Sajjad Ahmad Khan
In recent years, Washington’s policy towards Islamabad has been shaped less by bilateral warmth and more by geopolitical calculus. Pakistan no longer occupies the central place in American foreign policy that it once did during the Cold War or the Afghan jihad. Instead, the United States now views Pakistan largely through the lens of Afghanistan’s aftermath, counterterrorism concerns, its growing closeness with China, and increasingly, broader strategic interests in rare earth materials, energy resources, and even emerging financial domains like cryptocurrency. For Pakistan, this means that the once-celebrated “strategic partnership” has gradually thinned into a transactional association, where each side engages only to the extent of its immediate interests.
A crucial question is whether Pakistan’s diplomacy has been effective in managing this change. The truth is mixed. Pakistani diplomats have managed to prevent a complete rupture, ensuring that communication lines remain open, and that occasional cooperation continues in security and economic domains. Yet effectiveness is limited by the reality that Pakistan often negotiates from a position of economic fragility. Our foreign policy, historically tilted towards the United States, still struggles to break free from old habits of dependency. Instead of diversifying strategic options, Islamabad often falls back on the comfort of seeking American favor—while at the same time resenting its overbearing influence.
The most pressing layer of this relationship is economic survival. Pakistan’s recurring balance-of-payments crises have left Islamabad with little choice but to depend on international lenders—where American influence remains decisive. Every negotiation with the IMF carries echoes of Washington’s approval or disapproval. In 2023 and 2024, Pakistan secured critical loan packages, but behind the scenes, U.S. support was pivotal. This has created a paradox: while anti-American rhetoric remains politically popular at home, policymakers quietly acknowledge that without American backing in global financial institutions, economic collapse would be unavoidable. At the same time, U.S. remains one of Pakistan’s largest trading partners, with bilateral trade expanding by 16% in 2024–25 to $7.6 billion. Notably, the balance is in Pakistan’s favor, with $5.83 billion in exports—an unusual advantage in an otherwise asymmetrical relationship.
On the political front, Washington’s approach to Pakistan has shifted dramatically. Gone are the days when U.S. envoys cultivated close ties with Pakistani leaders to secure military bases or counterterror commitments. Instead, Washington now views Pakistan largely through the prism of regional stability and domestic governance. Concerns about democratic backsliding, shrinking civil liberties, and rising polarization have increasingly entered U.S. public statements on Pakistan. While Islamabad resents this as interference, it also recognizes that political instability at home weakens its ability to negotiate with Washington on equal footing.
Security cooperation remains an uneasy necessity. The rise in militant violence in Pakistan since the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul has revived quiet intelligence-sharing between Washington and Islamabad. The Trump administration’s limited shift in tone towards Pakistan—framed as part of his election promise to apprehend those responsible for killing Americans at Bagram—was facilitated less by diplomacy and more by the operational channels of U.S. CENTCOM and the CIA, working in tandem with Pakistan’s Army and ISI. This alignment, however, may not be lasting; it reflects short-term convergences in counterterrorism rather than a durable shift in strategic posture.
During the recent clash between Pakistan and India, the United States neither openly backed Pakistan nor turned its back on India. Washington’s stance was more about safeguarding its own interests and containing tensions than taking sides. The U.S. usually puts regional stability and its strategic relations with both countries first, so it’s unrealistic to expect it to fully support Pakistan or sideline India. That said, some emotional Pakistanis took pride when President Trump claimed, ‘I stopped this war,’ especially since Prime Minister Modi appeared visibly slighted by that remark.
Yet, the evolving U.S. interests in rare earth supply chains, energy markets, and financial innovations like crypto may furnish unexpected avenues of engagement. Pakistan, while not a dominant player in these fields, occupies a geostrategic space that intersects with regions rich in resources. Washington recognizes that securing access and influence in these domains often requires maintaining working relations with states that straddle critical geographies—Pakistan among them.
Climate change and humanitarian concerns have also emerged as areas of cooperation. The devastating floods of 2022, which displaced millions in Pakistan, prompted the U.S. to extend significant relief assistance and advocate for climate-resilience funding. These initiatives, while limited in scope, offered a glimpse of a possible future relationship that goes beyond aid-for-security bargains.
Looking ahead, the challenge for Pakistan is to redefine its relationship with the U.S. not as a dependency, but as a pragmatic partnership. This requires Islamabad to ensure the following: to strengthen its domestic economy, negotiate from a position of stability, broaden the agenda of engagement, include trade, technology, and resource cooperation, and manage its diplomacy with both Washington and Beijing without being reduced to a pawn in great-power rivalry.
For Washington, the test is whether it can move beyond its narrow security lens and invest in Pakistan as a society, not just a state. A Pakistan that is economically resilient, politically stable, and socially progressive would serve U.S. interests far better than a fragile ally clinging to external support.
Ultimately, the debate is not just about America’s policies but about Pakistan’s own priorities. The question is whether we can move beyond a posture of reactive diplomacy—waiting to see what Washington demands—and instead chart a course of proactive engagement, where relations are framed not by dependency but by mutual respect. True sovereignty will not come by loudly rejecting alliances, nor by blindly embracing them, but by carefully building a foreign policy that balances necessity with dignity, interests with principles, and partnership with independence.
