Turning of the American tide
Dawn · Khurram Husain ·
What looks clever in one season reads very differently at a hearing in the next.
THE election results in America this week portend a sea change, and they have important ramifications for Pakistan. The Democrats have taken both the House and the Senate in a rout that reached Texas and Kansas. Anger over living costs, tariffs, and the war on Iran all played their part. For the remaining two years of his term, President Donald Trump will face a Congress armed with subpoena power and eager to use it.
This is no distant affair for us. Much of the world has spent two years trying to cope with Trump. Meanwhile, the leadership in Pakistan flamboyantly embraced him, though let’s not underestimate how well that worked. It got us lower tariffs, a White House lunch, and, above all, a central role when the Iran war needed an exit ramp. The question now is what that embrace will cost us as the man on the receiving end of it begins to lose his grip on Washington.
Pakistan has veered too close to Trump, and this might not go down well in the near future. The April ceasefire that we helped broker was a genuine achievement, and I said so at the time. The memorandum that followed in June has since collapsed, but the credit earned in those weeks still stands. Yet all of it could well come to be overshadowed by the single act of having nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize in so conspicuous and overly generous a manner.