US President Joe Biden is not cool enough, not young enough, not pro-Palestinian enough. Young Democrats are disappointed by his approach to Gaza, while older voters remain grumpy about inflation. Political forecasters are therefore predicting a win for Donald Trump in this year’s US election. So it’s time to ask, what would a Trump win mean for Pakistan?
Pakistanis may have a misplaced nostalgia for the Trump era, recalling the bromance with Imran Khan and the offer to mediate between Islamabad and Delhi over Kashmir. But that reset of ties in 2019 (only a year after Trump had accused Pakistan of ‘lies and deceit’) was transactional, and rooted in the context of Pakistani support engaging with the Afghan Taliban to facilitate a US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
US-Pakistan relations continue to be defined by security considerations but times have changed and a second-term Trump administration (much like another Biden administration) is unlikely to prioritise ties. The US’s key interests have been that nuclear-armed Pakistan is not irreversibly destabilised, that India-Pakistan tensions do not devolve into conflict, and that the region does not become a hotbed of global militancy. Nominally, Washington would also like to prevent Pakistan from falling........