Another effort to strip Pakistan of its status as a major non-Nato ally of United States

A Republican lawmaker has moved a bill in the 117th Congress, seeking to strip Pakistan of its status as a major non-Nato ally of the United States. The Washington Times also pointed out that the bill, introduced drew little US media notice but triggered headlines in India, which … has long been critical of US-Pakistan relations. I am pleased to share with readers one of my blogs titled “US can’t afford to antagonize Pakistan” written as back as March 2013.

Over the years Pakistan has been fighting proxy US war in Afghanistan, not because of any love for Afghans or even to please the super power. It has been dragged into it and one could sum up the negotiations in before US assault on Afghanistan in one sentence ‘either you are with us or with our enemies’. At that time Pakistan had no option but to bow down as India was ready to join the US crusade. By that time Pakistan was also facing enduring economic sanctions for undertaking ‘nuclear test in 1998 and the probability was that refusal to join the war may also lead to air strikes on Pakistan’s sensitive installations.

On this Monday, Iranian Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari jointly inaugurated the work on the of 780-km Pakistani segment of Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline in the Iranian port city of Chahbahar. The point to be noted is that in this city India is constructing a sea port which is also being linked with Central Asia via Afghanistan on which the United States has never raised any objection. In fact it may be said that India is doing this under the instructions of United States which wants an alternative route, other than through Pakistan.

As I have said earlier United States is once again following ‘carrot and stock policy’. Victoria Nuland of the US State Department on one hand warns Islamabad that its cooperation with Tehran falls under the Iran Sanctions Act, which means that Pakistan may face a ban on its transactions through American banks and that US military and other aid to Pakistan may be curtailed. She also plays the mantra that the US administration is willing to offer other alternatives, but little has been done to date.

Pakistan is rightly demanding its treatment at par with India, if it has to quite Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, this could be done on only one condition supply of nuclear technology for civilian use. The US has offered this to India in exchange for deserting the gas pipeline project.

This morning I got another inspiration after reading an article in eurasiareview quoting Russian analyst Maxim Minayev of the Civic Society Development Foundation on the matter. He said “I don’t think that Washington will cut its military aid to Islamabad as long as the Afghan campaign continues. The aid is meant to strengthen Pakistan’s defense capacity, particularly against radical Islamist groups. Speaking about Pakistani-US relations, one should bear in mind the potential of those who oversee them in the White House, namely US Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joseph Biden. I think that such players will manage to create additional opportunities for the White House in terms of minimizing the impact of the Pakistani-Iranian pipeline project”.

In his view impositions of sanctions may have the opposite effect. If Washington curtails political and military cooperation with Islamabad, the latter will move to expand ties with China. That’s not what the White House wants. There will be a general elections in Pakistan in May with the ruling Pakistan People’s Party facing a tough challenge from the Muslim League-Nawaz led by ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Both the parties are campaigning on the promises to ease the country’s energy crisis that has reduced its GDP growth rate to around 2.5%. Therefore, any party that wins majority or form coalition government, its first priority will be to resolve looming energy crisis.

In fact President Asif Ali Zardari has won hearts of Pakistanis once again by transferring control of Gwadar port to China and commencing work on Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline. Any effort by the United States to create hurdle in smooth working of these two projects could raise two popular demands: 1) Pakistan should immediately pull itself out of US proxy war and 2) stopping movement of Nato supplies through Pakistan with immediate effect. I hope the US government just can’t afford either one.

I also tend to agree with Russian Orientalist Sergei Druzhilovsky. He believes that the project will go ahead, no matter who wins the election. All the more so that Iran has already built its 900-km segment of the pipeline and hopes to extend it into India. For Pakistan, gas transit means handsome profits. The latter circumstance must have outweighed the alternatives proposed by Saudi Arabia and the United States. Last May, Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made clear Islamabad would not yield to pressure over the pipeline.

Pakistan needs gas to keep its thermal power plants running and industries operating at optimum capacity utilization. Last but not the least Pakistan has a right to demand that the United States should first impose economic sanctions on India for buying oil from Iran, constructing Chahbahar seaport and rail and road network in Iran.

