he United States and Pakistan have repeatedly overestimated their ability to influence one another’s bilateral relations and regional security interests. Since Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the United States has employed every tool in its foreign policy playbook – from military coercion and debilitating sanctions to an enhanced partnership accompanied by billions of dollars in aid – with little success. Meanwhile Pakistan has continually hedged its bets by providing nominal action on U.S. priorities while pursuing its own national security interests, namely achieving strategic depth against India. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan is forcing both sides to re-evaluate their troubled relationship, but it will be exceedingly difficult to break the cyclical “groundhog day” nature of U.S.-Pakistan relations. In the meantime, Washington and Islamabad must search for new leverage and pressure points – with each other, China, and India – to help further their regional security goals while the geopolitical implications of a Taliban 2.0 world continue to play themselves out.
REVIEWING BILATERAL RELATIONS
In the first public hearing in Congress about Afghanistan since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken told policymakers that the United States would review its relationship with Pakistan to determine “the role that Pakistan has played over the last 20 years but also the role we would want to see it play in the coming years and what it will take for it to do that." Meanwhile, Ambassador Qureshi recently cautioned the United States against blaming Pakistan for the outcome in Afghanistan and called for both sides to “look forward” instead of “relitigating the past.”
Like so many Pakistan hands, I have lived this story before. When I served as a political-military affairs officer at the U.S. Department of State, I was at the forefront of explaining U.S.-Pakistan policy during one of the most turbulent times for our bilateral relationship. Against the backdrop of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden a stone’s throw from Pakistan’s premier military academy and Pakistan’s shutdown of NATO supply lines to Afghanistan, I was one of many analysts tasked with reviewing how we deployed over $1.1 billion a year in U.S. security assistance to Pakistan to determine what was working and what wasn’t. The conclusions I came to then still hold true today – Pakistan is a difficult but necessary partner, none of the carrots or sticks in our policy toolbox will fundamentally change Pakistan’s strategic calculus, both sides overestimate their ability to influence each other’s long-term behavior, and bilateral engagement is challenging but the alternative is worse.
THE LATEST TIPPING POINT - AFGHANISTAN
When the United States dialed back support for Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Pakistan was left with a bloody civil war and refugee crisis along its 2,670km western border with Afghanistan. From Pakistan’s perspective, building and maintaining a relationship with the Afghan Taliban was necessary to help counter India. Although Pakistan was willing to work with the United States to fight Al Qaeda, it was never willing to completely sever ties with the Taliban because it knew from past experience that Washington lacked strategic patience and would eventually withdraw its troops from the region.
As the mission in Afghanistan increasingly shifted from a narrow counterterrorism campaign to ensuring that Afghanistan could never again be used as a base for carrying out an attack on the United States, Pakistan and U.S. priorities increasingly diverged. The United States was intent on building an autonomous civilian government supported by a strong military that could prevent the rise of new terrorist safehavens; Pakistan’s biggest fear was that such a government would be pro-India and result in the encirclement of Pakistan. This fear was exacerbated by the fact that India quickly emerged as a major regional partner in US-led reconstruction efforts, investing around $3 billion and providing military training to the Afghan National Army.
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and withdrawal of U.S. troops is a strategic victory for Pakistan in many ways, but Islamabad faces a whole new series of complications in Afghanistan as its leverage over the Taliban decreases with each Taliban success. First and foremost, the success of the Afghan Taliban will embolden anti-government extremists in Pakistan. Islamabad is eager for their Afghan partners to curb the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which poses a significant and growing domestic terrorist threat, but it is unclear that the Afghan Taliban have the incentive or capacity to do so as they struggle to solidify their rule. This summer the Afghan Taliban already released hundreds of militants, including senior TTP leaders, from prisons across Afghanistan, and the TTP have historically benefited from safehavens in Afghanistan. Furthermore, if the Taliban fails to gain international recognition – a condition for the international aid underpinning Afghanistan’s economy – Pakistan will shoulder many of the repercussions. Pakistan is already home to nearly 4 million Afghan refugees and that number will swell if Afghanistan’s economy further deteriorates. In short, Pakistan is likely to find itself both a patron and a victim of the situation it helped to create.
