Daily Times

The threatening message was conveyed to Pakistan through Ambassador David Hale. Either you do it or our Navy SEALS would. Pakistan rescued the American-Canadian family. And now Pakistan is in self-deception mode. It needs to come down from this cloud nine of ‘relations getting better with America’. The drones are back with terror. Whether in Pakistan or Afghanistan, the Emperor has free reign in unleashing terror.

At a recent congressional hearing, US Defence Secretary James Mattis, said that the US was willing to give Pakistan ‘one more chance’ to change its policy.

A sort of mixture of ‘do more’ and Don Corleone’s ‘either your brains or your signature would be on the contract’, an offer that couldn’t be refused. It is a ‘do more’ mantra with a quintessential Trump tone.

It gets worse though, because this one is appalling in that the language is openly threatening. Trump in his August 21 speech had threatened economic and military sanctions if Pakistan didn’t change its policies.

Secretary Mattis threatened that if Pakistan didn’t change its policy after giving it “one more chance”, there would be consequences. More sanctions would be placed on Pakistan and it would be de-listed as a major non-NATO ally. Washington will take punitive measures. Furthermore, Pakistan will see an escalation in drone strikes. Clearly, these are threats and quite serious ones.

Imagine if the tables were turned and Pakistan issued threats that if America didn’t change its policy of destabilising the entire region, Pakistan would take punitive actions by sending drones through Mexico to kill people in Laredo, Texas. What do you think America would do in response to that?

Article 2(4) of the UN charter forbids the use of threat in international relations. Pakistan and the United States are both members of this treaty. Issuing threats against Iran, North Korea, so forth has been happening for quite a while now. However, these nations are not US allies. They did not fight America’s war on terror. Issuing threats against Pakistan has become the new norm.

Not just are the American threats a violation of the international law but also a textbook illustration of terrorism. Mr Mattis said, “They’ll find themselves diplomatically isolated, they’ll find themselves economically in increasing trouble as countries that are damaged by this terrorism coming out of there say enough is enough and take steps.”

The message is clear to the people of Pakistan in general and of FATA in particular: If your military-that you did not elect, but that doesn’t matter, does not change its policies, we will come and bomb you. We will put sanctions on you due to which many of you may not have an income.

We will make your lives harder and we will also take your lives. Our drones that you are so afraid of when the sky is blue will deliver instant death by our Play Station gamers cum pilots sitting in the Nellis and Creech bases in the desert of Nevada.

Notice that this is exactly the definition of terrorism even in the US code or US army manual. It defines terrorism as the calculated use of violence to achieve goals that are political, ideological, and religious in nature through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.

Trump, Mattis, McMaster, Tillerson, and so forth complain about and stress on change in policies of Pakistan. Last time I checked, all of these US officials mentioned above were not Pakistani citizens.

It is the right of the people of Pakistan to change the policies of Pakistan just as much as it is the right of the American people to change the American policies. Imagine if the tables were turned and Pakistan issued threats that if America didn’t change its policy of invading and occupying Afghanistan, if America didn’t stop destabilising the entire region, Pakistan would take punitive actions by sending drones through Mexico to kill people in Laredo, Texas. What do you think America would do in response to that?

Pakistan doesn’t have a monopoly over pursuing national interests. It would serve our cognisance to realise that national interests of any given state may not be the interests of all the people there.

The interest of a fruit vendor is different than the interest of a university professor. That renders the Realist IR theory a bit useless since it is based on a flawed assumption. That said, people in both Pakistan and the United States do not really choose their national interests.

It is the power systems in any given state that define the national interests and they for the most part, do not represent the aspirations of the people. It is the people in Rawalpindi and Washington and the ones across the Potomac river who actually decide what their national interests would be and how they will go about pursuing them. These two players are at loggerheads with each other. We are now in game theory turf. Player 1 complains about the tactics of player 2, when really

it is player 1 that employs dirtier tactics.

Diplomatic observers in Washington opine that such tough talk by America could result in forcing Pakistan into the arms of China and Russia. It is mind boggling to realise that this is the critique of such American rhetoric. No word about such threats being illegal or a contravention of UN charter. Nothing about the fact that the US is doing what by its own definition is terrorism. Emperors have a simple logic: Terrorism is what others do not us.

The writer is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Houston, and he teaches political science at the Lone Star College in Houston

Published in Daily Times, October 20^th 2017.