handholding, the US needs Pakistan for continuing counter-terrorism operations in the Af-Pak region — as was demonstrated in the August 5 operation in Kabul to eliminate al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Diplomatic measures would be underway to contain the damage from Biden’s remarks, and it will not be surprising if that includes more sweeteners and sops for Pakistan in this 75th year of the bilateral relationship.
India must hold the schadenfreude. As the F-16 maintenance package episode showed, US-Pakistan relations have “a different point of emphasis”. The two countries can’t live with each other, and they can’t live without each other either.
