Pakistan wants to be Trump's BFF
Two diplomats on the troubled DC-Islamabad relationship. And a thriller that's all too real
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The Big Story:
What does the formal end of Donald Trump’s hot war on Iran mean for the US relationship with Pakistan, which brokered both the ceasefire and the longer-term halt to hostilities?
On the one hand, the US and Iranian presidents’ electronic signatures on the memorandum of understanding deprived Pakistan of its big moment on the world stage, i.e., a splashy ceremony in Switzerland for the document called Islamabad MoU.1
Even so, Pakistan’s successful mediation between the US and Iran – countries locked in decades of hostility – is a diplomatic triumph that is winning it international kudos.2
Nearly 80 years after its birth, has Pakistan finally achieved founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s bold aspiration, to be “the pivot of the world”?
Or is Pakistan once again, allowing itself to be used by the United States, in a mutually beneficial transaction?
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, says in his 2013 book:
Primarily because of geopolitical considerations, the United States has enlisted Pakistan as an ally on three occasions: during the Cold War (1954–1972), the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan (1979–1989), and the war against terrorism (2001–present). In each instance the US motive for seeking Pakistani alliance has been different from Pakistan’s reasons for accepting it.
More context, fewer walls
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This Week’s Books:
A US diplomat hopes for better times.
A thriller that’s not all fiction.
A Pakistani ambassador on secrets and lies.
Another relevant free-to-read post:
Pakistan and American Diplomacy: Insights from 9/11 to the Afghanistan Endgame
By: Theodore Craig
Publisher: Potomac Books
Year: 2024
This account, by a US diplomat who served in Islamabad twice over in the 2010s, feels timely in light of Pakistan’s efforts on the US-Iran issue.
Ted Craig examines the possibility of a “successful” new relationship between Pakistan and the US despite their troubled history. “Could Pakistan find a way back from decades of colluding with Islamist militancy?” he asks. And could the Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan allow the US and Pakistan to recalibrate their equation?
After all, Pakistan’s “disappointment” with the Taliban has caused it to stop tolerating the group and the Pakistan military has also reduced “its costly support to Islamist militancy” in general. For Americans too, “the end of the ill-conceived nation-building effort in Afghanistan has freed institutions to set aside the once palpable current of moral outrage directed at the Pakistan state”.
Choice quote:
…the controlling ideology was the Pakistan security establishment’s idea that its interests in Afghanistan could best be protected by supporting the Afghan Taliban. This undercut the West’s efforts to remake that country.
Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage
By: David Ignatius
Publisher: W W Norton & Company
Year: 2011
This spy novel, by veteran journalist David Ignatius, portrays the deep mistrust in the US-Pakistan relationship, though in theory, they are allies.
The plot deals with double dealing of various kinds. The Pakistanis play both sides of the fence, working with the US and with militants. The Americans conduct covert operations on Pakistani soil.
There is a disturbing nod to a real-life incident revolving around a CIA contractor in Pakistan. In 2011, CIA contractor Raymond Davis shot and killed two Pakistanis on the streets of Lahore. He claimed to have acted in self-defence and was arrested by the Pakistanis. Davis was acquitted of all criminal charges after the payment of blood money and promptly left Pakistan. The saga triggered protests and strained the bilateral relationship.
Choice quote:
Now, there were large and small problems in Pakistan, but the very biggest ones were often connected to the words “United States of America.” For it was said, not without reason, that Pakistan’s life was bounded by the three A’s – Allah, Army and America.
Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding
By: Husain Haqqani
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Year: 2013
Early in this book, Husain Haqqani mentions that he was forced to resign as Pakistan’s ambassador to the US “amid fabricated charges”. He had been in post three years from 2008 but made the error of trying to “re-define the US-Pakistan relationship through an honest appraisal of past mistakes”. Few appreciated his candour, especially not Pakistan’s security services.
This book continues in that vein, underlining the mutual fictions of the special relationship. It was not “an alliance based on shared values and interests”, Haqqani writes, but a series of “half-hearted and time-limited transactions” that revolved around misunderstood intentions and limitations.
Americans were wary of a new country created on the basis of religion because “a significant minority seeking separation instead of safeguards” could lead to perennial conflict. But from its very first moment as an independent nation, Pakistan maintained an “almost exclusive focus on US military and economic aid”. In the early days, “the most frequent visitor from Karachi to Washington was the Pakistani finance minister”. Pakistan’s leaders desperately tried to get America’s attention by pointing to their location at the crossroads of the Middle East and South Asia. The foreign minister trumpeted Pakistan’s “obvious antipathy to the Russian ideology”.
In 1953, came Pakistan’s first major success in its “wooing of America”, when Congress passed a Pakistan-specific law to send it a million tonnes of wheat and prevent famine. President Eishenhower’s aides had also raised the idea of bringing Pakistan into “the free world’s defense system” as a bulwark against communism. And so a transactional theme was set. Cue massive aid for the mujahedeen after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and then, the post-9/11 war on terror.
The rest is…not history, but current affairs.
Choice quotes:
…Jinnah and his sister Fatima suggested that the [US] ambassador buy their property, the magnificent Flagstaff House, for his embassy. [Paul] Alling politely informed the governor-general that the embassy had already obtained another property. The ambassador then sent Jinnah a gift of four ceiling fans after he complained about Karachi’s sweltering heat.
[On his 1950 three-week visit to the US, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan] emphasized Pakistan’s key strategic location in Asia with its eastern wing bordering Burma, making it a part of Southeast Asia. In addition, Pakistan’s western wing bordered Iran and Afghanistan and was thus important with respect to any “communications to and from the oil-bearing areas of the Middle East.” His argument was simple: if Americans helped with Pakistan’s existential challenges, Pakistan could help protect American strategic interests in both Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Pakistan actively sought to become a Western ally, on the one hand, and embraced anti-Western Islamist vocabulary, on the other.
The Backstory:
Three presidents – Dwight D Eisenhower, John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson – have questioned what the US gained from aiding Pakistan. Five – Jimmy Carter, George H W Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama – have asked if Pakistan’s leaders can be trusted to keep their word.
In his first presidential term Donald Trump accused Pakistan of offering the US “nothing but lies and deceit”. Pakistan courted Trump on his re-election, joining his Board of Peace and nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The first anti-American demonstration in Pakistan was reportedly from Karachi in May 1948.
In 1979, the US mission in Islamabad was burnt down by an angry mob.
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The Islamabad MoU was signed by the US, Iran and Pakistan’s prime minister: https://www.npr.org/2026/06/18/nx-s1-5863027/us-iran-trump-memorandum-of-understanding-full-text
Pakistan is “being hailed as an influential global actor and peacemaker”, says @MichaelKugelman, resident senior fellow for South Asia at the non-partisan Atlantic Council thinktank.
UK thanks Pakistan for their leadership in brokering the US-Iran peace deal, June 16, 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-deepens-joint-migration-efforts-and-marks-pakistans-role-in-brokering-us-iran-peace-deal-on-two-day-ministerial-visit