Diplomats & Scholars Debate the Future of US-Pakistan Ties at Hudson Institute Webinar
By Elaine Pasquini
As the United States continues the withdrawal of all its troops from Afghanistan, experts on a June 29 webinar hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC discussed the future of Pakistan’s relationship with the United States.
Husain Haqqani, the Hudson Institute’s director for South and Central Asia and former Pakistani ambassador to the United States, moderated the timely hour-long discussion.
Former US ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson, now a senior advisor to the United States Institute of Peace, pointed out that Pakistan has played an important role in supporting American military efforts in Afghanistan.
“I think we have to recognize that Pakistan will be important to the United States in terms of security interests as we wind down the military aspects of our involvement in Afghanistan,” he said. “To the extent the US continues to support the peace process there will be an important role for Pakistan both in the intra-Afghanistan peace process, but more importantly, in a regional peace process.”
The ambassador argued that the US-Pakistan relationship would continue to be framed by external factors, particularly with respect to Pakistan’s growing alignment with China. “I think there will be strategic choices that Pakistan will have to make, particularly in the digital area in the future,” he added.
Olson predicted that the relationship between the two countries will shift from one that emphasizes security and counterterrorism to an alliance that focuses instead on economic and commercial issues as well as people-to-people issues. “This is an area which has not been terribly developed,” he stated.
Pakistan is attractive to the US economically because of, among other things, its large and growing youth population and burgeoning middle class. “This is the kind of country American companies should want to invest in,” he noted, but Pakistan would have to undertake some fairly serious economic reforms to become “a genuinely attractive venue.”
The Atlantic Council’s Shuja Nawaz expressed the need for the United States to strengthen its relationship with Pakistani civil society and concentrate on economics as a way to build a more productive relationship.
In addition, Nawaz pointed out Pakistan’s strategic importance, noting it is one of the largest Islamic states in the world, is a nuclear power and is strategically located, bordering China, India, Iran and overlooking the Arabian Sea.
Ambassador Robin L. Raphel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs suggested the US-Pakistan relationship should “forego all of the hype of strategic dialogue and instead be placed on a more modest plane and not be overloaded with issues.” This, she argued, would “make the relationship more stable, predictable, sustainable and…would take pressure off the parties so they could actually feel ownership and more control over the relationship and avoid the unrealistic expectations that have plagued the past.”
Lisa Curtis, senior fellow for the Center for a New American Security, also stressed the need for the Biden administration to direct its attention to improving the United States’ economic relationship with Pakistan. “The focus should be on trade, investment and climate change or similar issues,” she said.
Elaborating further on Curtis’s suggestions, Joshua White, associate professor of the practice of South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, added public health and energy as issues the Biden administration might want to tackle together with Pakistan. “These are fertile areas for cooperation with Pakistan and ones I think would form the basis for cooperation in the future. These are natural areas where Pakistani leaders can conflate their interest and cooperation with a mix of public sector engagement and stimulate private sector investment which I think would be welcome by this administration.”
(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)
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