Evolving Pak-US relations |
On December 21, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (retired) wrote an op-ed, “Trump’s surprising policy turn on Pakistan”, that appeared in the Washington Times. In addition to being a high-ranking retired army officer, Kimmitt is a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for Near East and South Asia and former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs of the United States (US).
The article offers an insight into the pattern of thought a retired military man carries over time to view the region of South Asia. Interestingly, Kimmitt chose the Washington Times and not the well-reputed and widely circulated Washington Post to vent his views. Nevertheless, the article gathered the needed attention in Pakistan. In the article, Kimmitt compares the causes and effects of the nearness (and remoteness) of Pakistan and India to the US. Kimmitt opines that, in the past, the US ditched Pakistan on the touchstone of doubts over its “counter-terrorism commitments” and on its cherishing “close ties with China”, whereas the US “leaned onto an India-first posture”, which has now crumbled because of India’s “increasingly majoritarian domestic politics and constraints on civil liberties [besides India’s] uneven military performance and growing reputation for diplomatic inflexibility [which] cast doubt on India’s reliability as regional stabilizer.” In this comparison of failures, Kimmitt is clearly saying that the criteria to judge Pakistan are different from those employed for........