Strategic dialogue with US
By Shahid Javed Burki
Tuesday, 06 Apr, 2010
THE tenor of the statements issued by the two sides following the conclusion of the strategic dialogue between Pakistan and the United States last month would suggest that both Islamabad and Washington achieved most of their objectives. The large Pakistani delegation achieved most of what it wished to get from the Americans.
The United States was relieved that it had finally placed Pakistan on the track on which it wanted to have it proceed in terms of its fight against terrorism especially with reference to carrying out its Afghan policy.
The Pakistani group made up of politicians, and senior civil and military officials came to Washington hoping that their relations with the United States would be placed on firmer ground. The off-and-on nature of this relationship over the last half century has hurt Pakistan. Washington sought Pakistan’s help when it suited its strategic purpose.
This was the case during the period of Ayub Khan when the Americans were busy constructing a wall around the communist world in Asia and Europe. This was also the case during the Ziaul Haq period when Washington needed Islamabad’s help to drive the Soviet troops out of Afghanistan and when America, in the period of President Pervez Musharraf, wanted Pakistan’s help to protect itself against the rising tide of Islamic extremism.
There are two reasons why Pakistan continued to turn to the United States even though the latter had demonstrated repeatedly that it did not have the staying power once its immediate concerns were satisfied. The first, of course, was the concern with India. There may have been good reason for this in the early days when the first generation of Indian leaders, having been disappointed that they were not able to keep India united after the departure of the British, attempted to do away with partition.
As India became progressively more powerful economically and militarily its interest concerning Pakistan changed. The Pakistanis, however, have not adjusted fully to this change in the circumstances of the two countries. I believe this was the thrust of the position taken by the Indian foreign secretary in the conversation with her Pakistani counterpart.
The other reason for Pakistan’s continued interest in being close to the United States was its inability to generate enough resources from within the country to pay for investment. Without foreign capital flows Pakistan can only see its economy grow at four per cent a year; with large amounts of finance coming in from the outside it has demonstrated that the GDP can increase at the rate of eight to nine per cent a year. The quantum and quality of external flows is heavily influenced by Washington’s attitude towards Islamabad.
The stop-and-go nature of the relationship between the two countries has meant that the Pakistani economy was on a rollercoaster ride: the economy did well when US attention was turned in Pakistan’s direction. It did poorly when Washington lost interest in Islamabad. This type of relationship may have eased Pakistan’s economic problems over the short term but did little to secure the country’s future over the long term.
Islamabad sent a strong team to Washington to ensure that relations between the two countries would be less subjected to the latter’s short-term interests. It was able to push the Americans towards putting in place a strategic dialogue between the two sides and to have it conducted at the senior political level. As one American analyst put it, “the ‘strategic dialogue’ was by itself meant to send a message: the administration used the term reserved for the substantive, wide-ranging exchanges it carries on with important countries like China and India”.
By agreeing to change the nomenclature of the discussions held between the two countries, Washington brought Islamabad to the same level as Beijing and New Delhi. At a reception on March 24 at the State Department Secretary of State Clinton said that the two governments had agreed to meet at the senior political level every year and that the next round of discussions would be held next year at Islamabad.
Given Pakistan’s grave economic circumstances and the situation in the part of the world in which the country is located it is not surprising that economic assistance, help to the military to improve its capacity to fight insurgency, America’s Afghan strategy and Islamabad’s resolve to fight Islamic militancy were the main areas of focus in the dialogue. Pakistan came well-prepared to discuss three of these four issues.
Where its own preparation fell short was in the area of economic development. The 56-page paper it gave the Americans had a list of projects for which it needed American assistance. But a project list does not make a strategy. There was no indication as to the strategy the policymakers were likely to pursue to bring about a number of needed structural changes in the economy.
These included raising more resources from within the country for the government as well as the economy, thus making both less dependent on outside flows; increasing the economy’s capacity to export in light of the changes occurring in the global system of production and in the direction and composition of international trade; improving the quality of human resource so that a large and young population became an economic asset rather than remained a political and social burden; and improving the quality of governance.
There were two areas of interest for Pakistan where it did not see much movement on the part of the United States. One was the desire to have the country recognised as a nuclear power which would make it possible to access nuclear technology. The other was to engage the United States in resolving the many disputes with India. In the press conference following the conclusion of the dialogue Ms Clinton was non-committal on both.