By: Ayyan Shaikh
What will be the impact on Pakistan of the current US elections? How will the foreign policy of both the countries towards each other change? With a change in government/leadership, there is always a new doctrine that impacts global geopolitics. Thus it will be safe to assume that the Pak-US relations will indeed change with Joe Biden as the new President-Elect of the United States.
While Trump dismissed the importance of Pakistan in its Afghan-US saga despite Pakistan acting as a mediator between both the countries, Biden has historically looked upon Pakistan as a strategic regional ally. During his tenure as the Chairman of SFRC, Biden helped in formulating quite a few Acts to strengthen the US-Pakistan relation. Furthermore, he also sees Pakistan as an important ally in its Afghan problem. However, he has also declared that he is not interested in completely pulling out the American forces from Afghanistan which will ultimately jeopardize Islamabad’s rising clout in the region as his policies might antagonize the Pak-supported Afghan Taliban.
Additionally, the new government will also likely affect Pakistan’s relationship with India. While India will still get unadulterated support from Biden administration due to its strong economic hold in South Asia as it is the only rival power of China in the region, it is expected that they will try to improve Pak-Indo relation which had hit an all-time low during the Trump administration due to Trump’s open support for India which had ultimately alienated Pakistan. As hinted by Biden’s Elected VP, Kamala Harris, they might pressurize India to curb its human rights violation in Kashmir.
In a nutshell, looking at the past and Biden’s current campaign for Presidency, Pak-US relations are expected to flourish and the world power might resume its civil-military assistance to Pakistan which had been halted during the Trump administration. Though it is important to notice that this improvement in US-Pak relationship might strain Pakistan's relationship with China, a long term ally, due to the US-China dispute that has been running for a very long time.
(Image from here.)
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