America’s Pakistani obsession.
America’s relationship with Pakistan has been one of the strangest contradictions in modern geopolitics. On paper, Washington and New Delhi share “strategic partnership” rhetoric. In reality, successive U.S. administrations—Democratic and Republican alike—have leaned on Pakistan as a lever to restrain India’s rise, particularly in the region. The pattern is consistent: America praises India as the “world’s largest democracy,” but when it comes to concrete policy, it props up Pakistan even when Pakistan’s record is one of duplicity, extremism, and direct hostility to U.S. interests.
Consider the record. The Taliban was midwifed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with tacit American approval during the Cold War, when Afghanistan was seen only through the lens of fighting the Soviets. Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, was kidnapped and executed in Karachi in 2002—not in Kabul or Kandahar, but in Pakistan’s supposed “ally” territory. Osama bin Laden, mastermind of 9/11, was not hiding in a cave in Afghanistan but living comfortably in Abbottabad, right next to Pakistan’s military academy. The 9/11 attacks themselves were orchestrated with the help of men who trained, plotted, and coordinated in Pakistan. Yet despite this unbroken trail of evidence, Washington never severed ties. On the contrary, billions of dollars in military aid flowed to Islamabad in the name of “counterterrorism.”
Why? Because Pakistan is the perfect instrument to keep India on the defensive. America knows that India, if left unchecked, can emerge as an independent pole of power—not aligned to Washington, Moscow, or Beijing. To prevent that, U.S. policymakers have long relied on Pakistan as a counterweight. Every time India asserts itself, America boosts Pakistan’s military, overlooking its sponsorship of terror. Even under Donald Trump, who thundered against “radical Islamic terrorism,” the United States quietly maintained ties with Pakistan, designating it a “major non-NATO ally.” The goal was never Pakistan for its own sake—it was to ensure India did not grow too bold, too independent, too capable of charting a foreign policy outside American control.
This dual policy emasculates India in two ways. Domestically, it fuels insurgencies and cross-border terrorism that sap Indian resources, destabilize its politics, and keep its military stretched on the western front. Internationally, it blocks India from assuming a rightful place in global councils: Pakistan, backed by Washington, lobbies to exclude India from bodies like the Nuclear Suppliers Group, while America uses Pakistan as a justification to deny India the same privileges as Western allies. In effect, Pakistan becomes both the hammer against India’s security and the excuse to withhold India’s full entry into the “club” of great powers.
The irony is stark. America lectures India about “human rights” and “religious freedom,” while it bankrolls the very Pakistani deep state that birthed the Taliban, sheltered bin Laden, and made jihad a state policy. The American establishment does not care that Pakistan undermines democracy and pluralism; it only cares that Pakistan remains useful as a thorn in India’s side. In this way, Washington’s embrace of Pakistan is not a mistake, not a lapse, not a blind spot. It is a deliberate geopolitical strategy: to manage India’s rise by keeping it perpetually preoccupied with a hostile neighbor armed and funded by America itself.
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