Is there some relief in the present doom and gloom scenario? Is it in our stars, this state of Denmark?
In Japanese history at the end of Edo and beginning of Meiji Restoration, between 1867-68, there was a time when, moved by a popular religio-social movement, a storm of widespread communal dancing, the ee ja nai ka, spread among the masses, from one end of the country to another. It subsided as the truth of its non-relevance to reality and the true conditions of the masses, dawned upon the people. Movements spurred more by emotions rather than facts and true social reality ebb and tide like the ephemeral yet often possibly destructive typhoons until the time of reckoning arrives.
What is the socio-historical significance of the present moment in our evolution towards a truly liberal, democratic polity, each person concerned for progress and reform should be impelled to reflect.
Each successive government throws blame for its woes on its predecessor. Yet each, short of a popular change, has sidetracked real social, economic and political reforms.
In the true sociological sense, in such transformations which eliminate elite capture, each political dispensation faces a possible or near diminution verging upon extinction. They seek that which forecasts their doom. Thus, processing an attenuated political structure counterpoised to a massively armed state apparatus, small successive steps to democratic evolution assume disproportionately great significance.
This highbrowed debate be for another time. What small gains can one perceive in the prevalent pervasive uncertainty?
During the last few months certain important changes have occurred on the external front that have been drowned in the cacophony of ongoing political storms. Germany, a big European and world player, issued an unprecedentedly significant statement endorsing the UN pathway to resolution of the Kashmir dispute. While commentators have ascribed this to implied criticism of India for its ambivalent status on Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine, it still is a huge turnaround. It connotes a radical departure from a decades-old position of putting the regional dispute into cold storage and one immune from external interference, one limited to the bilateral sphere. No wonder the strident riposte from India.
Removal by FATF of Pakistan from the grey to the white list after four years is no mean achievement. A huge obstacle to being accepted as a full-fledged member of the world economic, investment and financial system has been removed. At the UN GA session the favourable international response on floods, with Macron mooting an end-year donors conference on rehabilitation and debt relief, betokens astute diplomacy.
On another plane, US President Joe Biden’s off the cuff remarks in a party fundraiser about safety of Pakistan nuclear assets sparked speculation about hardening of an already cold US policy attitude towards Pakistan. This frigidity, some claim, was an obvious result of the serious reservations in the foggy bottom about the alleged duality of policy and actions of Islamabad towards US war in Afghanistan. The populist anti-US narrative built by the previous government to explain its ouster by a no confidence vote did not help.
Biden’s quip came as an inexplicable bolt from the sky to both the government in Islamabad as well as its bitter opponent. Especially the latter. The opposition was in two minds: how to explain to its supporters that a foreign government, involved in an alleged conspiratorial regime change, was impliedly condemning its own so-called protégée administration and the establishment in Islamabad. Secondly, whether, and that is what it ultimately chose, to make political capital by claiming that continued subservience to the US by the so called ‘imported government’ and its enabling establishment, a euphemism for the army, had attracted, as expected, a further humiliating spurn and doubt by the superpower of the country’s vital assets. Only standing up firmly to big boy bullying, notwithstanding what national interests demand, in diplomacy, it was averred, brings desired results, not the least being national honour.
Two caveats to President Biden’s remarks are relevant: firstly, the statement was an ad lib made in the context of Ukraine war and Russia endangering a nuclear armageddon and the other hotspots that could pose dangers of nuclear accidents. Biden, by forgetting the US oft-repeated North Korean threat to nuclear safety, can perhaps be pardoned for the shortened band width of memory that old age is not immune to. Secondly, that it was not an official US statement and that it was made during a Democratic party fundraising meeting does not belittle its importance since even an aside from Potus bears large ramifications.
Bilawal and Hina, our Foreign Minister and the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, to their credit handled, in consultation with the political leadership, the situation with calm deftness yet firmness, unwitnessed for sometime now. After the 2011 Salala incident it was the first time the US Ambassador was summoned to FO two days after the US President’s statement and handed over a stiff demarche. The considered yet bold response bore results.
The US government immediately realised that an unintended faux pas had occurred. It hastily retracted its steps by the US State Department issuing an official statement that verged upon a rebuff to its own President.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said: “The United States is confident of Pakistan’s commitment and its ability to secure nuclear assets.”
As a further measure, to assuage the hurt, when arguably the US doesn’t want to rock too many boats, what with the recent spat with Saudi Arabia over an oil production cut in tandem with Russia, a senior aide to the US Secretary of State, Counsellor Derek Chollet, called on the Pakistan Ambassador to Washington. After the meeting both sides expressed their desire to continue rebuilding partnership between the two countries.
To further mend fences the US State Department official spokesperson on Tuesday issued a statement saying, “Few countries suffer from terrorism like Pakistan and (US and Pakistan) have a shared interest in combating threats to regional stability and security from groups like TTP.”
Rather than ratcheting up public passions for short-sighted domestic political gains, securing national interests demands cool and calculated diplomacy which can bring even a world superpower, as it were, to eat its words and in the Homeric metaphor, to come down to its knees. Small gains yet big steps.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 5th, 2022.
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