As Pakistan's client Taliban regime was declaring it wouldn't cooperate with the U.S. in containing ISIS, a strong, long- overdue message was delivered to Islamabad:
A senior US official visiting Islamabad has made clear to Pakistan that the Biden administration has downgraded the bilateral relationship.
On the eve of her arrival, the deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, used a public event in Mumbai to lay out in blunt terms the new parameters of US-Pakistan relations, stressing there would be no equivalence with Washington’s deepening ties to India.
The Islamabad trip was for “a very specific and narrow purpose”, Sherman said, to talk about Afghanistan and the Taliban.
“We don’t see ourselves building a broad relationship with Pakistan, and we have no interest in returning to the days of hyphenated India-Pakistan,” she added. “That’s not where we are. That’s not where we’re going to be.”
Any strategic value the increasingly authoritarian Pakistan may have had has long since been overshadowed by the emergence of strong countervailing forces in the region, most notably through India (and by extension "The Quad"). At the same time, tolerance of the "double game" Pakistan has played in supporting the Taliban (and providing safe harbor for other destabilizing terrorist groups in the region), while claiming to be a partner in fighting global terror, has apparently come to an end. Following high level meetings last month with Pakistan, the U.S. has decided that Pakistan intended to continue playing its "double game," to the detriment of U.S. interests in the region, thus the downgrade in the relationship.
Good. It was past time to end the charades.