70 YEARS OF PAPERING OVER DIVERGENT GOALS
The United States has prioritized cooperation with Pakistan during two geopolitical eras. During each of these periods, the two countries had starkly difference motives for forging an alliance. While Washington’s priorities focused first on countering communism and then terrorism, Pakistan remained singularly focused on cultivating strategic depth against India. From Pakistan’s perspective, its initial alliance with the United States guaranteed significant military and economic aid while seemingly inhibiting closer American ties with India (although this would be a repeated source of disappointment as US-India ties grew over the decades). Military action in Afghanistan since the 1980s served multiple purposes, including regaining U.S. military and economic aid after multiple suspensions, providing a training ground and launching pad for extremists that Pakistan could re-orient toward India, and trying to ensure Afghanistan was controlled by forces friendly to Pakistan.
Over the past 70 years, both sides repeatedly failed to recognize, ignored, discounted, or simply papered over their strategic disparities. Each tried to maximize what the other side offered, conveniently overlooked inconsistencies in behavior when mutual dependence was deemed critical, and overestimated their ability to influence each other’s long-term behavior. And each time that U.S. regional security goals shifted such that Washington no longer viewed Pakistan as a critical partner, bilateral relations took an abrupt nose dive and the United States penalized Pakistan for actions it had conveniently ignored as long as it depended on Pakistan’s support. Given this context, it is no surprise that our long-term goals failed to converge in Afghanistan, or that Pakistan is emphasizing the central role that it could play to further America’s regional security priorities as it pitches continued bilateral engagement in a Taliban 2.0 world.
WHAT NEXT?
The United States has less incentive to engage with Pakistan now that the imperative of protecting and supplying ground forces in Afghanistan no longer exists (although an “over the horizon” capability to target terrorists in Afghanistan will require using Pakistan’s airspace). Pakistan is clearly concerned that its reduced leverage over the United States will lead to an abrupt downturn in the relationship, as it has in the past. Prime Minister Khan’s recent UN speech was a highlights reel of the ways that the United States has been an unreliable partner over the last 70 years. Recognizing that its ability to maintain relations – and cashflows – has been most effective when its support is framed as vital to American regional security interests, Pakistan’s latest pitch for continued engagement wisely focuses on geoeconomics, playing into America’s increasing regional security concerns regarding China.
If the United States chooses to pursue a strategic partnership with Pakistan, rather than a more transactional “pay to play” type arrangement, America must take into account several lessons from the past 70 years. American expectations for the bilateral relationship have consistently fallen short whenever U.S. regional security goals were at odds with Pakistan’s pursuit of strategic depth. Barring a successful Pakistan-India peace process, there is no mystical combination of American carrots and sticks that will fundamentally change Pakistan’s obsession with strategic depth. The Biden administration is still finalizing its approach to China, but it has already signaled that America’s so-called “Quad” partners (India, Japan, and Australia), will play pivotal roles in its emerging Indo-Pacific strategy to offset China’s influence in the region.
Blaming Pakistan for the outcome in Afghanistan and focusing purely on punitive tools, as we have in the past, will be sorely tempting and politically expedient. But such an approach will simply encourage Pakistan to further expand its cooperation with China while increasing Indo-Pakistan tensions due to India’s role in the Quad; both of these outcomes would detract from U.S. regional security goals. Bilateral engagement will continue to be frustrating for both sides, but disengaging is shortsighted and reeks of the same strategic impatience that enabled the Taliban to retake control of Afghanistan.
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U.S.-Pakistan Relations: Another Groundhog Day?
Photo via Pixabay.