Joe Biden names his foreign policy team

US President-elect Joe Biden has named his top foreign policy staff on Monday. He announced, as expected, Antony Blinken would serve as secretary of state.

“We have no time to lose when it comes to our national security and foreign policy,” the president-elect said in a press release. “I need a team ready on Day One to help me reclaim America’s seat at the head of the table, rally the world to meet the biggest challenges we face, and advance our security, prosperity, and values.”

Biden also tapped former secretary of state and former senator, John Kerry, as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. He will sit on the National Security Council as well. “This marks the first time that the NSC will include an official dedicated to climate change, reflecting the president-elect’s commitment to addressing climate change as an urgent national security issue,” the transition team said in a press release.

Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a veteran member of the Foreign Service, would serve as ambassador to the UN. Thomas-Greenfield served in many positions during her 35-year service, including as ambassador to Liberia. She was posted in Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, and at the US mission to the UN in Geneva. In 2013, she was appointed as assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs, where she led the policy on sub-Saharan Africa. Thomas-Greenfield also served as Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of human resources and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Population, Refugees and Migration Bureau.

Ambassador Barbara Bodine is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown, where Thomas-Greenfield was the inaugural Distinguished Resident Fellow in African Studies from 2017 to 2019. “She has a background and experience directly with multilateral institutions,” Bodine said. “After serving in Africa, as she has as assistant secretary and ambassador, she also has seen how multilateralism or multilateral collaboration is how we operate in the field, on the ground every day,” she added.

According to Bodine, the fact that her name came out at the same time as Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and before all the other members of the administration, “signals that diplomacy is going to be a fundamental tool, not a secondary tool, and that we want to reengage credibly, collaboratively, with our partners, our friends and the rest of the world.”

She noted that Thomas-Greenfield is experienced in “conflict areas and worked on how you craft sustainable agreements to bring about peace.”

One important element for her work, Bodine noted, is that the US is going to chair the Security Council starting in March, which would require a knowledgeable person to hold the position. She added that Thomas-Greenfield doesn’t have experience with Israel or the Near East, “but she is going to represent the policy of the administration” when it comes to the region.

Biden also named Jake Sullivan as a national security adviser, according to media reports. Sullivan has gone a long way with Biden and Hillary Clinton. He advised Clinton during her 2008 primary bid and later Obama in his general-election bid. When Clinton was appointed secretary of state, Sullivan served as her deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning. When Clinton left the administration during Obama’s second term, he served as Biden’s top security aide. In 2016, he again advised Clinton during her presidential campaign. He was instrumental in shaping the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He had defended the agreement.

“Under the deal, Iran’s nuclear program was in a box, it was frozen,” Sullivan wrote. “Under the deal, there were no rocket attacks killing Americans in Iraq... Today, Iran is attacking shipping in the Gulf and threatening the rest of the region.”

In August, he spoke at a webinar hosted by Democratic Majority of Israel, and said that Biden believes that “it is not a concession of leverage to sit down with Iran at the bargaining table.”

Sullivan said that at the end of the day, “what has been proven out over the past few years is that the United States has immense capacity, through the financial sanctions tool, to very swiftly ratchet up pressure. We did that in the Obama administration; the Trump administration did it; Iran knows that.

“He fundamentally believes that there’s a way to interplay the diplomacy side of this equation and the pressure side of this equation in a way that will help us secure the objectives that we’re trying to achieve,” Sullivan added.

According to Sullivan, diplomacy backed by pressure that creates leverage “is the kind of formula that could work again to make progress, not just on the core nuclear issues, but on some of these other challenges as well.

“One of the vice president’s commitments and all of this is to get to the table to be able to negotiate a follow-on agreement that does materially advance the security of the United States, of Israel, and our other regional partners as well, and does hold Iran to account.

“And he believes that that is the best way to actually produce a durable outcome,” he added.

Sullivan – together with two other former Obama officials, ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro and under-secretary of state Wendy Sherman – played a role in shaping the Democratic Party’s foreign-policy platform.

Following the signing of the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, Sullivan praised the move, saying the deal was a “positive accomplishment” for the president’s foreign policy.

“It’s good for the region, it’s good for Israel, it’s good for peace,” said Sullivan during an interview on the Yahoo News podcast Skullduggery.