Biden-Presidency: New flood of expectations
A change in the White House is often followed by a foreign policy shift in Islamabad. Every United States (US) president, as in the words of Noam Chomsky, comes with a new doctrine that significantly impacts global geopolitics. Thus, it will be unsurprising to see that if Joe Biden gets elected, Pakistan’s relations with the US and its allies might change for good.
The election of Donald Trump did not particularly bode well for the US-Pak relationship. His espousal of the “no more” mantra and announcement for a reduction in bilateral aid to Pakistan in a New Year tweet in 2018 remarkably strained the diplomatic relationship between the two cold war allies. Realizing the strategic importance of Pakistan and its role in Afghanistan during the cold war period, Washington toned down its harsh criticism aimed at Islamabad for playing a “double-game” in the region — selectively targeting militant and anti-US elements on strategic grounds. This also gave Pakistan the diplomatic space to resume its role as a strategic mediator between the US and the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan for a long term peace accord and regional stability.
Unlike Trump’s skepticism about Pakistan’s role in the US war on terror, Biden has historically looked upon Pakistan as a strategic regional ally. Biden, along with Senator Richard Lugar, promulgated the Enhanced Partnership Act with Pakistan 2008. The main aim of Biden’s effort was to improve the political and economic situation in Pakistan for regional stability. Biden also sees Pakistan as a valuable and trustful ally in the context of the Afghan problem. Biden gave a ‘shut-up call’ to Hamid Karzai when the latter demanded that the US should pressurize Pakistan diplomatically to curb its support for the Afghan Taliban. Biden countered this by asserting that “Pakistan is fifty times more important than Afghanistan for the US”. However, on the other hand, his success can also jeopardize Islamabad’s rising clout in the region. He recently announced that he does not plan to pull out American forces entirely from Afghanistan, which can potentially antagonize the Pak-supported Afghan Taliban. A change in the White House can also alter Pakistan’s relationship with its hostile eastern neighbor. India has enjoyed diplomatic leverage under the Trump administration. Its hostile narrative towards Pakistan since the last Indian elections, and the unilateral annulment of Article 370, revoking Kashmir’s special autonomy, relatively went unheard in Washington. However, the Biden administration would likely strive to improve Indo-Pak relations through dialogue — something he explicitly endorsed during the Vajpayee-Musharraf talks as a US senator. Moreover, possibly, the US will diplomatically pressurize India to curb its human rights violations in Kashmir, as hinted at by Biden’s running Vice President Kamala Harris.
Concluding all, If Biden wins the November elections, the Trumpian doctrine will finally come to an end. The washington-Islamabad diplomatic exchange will flourish, and the US might resume its civil-military assistance to Pakistan. However, the new administration might compel Islamabad to move away from Beijing’s influence because of the strained US-China relationship.
