When US's F-16 aid talks Urdu diplomacy to Pakistan, a handshake is not a hug for India

Pakistan's official language is Urdu, and when it comes to reading US foreign policy on the country, it is best to read it like the language's script: from the right to the left. Power comes first, democracy later.

As Uncle Sam offers $450 million to maintain F-16 fighter jets to a nation that has often been accused of harbouring or encouraging terrorism, it does smell of great irony when the somewhat lapsed superpower cites countering terrorism as one of the stated objectives for the aid package. To understand this, we must understand both America and Pakistan with a sense of detail.

But first, let us see what has changed for India, whose foreign minister Subrahamanyam Jaishankar minced no words as he lambasted Washington with a who-do-you-think-you-are-trying-to-fool attitude, inviting a State Department response that the US does not view Pakistan through an Indian lens.

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On the ground, little has changed in India's perception of the US: it is an intimate adversary, with a middling and meddling approach, singing the glories of shared democratic/liberal values and paeans to the virtues of free-market economics even as it footsies with Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, depending on an ad-hoc mix of its self-appointed role as a globocop, an agent of Wall Street capitalism and a practitioner of visa protectionism that hurts India's service exports.

What has really changed is that under Dr. Jaishankar, India has skipped elegant diplomatese for sarcasm and a clear calling out of double standards. Much before his F-16 shot, the Minister of External Affairs had tauntedthe US on its questioning India's purchase of Ukraine-sanctions-tainted Russian oil even as Europe shopped for gas from Russia.

In a way, this is all diplomacy-as-usual because both India and the US pursue their interests independently. Washington has compromised on democratic values and India has let go of its old Panchsheel principle of opposing interventions into national sovereignty by being publicly neutral on Moscow's invasion of Ukraine under whatever pretext.

As an old Hindi/Urdu saying goes: Hamam mei sab nange hain. Everybody is naked in this bathtub.

Is there a deeper truth in all this but for episodic reiteration of every country pursuing its own interests? There is, for both India and the US, if they are to truly be the strategic allies they want/claim to be. Short-term diplomacy may be in narrow self-interest, but long-term views must align with core principles. India cannot drag its feet for too long as a neutral power even as Russia eats slices of Ukraine as if that country was some Italian pizza. The US, on the other hand, cannot be unconditionally friendly to the Pakistan army without considering its history (and that of its spy arm, the Inter-Services Intelligence) of effectively creating the atavistic Taliban in Afghanistan or of the Pakistani state playing ball with China on everything from business to the Kashmir dispute.

Somewhere along the way, there has to be a joint Indo-US plan in which Pakistan has a role, not a standalone US plan in which India and Pakistan have separate roles. This is for Washington to realise and act on, and for India to drive home.

New Delhi needs to reconcile with the idea that Pakistan, as an increasingly stronger democracy with an English-speaking civil society culture nurtured by British colonialism (and admittedly Indian civilisational roots), is a strange beast that needs special treatment beyond the caricatured desh-ka-dushman (enemy of our country) approach practised by the Narendra Modi government. This requires a painful mix of soft diplomacy, an assertive style and backroom deal-making.

And yes, this requires a quid-pro-quo from the US in the form of a visible role for India as an international interlocutor, not the patronising mention of India as a South Asian good boy.

India needs to understand that history may not be favourable for Islamabad's diplomatic gains, but geography most certainly is. Geopolitics certainly beats democratic dalliances, at least in the current phase of international diplomacy. Dr. Jaishankar understands this for sure, but how to drive a deal in such a context is where India's diplomacy is at. This requires deal-making diplomacy, not just biting words.

What rings true for India, above all this, after all those American handshakes, is a hard truth of foreign policy best expressed in a self-referential couplet by Pakistan's Urdu poet Ahmad Faraz:

Tum takalluf ko bhi ikhlaas samajhtey ho Faraz

Dost nahi hota har haath milane wala

(You mistake mere formality for affection, dear Faraz

Not everybody who shakes your hand is your friend).

Pakistanis can teach India some fine diplomacy lessons, for sure.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)