November 17, 2021
With the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, U.S.-Pakistan relations are dangerously strained. Yet it remains in both countries' best interests to re-engage, and regional security will suffer if they fail to, writes Truman National Security Project Fellow Alexia D'Arco.
T
he United States and Pakistan have repeatedly overestimated their ability to influence one another’s bilateral relations and regional security interests. Since Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the United States has employed every tool in its foreign policy playbook – from military coercion and debilitating sanctions to an enhanced partnership accompanied by billions of dollars in aid – with little success. Meanwhile Pakistan has continually hedged its bets by providing nominal action on U.S. priorities while pursuing its own national security interests, namely achieving strategic depth against India. The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan is forcing both sides to re-evaluate their troubled relationship, but it will be exceedingly difficult to break the cyclical “groundhog day” nature of U.S.-Pakistan relations. In the meantime, Washington and Islamabad must search for new leverage and pressure points – with each other, China, and India – to help further their regional security goals while the geopolitical implications of a Taliban 2.0 world continue to play themselves out.
REVIEWING BILATERAL RELATIONS
In the first public hearing in Congress about Afghanistan since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken told policymakers that the United States would review its relationship with Pakistan to determine “the role that Pakistan has played over the last 20 years but also the role we would want to see it play in the coming years and what it will take for it to do that." Meanwhile, Ambassador Qureshi recently cautioned the United States against blaming Pakistan for the outcome in Afghanistan and called for both sides to “look forward” instead of “relitigating the past.”
Like so many Pakistan hands, I have lived this story before. When I served as a political-military affairs officer at the U.S. Department of State, I was at the forefront of explaining U.S.-Pakistan policy during one of the most turbulent times for our bilateral relationship. Against the backdrop of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden a stone’s throw from Pakistan’s premier military academy and Pakistan’s shutdown of NATO supply lines to Afghanistan, I was one of many analysts tasked with reviewing how we deployed over $1.1 billion a year in U.S. security assistance to Pakistan to determine what was working and what wasn’t. The conclusions I came to then still hold true today – Pakistan is a difficult but necessary partner, none of the carrots or sticks in our policy toolbox will fundamentally change Pakistan’s strategic calculus, both sides overestimate their ability to influence each other’s long-term behavior, and bilateral engagement is challenging but the alternative is worse.
THE LATEST TIPPING POINT - AFGHANISTAN
When the United States dialed back support for Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Pakistan was left with a bloody civil war and refugee crisis along its 2,670km western border with Afghanistan. From Pakistan’s perspective, building and maintaining a relationship with the Afghan Taliban was necessary to help counter India. Although Pakistan was willing to work with the United States to fight Al Qaeda, it was never willing to completely sever ties with the Taliban because it knew from past experience that Washington lacked strategic patience and would eventually withdraw its troops from the region.
As the mission in Afghanistan increasingly shifted from a narrow counterterrorism campaign to ensuring that Afghanistan could never again be used as a base for carrying out an attack on the United States, Pakistan and U.S. priorities increasingly diverged. The United States was intent on building an autonomous civilian government supported by a strong military that could prevent the rise of new terrorist safehavens; Pakistan’s biggest fear was that such a government would be pro-India and result in the encirclement of Pakistan. This fear was exacerbated by the fact that India quickly emerged as a major regional partner in US-led reconstruction efforts, investing around $3 billion and providing military training to the Afghan National Army.
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and withdrawal of U.S. troops is a strategic victory for Pakistan in many ways, but Islamabad faces a whole new series of complications in Afghanistan as its leverage over the Taliban decreases with each Taliban success. First and foremost, the success of the Afghan Taliban will embolden anti-government extremists in Pakistan. Islamabad is eager for their Afghan partners to curb the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which poses a significant and growing domestic terrorist threat, but it is unclear that the Afghan Taliban have the incentive or capacity to do so as they struggle to solidify their rule. This summer the Afghan Taliban already released hundreds of militants, including senior TTP leaders, from prisons across Afghanistan, and the TTP have historically benefited from safehavens in Afghanistan. Furthermore, if the Taliban fails to gain international recognition – a condition for the international aid underpinning Afghanistan’s economy – Pakistan will shoulder many of the repercussions. Pakistan is already home to nearly 4 million Afghan refugees and that number will swell if Afghanistan’s economy further deteriorates. In short, Pakistan is likely to find itself both a patron and a victim of the situation it helped to create.
