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The visit by Pakistan’s army chief General Asim Munir to the US marked an important effort at re-engagement by the two countries. He held meetings with military officers as well as State Department and White House officials. He also visited the headquarters of Central Command in Tampa, Florida. These wide-ranging interactions should help the process to reset the relationship, which has been in a state of flux since the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
Pakistan-US relations are at an inflection point today. For the past two decades, the relationship pivoted around Afghanistan and lacked any significant bilateral content. Now the two countries have to find a new basis for ties. Historically, geopolitical concerns and superpower dynamics that shaped America’s regional alignments and priorities also defined relations with Pakistan They drove bilateral ties into different phases. First, in the Cold War, when the US aim was to contain communism, Pakistan became America’s “most allied ally.” Then came the shared interest, after 1979, of rolling back the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. And then the post-9/11 phase that involved defeating Al-Qaeda in the ‘war on terror.’ That chapter ended with the US pullout from Afghanistan. These phases laid bare an ineluctable reality. Positive transformations in ties were almost always driven by events extraneous to the bilateral relationship.
The last phase in relations proved consequential for future ties. The ‘long war’ waged by America in........