US President Joe Biden’s remarks about Pakistan were uncalled-for, to say the least. His characterizing of Pakistan as a country that lacked cohesion and listing it among the global threats that the USA had to tackle came before a Democrat Party fundraising event, before an audience of campaigners. It was thus part of a message that President Biden wants carried into the elections next month, when both the Senate and the House are up for grabs. While Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been forthright in saying that nuclear security is safely protected, and while the Foreign Ministry has called in the US Ambassador to Pakistan to hand him a démarche, it is still not clear why President Biden chose to say what he did. PTI chief and ex-PM Imran Khan, apart from saying that Pakistan had ‘one of the world’s most secure command and control systems’, he pointed out that Pakistan had never threatened any other country with its nuclear weapons, and that these remarks made nonsense of the PDM’s claims of having achieved a reset in relations with the USA.
It is more than possible that the instability afflicting Pakistan, both political and economic, have caused jitters in Washington. Pakistan additionally has the threat of terrorist militancy, which has seen an upsurge since last year’s US exit from Afghanistan. Then there are the factors (very closely interlinked) of the USA’s growing closeness to India, and its increasing rivalry with China, which are the mirror images of Pakistan’s traditional relationships: friendship with China and hostility towards India. However, friendship with the USA had been also a cornerstone of its foreign policy. Since the increasing rivalry of the USA and China, Pakistan has had to walk a tightrope, and is still trying to do so. That it has abstained twice in the UN, the second time on Thursday, in votes on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, also upsets the USA, which has taken on the leadership of the anti-Russia forces.
It is as if the USA is expressing its anger at the vote by picking at a scab on an issue which the two countries differ on at the most fundamental level. It is almost as if the decision point is upon Pakistan. If Pakistan was to turn against Russia, and thus China, and grow closer to India, all its nuclear sins will probably be forgiven. The US relationship is very important to Pakistan, and it becomes necessary to decide whether it is more necessary than its nuclear status. It should not forget that that status is all that stands between it and Indian bullying.
