Dealing with Trump

Beyond personal diplomacy

Trump’s penchant for hyperbole is well known. Hence his effusive praise for Pakistan and for Prime Minister Sharif should be taken with a bucket of salt.

The prime minister did the right thing by calling up US President-Elect Donald Trump, congratulating him on his landslide victory — but it was not such a good idea to release a gushy transcript of the teleconference.

It is simply not done in the conduct of international relations. That is why the world media picked it up and made it a subject of scorn.

The US media, still largely sceptical about Trump, had a field day criticising the president-elect for his effusive style. In the process it took pot shots at Sharif as well for releasing the transcript.

Whose bright idea was it in the prime minister’s office to go to town on what is normally considered a formality between heads of states or governments? Apparently the foreign office was deliberately kept out of the loop as the prime minister’s media managers wanted to score a point at their expense.

Ironically, the same US media that were critical of candidate Trump for his xenophobic utterances about Muslims on the campaign trail are now castigating him for having a polite conversation with the prime minister of an Islamic country that is also a quasi-ally of the US. For example the Washington Post has reminded Trump of his past, extremely critical tweets of Pakistan.

Trump’s penchant for hyperbole is well known. Hence his effusive praise for Pakistan and for Prime Minister Sharif should be taken with a bucket of salt.

Interestingly, Sharif also has a peculiar style of conducting diplomacy. In the absence of a foreign minister, he likes to pursue foreign policy objectives in a highly personalised manner.

Striking bonhomie with foreign leaders does always help. However, it has its obvious limitations. It is simply not possible to tackle complex foreign policy and security issues merely through personal diplomacy.

Nawaz Sharif successfully tried the formula on former BJP Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Indian PM visited Lahore in February 1999 on a bus, kicking off his bus diplomacy.

Hopefully the day will not come when Pakistan could be declared a terrorist state. However, mere phone calls to the US president elect will not do.

The resultant thaw was, however, nipped in the bud by a recalcitrant army chief in the form of General Pervez Musharraf. While Sharif and Vajpayee were smoking the peace pipe, he was planning the soon to be launched Kargil misadventure.

In April 2014, Sharif again tried the same formula with Prime Minister-Elect Narendra Modi. But he failed miserably. Modi, instead of reciprocating the Pakistani prime minister’s gesture of attending his oath taking ceremony, snubbed him by enumerating a litany of complaints against Pakistan.

Similarly, when Modi landed in Lahore on an impromptu visit to attend Sharif’s granddaughter’s wedding a year ago, the army leadership was not amused. Hence this gesture also came to naught.

So far as Trump and Sharif are concerned, both the leaders (on a strictly personal level) have a lot in common. Trump is essentially a businessman and so is Sharif. Both of them — despite being unorthodox in their methods — espouse a conservative brand of politics.

The manner in which the US president elect has co-opted his family in the transition team has raised eyebrows in the media. However, technically, Trump has broken no laws.

Similarly, Sharif does not believe in drawing red lines between the state and the person. The family enriched itself during the Zia period after their nationalised steel mills were returned to them.

If Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump is playing a pivotal role lending a helping hand to her father, Maryam Nawaz is now the key person in her father’s kitchen cabinet.

Trump as a businessman believes in cutting every possible corner not to pay taxes. He refused to release his tax returns during the election campaign.

Sharif, in the same vein, pays minimal taxes compared to his personal wealth. That is why he is in big trouble over the Panama Papers, unable to explain his source of wealth to buy expensive properties in London.

Despite these obvious personal similarities — and perhaps some more — the wheels of state institutions grind in their own manner. Somewhat unlike Pakistan, the system in the US is so well entrenched and state institutions so strong, that the president despite having tremendous powers in the conduct of foreign policy has limitations on his actions.

To assume that Donald Trump is a born again friend of Pakistan would be tantamount to suffering from an extreme form of naivety. The US Republican controlled Congress will not be a check on the president as it was on Democratic President Obama’s administration.

Even the US Supreme Court is poised to go the conservative way after Trump has the opportunity to appoint at least two justices to tip the balance away from a liberal Supreme Court. All this gives tremendous powers to a Donald Trump administration post 20 January next year.

Obviously it makes sense for Pakistan to fully engage President-Elect Trump. In this sense Sharif did just the right thing calling to congratulate him.

Right now Trump is in the process of selecting his team. The front-runners for key defence, national security and foreign policy are a combination of hardliners, a few pragmatists and dark horses.

There are harder times ahead for Islamabad in its conduct of relations with Washington. Not that Pakistan had an easy run under an Obama administration. The Democratic administration after using Pakistan’s services for its counter terrorism efforts and logistic support simply refused to pay for the F16s that it had promised.

In the post-Afghanistan disengagement period Washington’s demands for Pakistan to clampdown on the Haqqani Network, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and other jihadist organisations have become more persistent.

With the fast changing international and regional environment, and a new army chief in place, Islamabad badly needs a reset in its strategic priorities.

Admittedly, Pakistan has somewhat successfully tackled terrorism within its borders, but now we can simply not afford to give terrorist organisations a free pass to use Pakistani territory for their regional and international agendas. Hence the answer to our foreign policy and security related conundrums lies in Islamabad and Rawalpindi rather than in foreign capitals.

The abortive attempt by certain pro-India Congressmen to declare Pakistan a terrorist state was successfully thwarted by the Obama administration. The Trump administration is, however, poised to take a harder line on the issue.

Hopefully, the day will not come when Pakistan could be declared a terrorist state. However, mere phone calls to the US president-elect will not do.

There is an urgent need for introspection amongst our policy makers. Pakistan’s security paradigm is considered to be somewhat out-dated and simply not sustainable.

In this context, despite domestic opposition, Islamabad did the right thing by deciding to attend the Heart of Asia conference in Amritsar next week. Notwithstanding the sabre-rattling, the level of belligerence between the two nuclear powered neighbours needs to be brought down.