70 YEARS OF PAPERING OVER DIVERGENT GOALS
The United States has prioritized cooperation with Pakistan during two geopolitical eras. During each of these periods, the two countries had starkly difference motives for forging an alliance. While Washington’s priorities focused first on countering communism and then terrorism, Pakistan remained singularly focused on cultivating strategic depth against India. From Pakistan’s perspective, its initial alliance with the United States guaranteed significant military and economic aid while seemingly inhibiting closer American ties with India (although this would be a repeated source of disappointment as US-India ties grew over the decades). Military action in Afghanistan since the 1980s served multiple purposes, including regaining U.S. military and economic aid after multiple suspensions, providing a training ground and launching pad for extremists that Pakistan could re-orient toward India, and trying to ensure Afghanistan was controlled by forces friendly to Pakistan.
Over the past 70 years, both sides repeatedly failed to recognize, ignored, discounted, or simply papered over their strategic disparities. Each tried to maximize what the other side offered, conveniently overlooked inconsistencies in behavior when mutual dependence was deemed critical, and overestimated their ability to influence each other’s long-term behavior. And each time that U.S. regional security goals shifted such that Washington no longer viewed Pakistan as a critical partner, bilateral relations took an abrupt nose dive and the United States penalized Pakistan for actions it had conveniently ignored as long as it depended on Pakistan’s support. Given this context, it is no surprise that our long-term goals failed to converge in Afghanistan, or that Pakistan is emphasizing the central role that it could play to further America’s regional security priorities as it pitches continued bilateral engagement in a Taliban 2.0 world.
WHAT NEXT?
The United States has less incentive to engage with Pakistan now that the imperative of protecting and supplying ground forces in Afghanistan no longer exists (although an “over the horizon” capability to target terrorists in Afghanistan will require using Pakistan’s airspace). Pakistan is clearly concerned that its reduced leverage over the United States will lead to an abrupt downturn in the relationship, as it has in the past. Prime Minister Khan’s recent UN speech was a highlights reel of the ways that the United States has been an unreliable partner over the last 70 years. Recognizing that its ability to maintain relations – and cashflows – has been most effective when its support is framed as vital to American regional security interests, Pakistan’s latest pitch for continued engagement wisely focuses on geoeconomics, playing into America’s increasing regional security concerns regarding China.
If the United States chooses to pursue a strategic partnership with Pakistan, rather than a more transactional “pay to play” type arrangement, America must take into account several lessons from the past 70 years. American expectations for the bilateral relationship have consistently fallen short whenever U.S. regional security goals were at odds with Pakistan’s pursuit of strategic depth. Barring a successful Pakistan-India peace process, there is no mystical combination of American carrots and sticks that will fundamentally change Pakistan’s obsession with strategic depth. The Biden administration is still finalizing its approach to China, but it has already signaled that America’s so-called “Quad” partners (India, Japan, and Australia), will play pivotal roles in its emerging Indo-Pacific strategy to offset China’s influence in the region.
Blaming Pakistan for the outcome in Afghanistan and focusing purely on punitive tools, as we have in the past, will be sorely tempting and politically expedient. But such an approach will simply encourage Pakistan to further expand its cooperation with China while increasing Indo-Pakistan tensions due to India’s role in the Quad; both of these outcomes would detract from U.S. regional security goals. Bilateral engagement will continue to be frustrating for both sides, but disengaging is shortsighted and reeks of the same strategic impatience that enabled the Taliban to retake control of Afghanistan.
