The bilateral ties between the US and Pakistan have undergone many ups and downs in the last 77 years. What is certain is, however, Pakistan’s strategic location, which has allowed it to be a frontline state for the US on several occasions. During the Cold War, as a member of both the South-East Asian Treaty Organisation and the Baghdad Pact bloc, it was embedded in the US-led order, benefitting from the latter’s diplomatic and military support. Pakistan’s centrality increased during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, declining after the end of the Cold War, and reached its apogee during America’s War on Terror. And although the Trump administration faced an uphill struggle with Imran Khan, the US and Pakistan closely engaged to facilitate the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
Changed New World
However, both the United States and Pakistan have changed since Trump’s last term. Trump has returned with a massive mandate but is ageing and will serve his last term in office, more encumbered in considerations of legacy. The US is unprecedentedly polarised across the fault-lines of ethnicity, race, sex, class, and political ideology.
Politics in Pakistan is transient. But be that as it may, the hybrid order seems to be the dominant backdrop, against which politicians will jostle for influence and Rawalpindi’s favours. The hybrid order, however, has little popular legitimacy. The loss of popular consent and allegations of rigging the results of the national elections in 2024, coupled with the country’s ongoing economic crisis and the imprisonment of Imran Khan—arguably Pakistan’s most popular leader—have strengthened secessionist and sectarian forces, with some, such as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), actively colluding.
Biggs’ Big Proposal
Given these challenges, the legislative proposal by Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona to terminate the designation of Pakistan as a major non-NATO ally could not have come at a worse time. Biggs is a vocal member of the Freedom Caucus, a far-right, fiscally conservative and spiritually Trumpian faction of the Grand Old Party (GOP), known for its opposition to the centre-right elements of the party. While the Freedom Caucus’s positions might have seemed beyond the Overton Window, Trump’s return and his decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Paris Climate Pact, as well as doubling down on his hardline stance on immigration, have confirmed what may be the new normal for years to come.
However, it is unlikely that Pakistan or its status as a major non-NATO ally will figure highly in Trump’s foreign policy agenda. His executive orders on backtracking on the US’s multilateral commitments and amending the basis of American citizenship suggest that his agenda will likely revolve around key electoral planks like immigration and the geoeconomic competition with China. Pakistan’s primacy in the American calculus precipitously declines in the absence of a conflict in South Asia, one that is of interest to the Americans. Whatever little engagement the Trump administration enjoyed with Imran Khan’s regime rarely extended beyond the facilitation of American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump and his appointees will not like the deployment of American assets in conflicts peripheral to American interests, and, due to the sectarian conflict in Pakistan and the resumption of terrorist activity by the TTP and BLA, will avoid dialling up its partnership with the country.
The Signs Were There
By neither meeting nor talking to Imran Khan and Shehbaz Sharif, the White House effectively downgraded Pakistan’s status during Joe Biden’s Presidency. While this also has to do with the Democrats’ support for Israel in the Israel- Gaza war, Imran Khan’s reception by Donald Trump in 2019, as well as the linkages fostered by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) with the Pakistani diaspora, had endeared the latter to Trump. Their belief in Trump to vocally support and build pressure on the Pakistani establishment to release Khan was strengthened by Richard Grenell’s support for him. However, now, as the Special Envoy for Special Operations, it is unlikely that Grenell will have much influence over Trump’s policy towards Pakistan, or even South Asia, in general.
The 6,80,000-strong Pakistani diaspora in the US and the PTI’s supporters conveniently forget Trump’s frequent comments against Pakistan and his designation of it as a “country of particular concern”, and also that he suspended military aid worth $1.3 billion in 2018. Grenell notwithstanding, Trump, in true populist fashion, will exercise a highly centralised, personalistic foreign policy, unmitigated by concerns of convention and the need for deliberative decision-making. This implies that Trump’s policies towards any country for that matter—Pakistan in this case—will be predominantly dictated by personal biases and beliefs and his relationship with his counterparts.
Limited Contact
The US and Pakistan nonetheless continue to pursue a strategic partnership, oriented towards defence and intelligence-sharing, albeit one with reduced stakes. The US Central Command Commander, Michael E. Kurilla, visited Islamabad in 2022 and 2024, reaffirming the US-Pakistan security partnership. And while Gen Asim Munir visited the US in 2023 and met the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the trip came after he had already been in office for a year. Under Biden, the US, trying to re-orient the focus of the relations between the two countries to human security, had commenced a ‘Health Dialogue’ and invested $23.5 million in the power sector. The US was one of the earliest responders to the cataclysmic floods in Pakistan in 2022, forming the Green Alliance and a bilateral working group on climate, in addition to extending $30 million in critical humanitarian aid and mustering support from allies.
Slouching Towards China
Trump’s climate scepticism and transactional view of world affairs will imply an immediate cessation of this non-strategic dimension of their partnership. The reduction in strategic stakes, coupled with an end of humanitarian and economic assistance, can further deepen the trust deficit between the US and Pakistan. Trump’s simplistic understanding of international relations constructs a Manichean binary between the US and China, and any attempt by Pakistan to grow closer to China to achieve its objectives will not sit well with the White House.
The jury is still out on the impact of Trump’s return on US ties with its partners, but his actions in the first week confirm fears about America’s retrenchment from the global order and the resurgence of transactional foreign policy. In the eyes of Washington, America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan did not de-hyphenate Pakistan from the country’s affairs; rather, it diminished Pakistan’s status. It is unlikely that Pakistan will figure prominently in American foreign policy in Trump 2.0, bringing, as it does, little to the table for the US. Trump will be preoccupied with strengthening his alliance with the Gulf’s monarchs as well as leaders in the Indo-Pacific to counter China.
Unless the situation in Pakistan poses a threat to American interests, US-Pakistan intelligence-sharing and counter-terrorism efforts will be relegated to the back burner. In such a situation, Pakistan may bandwagon further behind China, enraging the Trump administration and setting in motion forces detrimental to their bilateral ties.
(Parth Seth is a Research Fellow at India Foundation. He studies South Asia and the Middle East, and North Africa.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author