Half Friend, Half Enemy

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” Henry Kissinger
The theme that Pakistan needs to maintain a “balance” in its relations between the Dragon (a symbol of good luck, strength, and wisdom in China) and the Eagle (symbol of a powerful bird of prey in the US) is important because it is attractive, but misleading. Pakistan needs to have as broad and mutually beneficial a relationship with the US as possible because it is still the mightiest military power, biggest economy, and technology leader in the world. Along with the EU, it is also the main market for Pakistan’s exports. Pakistan has also benefited from US assistance, cooperation, and investment. These benefits should be built upon as far as possible for Pakistan’s future welfare and prosperity.

Similarly, Pakistan has had the good fortune of being a neighbor and long-standing friend of China, whose post-Mao 40-year transformation from a relatively isolated developing country to a global power second only to the US has amazed and changed the world. Unfortunately, Pakistan has, by and large, failed, for reasons that are widely known but seldom frankly expressed, to avail itself of the opportunities provided by this Chinese transformation to transform itself. Any government of Pakistan will need to actualize the potential of its relations with contemporary China, even to begin discharging its overriding obligations towards the welfare and prosperity of its people.

Pakistan needs to develop mutually beneficial cooperation with as many countries as feasible, particularly in its region, and especially with the two most important countries of the world. This, however, does not mean Pakistan should seek a “balance” in its relations with the US and China. The reason for this is simple. Given the state of relations between the US and China, such a balance cannot be sustained. Why not? Given the zero-sum attitude of the US towards China, the US itself rejects the idea of critically located countries, such as Pakistan, maintaining any kind of balance between itself and China.

The US, whatever it might say to the contrary, demands compliance as a condition for its strategic friendship. This includes prioritizing US strategic interests over the national interests of partners and allies such as Pakistan. Even as large and important a country as India, which insists upon its “strategic autonomy” and “India First” diplomacy, is today confronted by the mercurial and egotistical U.S. President Donald Trump, whose “transactional” approach is little more than crass bullying. A smaller debt-ridden country such as Pakistan, that remains utterly dependent on regular debt-ballooning bailouts from the US-controlled IMF and World Bank, accordingly, has little strategic bargaining power vis-a-vis the US, whatever posture it may adopt for domestic public consumption.

Contemporary China, however, makes no such self-centered demands on its friends and partners. It prioritizes its national security imperatives like all countries do, but it requires no subservience from other countries other than that they not become the strategic instruments of its adversaries. Nor does its ideology have a missionary or colonial aspect that justifies the perception, as is the case with the US, that global hegemony is a necessary condition for its national security.

This is manifest not just in China’s rhetoric but in the scale of the concrete steps it has taken, and in the comprehensive coverage of the institutions it has established in support of its “shared prosperity” goals, which are in marked contrast to the “hierarchical security” goals of the U.S. China’s great endeavor is, of course, still a work in progress, with “miles to go” before it reaches its goals. But it is already global in scope, and in no way based upon forcing unwelcome choices upon friends, partners, and allies, as does the US, which requires its allies and partners to “target” specific countries that it unilaterally designates as adversaries and enemies.

Accordingly, the US has consistently targeted CPEC, the flagship of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In this regard, it has relied on the complicity of dependent decision-making elites in Pakistan who have, by and large, consistently opposed and thwarted the priorities and rights of the vast majority of their people. China, by contrast, does not interfere in the politics of other countries. But it does assume - and this is important - that the governments of countries it regards as strategic partners will not be seen by their citizens as inimical to their fundamental rights and priorities. This is because China realizes that such a perception would sooner or later adversely impact the people’s perception of China itself.

This is a condition that Pakistan has failed to satisfy, which can have a progressively corrosive effect on China’s perception of Pakistan as a reliable strategic asset. The US, on the contrary, implicitly prefers externally dependent ruling elites in countries of strategic importance who have demonstrated a capacity and will to deny and defy their people’s priorities in deference to the imperatives of US strategic priorities.