Only way the US can force Pakistan to comply is by imposing crippling sanctions on the country

There is no dearth of sceptics among South Asia policy wonks in Washington and also in the strategic community in India over the efficacy or even endurability of US President Donald Trump’s South Asia policy. Questions over the efficacy of the Trump policy centre on the ability and capacity of the US to coerce Pakistan into compliance. The doubting Thomases base their assessment on a somewhat exaggerated notion of Pakistani defiance of any US demand that runs counter to Pakistan’s strategic red-lines. In India, the scepticism is based not just on the past record of the US mollycoddling Pakistan, but also on the mercurialness of President Trump, who, in a breath, can switch from threatening destruction to heaping encomiums. But just as Trump’s tweets aren’t accurate markers of what the US policy is going to be, the show of defiance by Pakistani generals and their civilian underlings isn’t necessarily indicative of the trajectory of Pakistani policy.

While it is entirely possible that Trump’s South Asia policy, which centres on turning the screws on Pakistan, might fail to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, continuing with the failed policy of the past 16 years – mollycoddling Pakistan, encouraging it, rewarding it or even giving in to its tantrums – is definitely going to end in an ignominious failure. American critics of Trump’s South Asia policy, many of whom were architects, advocates, and even apologists of the failed US policies in the Af-Pak region over the last 16 years, have really no workable alternative plan to offer. Cut through their clap-trap, and what they are recommending falls in the category of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result every time. Any objective audit of the US soft-peddling on Pakistani double-speak, double-game and double-cross in Afghanistan will reveal the vacuousness of the policy pursued by the US since 9/11.

The argument that Pakistan has had a consistent strategic approach on Afghanistan and will not cave in to any coercive strategy adopted by the US is utterly specious. Although Islamism and jihadism are both articles of faith for the Pakistani ‘establishment’ or ‘deep state’, these are conveniently cast aside when the price is right or the prospect of punishment is forbidding. For example, there isn’t a peep out of the Pakistanis when the Chinese crack down on Muslims. The money and weapons from China clearly outweigh the obsession of Pakistanis with Islam. Similarly, after 9/11, the prospect of the US ‘bombing Pakistan into the stone-age’ ensured that the Pakistanis dumped the Taliban on just a phone call. The bottom line is that coercion works, even with Pakistan. Of course, if the coercer is diffident or unsure about the coercive strategy and hems and haws about turning the screws, then it becomes that much more difficult to implement. The coercive strategy will also not succeed if instead of being all in, it ends up being a bit of this and a bit of that.

When many analysts point out how little the US sanctions have worked in the past when applied on Pakistan, what they conveniently gloss over is the fact that most sanctions in the past were partial or piecemeal. The US has never really imposed crippling sanctions aimed at forcing compliance on Pakistan. In the past, whenever the US shut off economic and military aid or imposed targeted sanctions, it had only limited impact simply because Pakistan could afford to live with these measures. And in case these sanctions started seriously hurting Pakistan, the US was quick to provide relief, waivers and concessions, lest Pakistan be pushed over the edge.

Over the years, many things have changed. China has now more or less replaced the US as Pakistan’s patron state. As a result, Pakistan’s dependence on the US has reduced considerably. This means that piecemeal, limited or partial, sanctions will have even lesser chance of success today than they had in the past. In other words, if today the US has to force compliance on Pakistan, it will have to double down on the coercive steps by bringing into play not only all elements of its own considerable national power but also that of its other allies, namely the Europeans and countries like Japan. Incremental coercion will simply not be able to generate the momentum required to change the Pakistani strategic calculus which is based on defiance of a ‘declining’ US by getting China, and possibly Russia and even Iran, to back them.

Trump, who understands the art of the deal better than anyone else, would know that in the given situation, the only way Pakistan can be forced to comply is if Pakistan is convinced that it stands to lose enormously more by defying the US as compared to any gain it will get by backing the Taliban and other Islamist/jihadist organisations in Afghanistan. This is precisely the message Trump delivered when he enunciated his South Asia policy. Since then, his tweets and his statements have only reiterated that message, even if in a convoluted way. The direction of his policy is clear and so far, unwavering. It is the speed at which the policy is being implemented that needs to pick up so that the policy gains the momentum necessary to achieve the objective of forcing compliance on Pakistan.

The author is a senior fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation