ISLAMABAD – US president who fires his cabinet ministers via a mere tweetis unstable, mercurial and erratic. A policy wonk like Thomas Friedman of *TheNew York Times* says, “We have a president who’s a disturbed person.”Setting off alarm bells, America is in danger according to Freidman. It’sin “code red” moment because of the man in the Oval Office.
This week Trump had his foreign policy advisers, analysts and talk showhosts throw up their arms when he threatened to withdraw 2,000 Americantroops from Syria that provides a bulwark against the return of ISIS to thearea. “It’s very costly for our country and it helps other countries ahelluva lot more than it helps us,” was Trump’s snafued logic.
With a mercenary US president, Pakistan has already received a whackingfrom him. His very first tweet of 2018 slammed Islamabad, saying it hadgiven the US nothing but “lies and deceit.”
Therefore he decided to suspend $1.3 billion in US military aid to Pakistanas punishment for allegedly harbouring terrorists. Recently *ForeignPolicy* magazinecarried an article titled “Is Trump Ready to Dump Pakistan.”
Given Trump’s current state of capriciousness and ignorance in foreignpolicy, doubled by the appointments of national security adviser JohnBolton, a hardcore nationalist, and Mike Pompeo as the new secretary ofstate, Islamabad may become a pariah state.
Outlined by the *Foreign Policy* journal are some of the measures beingweighed by the Trump administration to permanently cut off the annual flowof military aid this year, which could “put a strain on Pakistan’s defensebudget and deprive it of coveted U.S. military hardware.”
Apart from financial aid, “visa bans or other punitive measures againstindividual members of the Pakistani government, military, or ISIintelligence service suspected of allowing the Taliban and Haqqanimilitants to operate from sanctuaries inside Pakistan,” are being mootedaccording to current and former officials.
Trump’s highhanded measures may well “represent a clear rebuke of Pakistanand signal the unraveling of an uneasy military alliance that was bornduring the Cold War and renewed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.”
Saner voices advise restraint. Andrew Liepman, a 30-year-old CIA veteran,praises Pakistan for its “invaluable” help in hunting down al Qaedaleaders: “The substantial progress we made in dismantling the al Qaedanetwork could not have been accomplished without help from ISI,” hetold *ForeignPolicy*.
And with the country’s strategic location and nuclear arsenal, aconfrontation could risk a backlash by extremists and even a nightmarescenario where jihadis get hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, many fear.
Kamal Alam is a visiting fellow at the UK-based The Royal United ServicesInstitute (RUSI) famed for its avant-garde defence and security research.His article titled ‘The Bajwa Doctrine:
The Pakistani Military Has Done More than Enough’ sets the record straightfor Pakistan. According to Alam, “gone are the days of timidity andscurrying to please the Americans. This is being called the ‘BajwaDoctrine’, and it suggests that the army should not do more, but rather theworld must do more.
The Pakistani military is far more confident than it was when the USthreatened then president Pervez Musharraf to bomb Pakistan into the stoneage if it did not comply with their demands.” Recently when Trump’s keyaide Alice Wells visited Islamabad, she was kept at an “arm’s length”failing to “get a meeting with the senior command of the Pakistanimilitary, as is the normal custom”.
As 2018 begins, it’s America who needs Pakistan and not the other wayaround, says Alam. US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis knows Islamabad isindispensable in the war against terrorism. But his president is crazyunpredictable with itchy fingers and may well one early morning dumpPakistan with just one tweet!By: Anjum Riaz