Trump 2.0 and Pakistan

Donald Trump has taken oath as America’s 47th president (he was also its 45th) and issued a raft of executive orders, most of them related to domestic policies and politics.

While those who support Imran Khan have high hopes that the new US president will also be instrumental in getting former prime minister Imran Khan released, such an eventuality is very unlikely. And the most obvious and straightforward answer for that is Pakistan just doesn’t figure that high on Trump’s priorities and it is for that very reason that he has never really mentioned it during his election campaign or in the ten weeks since he won the US presidential election.

He has talked about trade and wanting to impose tariffs on all imports into the US, to save jobs in America and to punish countries like China which have massive trade surpluses with America – meaning that Americans spend far more on buying Chinese goods and services than Chinese people do on American goods and services. Trump has also spoken about Ukraine and Russia, and the European Union and Nato and how he thinks that the Europeans need to do their bit and that America shouldn’t have to fund the security of the European continent on its own. He has also talked about imposing a 25 per cent tariff on imports from America’s immediate neighbours, Mexico and Canada, and even made fun of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling him the “governor of America’s 51st state”.

The fact is that let alone Pakistan, Trump hasn’t really spoken much for any South Asian country, not even India. In fact, India’s populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not receive an invitation to Trump’s inauguration, and Indian media extensively reported that he was hankering for one. The only mention that India really got in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration has been in the H1-B visa debate since a bulk of the visas are obtained by applicants from India.

The whole debate was linked to a comment on Twitter/X by Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian American billionaire who has been nominated to a senior post in the incoming administration, and his remarks on how American popular culture looked down on those who were intelligent and had a tech background, calling them the pejorative ‘nerds’ and rewarded ‘jocks’ or athletes. That tweet split Trump’s voters down the middle with many heaping scorn on Ramaswamy and much of the critique was dipped in a healthy serving of racism.

In any case, there was still no mention of Pakistan. And while Richard Grenell, named ‘envoy for special missions’ by Trump, tweeted several times calling for the release of Imran Khan, it is unclear how much clout he will have in the Trump administration and whether it will be of the kind that could change policy on Pakistan. Besides, conventional wisdom would suggest that any incoming US president would want to work with the government (of a sovereign state) that is already in place, and it is likely that this will continue with Trump as well.

It is also likely that under him, the Pentagon will continue to work as usual with the Pakistani military. Of course, the nature of that relationship may have changed somewhat in recent years, especially with the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. However, with a Taliban government firmly in place in Kabul, the US-Pakistan relationship will likely continue to have a strong security component.

At the end of the day, Pakistan will have a relationship with the Trump administration that isn’t going to be all that different from the past: the one with the Biden administration was hardly remarkable.

In fact, the one thing that stood out during its run was how the PTI and then-PM Imran Khan used the controversial cipher case to accuse America of interfering in Pakistan’s internal affairs. It is therefore supremely ironic that PTI supporters and its leadership have now tried to curry favour and gain access with the Trump administration – their sole aim being to gain their leader’s release from prison – and are now beseeching the very government for help which their leader had accused of his ouster.

If Pakistan, or any country for that matter, wishes to have a bilateral relationship with America – on a somewhat equal footing – then it should pay attention first and foremost to its economy. And when it has enough economic clout as a result of a large and growing economy, the relationship will move towards one based on an even keel.

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. He tweets/posts @omar_quraishi and can be reached at: omarrquraishi@gmail.com