What Is The Quid Pro Quo?

Now Pakistan: US and Pakistan interests have converged and diverged regularly. The US has generally engaged Pakistan through transactional deals only, offering the barest minimum economic and military aid to satiate it and meet its own objectives at that particular point in time. Thereafter, geopolitics has always reigned supreme; with the US distancing itself from Pakistan and the latter feeling let down, used, discarded and frustrated-till the next time! Pakistan's vulnerability has generally lain in its weak political and military rulers accentuated further by its invariably poor economy. The US has exploited these most dexterously to achieve its desired end states in the region.

The US perhaps needs to engage Pakistan yet again, as an essential element of its Asia policy and its strategic design for the Indo-Pacific Region (IPR) and the SAR, in particular.

At the geopolitical level, the US would prefer to see Pakistan still lean towards the US-led West and be weaned away from China. It would suit US regional interests were the Sino-Pakistan strategic partnership to be weakened and/or a disconnect achieved between the two neighbours. That would neutralise perhaps the most dynamic strategic partnership in the region, create more strategic space for the US-led West and India and make Pakistan more dependent upon the West. It would further nullify China's access to the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean via the BRI-CPEC/Makran Coast, stunt the expansion of the BRI-CPEC, re-emphasise the importance and value of the Malacca Straits choke point vis a vis Gwadar and deny China the benefits of being a two-ocean nation. It would ostensibly meet India's regional ambitions and interests, too. A peculiar triangular relationship exists in the SAR between China, India and Pakistan. India generally cannot deal effectively with either China or Pakistan without taking the other into consideration. A distancing of Pakistan from China would ease matters for India, (a strategic partner of the US), tremendously, while it would harm Pakistan's vital national interests enormously. Furthermore, till the festering issue of Kashmir is resolved according to the UNSC Resolutions, there can be no genuine peace, cooperation or exchange of favours between India and Pakistan. Period.

At the geostrategic level, the US will expect India to engage China on the Himalayan front, fix a substantial part of the PLA there and create a favourable environment for it and its allies in the...