The Million Dollar Question: Will Trump Help Imran Khan?
Let me settle this ongoing debate: Will U.S. policy on Pakistan change under President Trump? The answer is "unlikely." But that’s because the question itself is flawed.
The right question is: Will U.S. policy on Imran Khan change under President Trump? Absolutely, it will!
There’s a nuance in this questioning that somehow is missing from public debates on the subject.
Biden's biases and preferences in Pakistan were shaped by his experiences from 2007–2014 (refer to the Wikileaks documents on this), and unfortunately, the State Department preferred emotional diplomacy over traditional diplomacy in managing its relations with Pakistan since the VoNC that ousted Imran Khan from Prime Minister Office.
However, much of this ultimately came down to inertia. When things went sideways, both in Pakistan since VoNC and in the U.S for Biden, path dependency and disinterest in Pakistan took over the US policy leadership. Given the state of the mess that Pakistan had become, nobody wanted to touch it anymore, despite officials from State Department agreeing that things have gone too far in the wrong direction in Pakistan and that Imran Khan needs to be set free.
Therefore, the US policy on Imran Khan is going to change, regardless, even if Kamala Harris had won the elections. But with Trump in White House, the expectation is that he would be more effective and move faster. Part of this is due to his personal friendship and likeness for Imran Khan, but most of it is simply the changes at the White House and State Department that is going to break the inertia and deliver a clear policy decision on Imran Khan—who has wrongfully been in a death cell for over a year for defying Pakistan's powerful military establishment and political dynasties.
Put simply, the overall US policy on Pakistan may or may not change, but the policy on Imran Khan is all set to change given the major roadblocks and inertia stands removed and the system is about to reset. And as is obvious by the history of US-Pakistan relations, the reset in US political setup is almost always followed by a reset in Pakistan’s political set up; a political entanglement of sort.
An alternative title for this post should have been "How to trigger the PDM".
The unfortunate thing is that when the US was complaining about Pakistani Army generals, the Pakistani public was not on the same page. Today, the Pakistani public has caught on and understands how the generals have misled them but the US is backing these generals. I look forward to the day when US and Pakistani people come to the same page so we can get proper democracy.