It's not only temperatures that have cooled; so have expectations. The strategic partnership is history. "There's a lot of wisdom in having a more modest relationship," as one official said to me. "On things like the Haqqanis, our long-term goals don't align. It's better to recognize that they don't and work on what we have in common." In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States (and no relation to the jihadists), suggested that the two sides admit the truth and "explore ways to structure a nonallied relationship." That's not so far from what's happening now, though no one would dare to call it that. The chastened wisdom of 2013: "We can't, so we won't."
The Obama administration still depends on Islamabad for its exit strategy from Afghanistan, both because Pakistani intelligence continues to use Taliban proxies to destabilize its neighbor and because political reconciliation between the Afghans and the Taliban will never happen without active Pakistani engagement. Islamabad has made a few gestures towards the reconciliation process, as I described in an earlier column, but nothing decisive; Afghan leaders remain extremely skeptical of Islamabad's intentions. The United States is withdrawing one way or another, and Afghanistan will cope as well as it can with whatever support from the U.S. and foreign donors it continues to receive.
After 2014, Afghanistan will fade away; but Pakistan will still cling to America's trouser cuffs like a tenacious burr. What will become of U.S.-Pakistan relations when U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan ends? American officials have been at pains to say: We're staying. In a recent speech in Islamabad, U.S. Ambassador Richard Olson said, not once but twice, "2014 is not 1989" -- that infamous year when the Soviets packed up and left the region, and then the United States did so as well. Those working groups will keep working; aid will keep flowing. Of course, the fact that a growing number of lawmakers oppose that aid, and that Congress has blocked free-trade legislation that would allow Pakistan to establish so-called Reconstruction Opportunity Zones to export textiles to the United States, makes Pakistanis understandably skeptical of that claim.
If abandoning Pakistan is a bad idea (no matter how gratifying) and if at the same time Washington has little if any ability to make military and intelligence officials in Islamabad comply with U.S. counterterror goals, the best solution may be to focus on the war on despair rather than the war on terror. It is, after all, despair among ordinary Pakistanis, not the brutality of jihadists in Waziristan, which makes Pakistan so dangerous to itself, its neighbors and the United States.
Post-2014, or for that matter starting now, Obama should give more authority to U.S. diplomats, and less to the Pentagon and the CIA. He should push for trade legislation --which will create manufacturing jobs -- once Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wins his primary against an expected Tea Party opponent, and thus can safely contemplate offending the textile industry. And the administration should stop doing things that play into the hands of Pakistan's extremists and obscurantists, like issuing ultimatums about covert support for extremists (leave that to Congress) and authorizing drone strikes, save in exceptional circumstances. Obama can't do anything to make most Pakistanis stop hating America, but he can stop doing things that distract Pakistanis from addressing their own problems.
Right now, there are very few signs that Pakistan's corrupt and feudal political class is prepared to face those problems. While it's a very good thing that the regime of President Asif Ali Zardari just became the first civilian government to serve out a full term in Pakistani history, there is no reason to expect the next government to be any less feckless than his. (It may, in fact, be his.) The only saving grace in Pakistan is that few people have fond memories of the last era of military rule: former Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has returned to Pakistan in the hopes of starting a political career, appears to have zero appeal. Democracy in Pakistan is thus likely to survive its own persistent failure. That is a genuinely good thing.
Nothing good will happen soon; but perhaps someday Pakistan's democracy can begin to make inroads on Pakistan's despair. With low expectations and a modest investment, Washington can afford to be patient.
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