Pakistan is frustrated because it has run out of friends

The problem with Pakistan is that it is so fragmented today that it is difficult to understand its actual voice. The country has so many power centres engaged in a tussle with each other. The irony is that Pakistan is in more chaos at a time when its democratic government is about to complete five years in office, something unprecedented since its birth in 1947. This shows how discredited the civilian government of Pakistan has become. The world's only superpower does not trust its democracy like it did its dictators in the past.

Not India but Afghanistan is Pakistan's bigger challenge today

Pakistan is afraid to think about the challenges it will face once the US troops pull out from Afghanistan in two-years time. With terrorists in no mood to give up and the central authority in Islamabad lying in a shambles (the supreme power centre, i.e., the army too has understood the threat from the Frankensteins that its own leaders created in the past). When this is added by the USA's engaging India in the construction of Afghanistan, Islamabad is bound to feel the pressure. The reality has changed so much that Pakistan's one-dimensional foreign policy stands, based on anti-Indianism, has faced a great challenge today.

Today, the country's threat comes more from its western border than the eastern border and with the USA too sitting on the opposite side of the table, Islamabad has virtually run out of friends. President Asif Ali Zardari is often found running helter-skelter for aid and encouragement but at the end of the day, as a top media personality rightly said during yesterday's TV debate, India is perhaps Pakistan's only ally in the changed situation. Today, Islamabad needs more economic assistance from New Delhi instead of airing useless missiles time and again thinking that it will intimidate the latter.

China too will not back Pakistan as it did in the past

One may raise the China factor but it will be too simplistic to believe that Beijing will help Islamabad against India as readily as it has done in the past. China, although will be happy that Mitt Romney did not win this time for that would have needed a re-strategising vis-a-vis a fresh incumbent, it will also have to deal with the continuing incumbent. The USA, of late, has decided to focus on the South-east Asian theatre and that won't allow much of a breather for China.

The USA will try to take India and Japan into its anti-China scheme of things and there is also a challenge from India in the South China Sea. To add to this, China is undergoing a leadership transition and internal issues like corruption has kept it preoccupied. Beijing will undoubtedly back its anti-India designs in South Asia but the race between the two big neighbours will also ensure that they call for greater economic ties.

Pakistan does not fit into the 21st century reality

The reality of the 21st century global politics is that co-operation has to be the cornerstone for any relation, no matter how much adverse equations state share. This is an age of globalisation, reverse globalisation and glocalisation. Weapons matter but what matters more is mutual cooperation and exchange of assets. Countries like India, the USA and China fall in that category of nations that can prosper just by exchanging their human capital marked by occasional pressure tactics.

Who is Pakistan angry with? Itself?

Pakistan, on the other hand, is an uprooted (it was uprooted in 1947 as well) and failed state that has only one agenda to survive and that is jingoism. Ambassador Hilaly expressed the hopelessness of his country yesterday by airing a caution. 1971 is something we have left long ago. The poor Pakistanis still haven't and today they don't know with whom they are actually angry. Obama is just another excuse to vent frustration.