Take with multiple grains of salt any conclusions, even from the most knowledgeable of American military leaders, that Pakistan and its military are moving toward cooperation with the United States in its efforts in Afghanistan. That’s the advice of Hussain Haqqani, now of the Hudson Institute and Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States in 2008-2011, in this article in The American Interest. Haqqani is expanding here on his analysis in depth of Pakistan’s military elite in his 2013 book Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States and an Epic History of Misunderstanding.
He shows how for many years U.S. policymakers fancied that Pakistan could become a reliable ally. Sometimes there were dividends: Henry Kissinger’s secret flight to China in 1971 took off from Pakistan, for example. But all our efforts have been frustrated by the views ingrained in Pakistan’s usually dominant military: that the great enemy was India and that that justified working with Islamist terrorists to prevent India from getting a foothold in Afghanistan. India’s cool relations with the United States, and its tilt toward the Soviet Union in international forums for the first several decades after it achieved independence in 1947, made it appear we had common cause with Pakistan.
But since the end of the Cold War, India has become much friendlier with the United States, and the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Donald Trump have all, to varying extents, moved toward something like a de facto alliance with India.
Haqqani’s article, summarizing the historic record and recent developments, is a good antidote for any American policymaker imagining that a tilt toward Pakistan could be productive.
