13-05-2022

FRIdAY, mAY 13, 2022
5
uzAIR sATTAR
The most challenging problem the United States faces in
executing its foreign policy goals in Pakistan is anti-
Americanism. The ouster of former Prime Minister Imran
Khan following a vote of no confidence reinvigorates this
perennial challenge.
Khan is rallying his supporters over a new slogan,
"Imported Government Na Manzoor" (translation: rejected),
after alleging that the United States spearheaded a conspiracy
to remove him from office. His accusation of regime change
has been refuted by Pakistan's National Security Committee
(NSC), the country's highest bipartisan civil-military forum.
The NSC stated that a U.S. official's "undiplomatic language"
at a lunch amounted to "blatant interference" but concluded
that "there has been no conspiracy."
Yet, in an era where alternative facts are as good as true, this
does not matter to Imran Khan or his supporters. His
narrative is merely a symptom and not a cause of anti-
Americanism in Pakistan. There may be a temptation to
dismiss conspiracy claims as resurgences of repeated tropes
in Pakistani politics. However, this avoids confronting why
Khan can effortlessly tap into anti-American sentiments and
dynamics that in turn impact Pakistani politics and its foreign
policy.
Anti-Americanism sells in Pakistan. A Gallup poll revealed
that "only" one-third of Pakistanis (36 percent) believed the
foreign conspiracy claim. The same poll, however, showed
that more than two-thirds of Pakistanis (72 percent) thought
the United States was an enemy rather than a friend of
Pakistan. This figure has remained relatively consistent over
the past two decades. Two-thirds of Pakistanis today are
under 30 and have lived through the strongest waves of anti-
Americanism in Pakistan since 1990.
The United States and Pakistan have well-known laundry
lists of foreign policy grievances. When Pakistan airs these
grievances, Washington's establishment often dismisses
them as "familiar tropes." Whether or not Washington wants
to believe these grievances are legitimate, its passivity
increases anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. This, in turn,
makes it increasingly difficult for the U.S. to achieve its
foreign policy objectives. While the relationship has been
historically predicated on security asks, moving toward nontraditional
security collaboration may be the only structural
approach to mitigate anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
Anti-Americanism is not exclusive to Pakistan but takes a
unique form in the country. Radical anti-Americanism, anticapitalism,
and poor people-to-people relations are not the
major factors.
Radical anti-Americanism has erupted in minuscule
pockets in Pakistan but remains an anomaly in the 75-year
relationship. There is also no mainstream fiscal ideological
debate in Pakistan, which keeps Islamabad tied to the
Washington Consensus. While new leftist parties have added
invaluable dimensions to socioeconomic debate, they still
have a long way to go before uprooting centrist groupthink
and historic economic alignments.
Instead, liberal and sovereign-nationalist critiques remain
salient because of the United States' securitized engagement
with Pakistan and its foreign policy goals. Liberal anti-
Americanism critiques relate to Washington upholding
values for domestic audiences but dismissing them abroad.
Sovereign-nationalist critiques concern the impingement of
sovereignty - both directly, such as military intervention, and
indirectly, through coercive diplomacy.
Imran Khan is the latest in a long line of politicians to
exploit anti-Americanism for political survival. WikiLeaks
revealed that Pakistan's civilian leadership (some of whom
Anti-Americanism in Pakistan
supporters of ruling party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf burn a representation of u.s flag.
Photo: muhammad sajjad
are now back in office) privately supported U.S. drone strikes
in Pakistan (2008-2018) but lied about their stance publicly.
This created an impression that the United States was playing
a double game in Pakistan. In addition to fueling the fire,
Khan has added another dimension to the phenomenon.
During the initial no-confidence vote, the deputy speaker of
Parliament, a Khan loyalist, justified dismissing the vote by
declaring all opposition members disloyal under Article 6 of
the constitution for allegedly working with the United States.
The term "traitor" has provided unending currency in
Pakistan. While military officials seem to remain immune, when
applied to critical politicians, journalists, and civilians, the
"diagnosis" is a cue to begin "self-treatment" through selfcensorship.
Not doing so can have severe consequences. Today,
advocates for maintaining or improving Pakistan-U.S. relations
represent a collective group at risk of being sent to "Traitorville,"
whose proverbial boundaries expand as Khan's false narrative
gathers steam. This is hampering a meaningful debate in
Pakistan about its relationship with all superpowers.
Washington's relative non-engagement with Pakistan's civilian
government and society has not helped either.
Pakistan and the United States have a state-to-state
relationship predicated on two primary issues: war and
terrorism. In that context, the United States has directly
engaged with the military and not civilian governments to
achieve its security objectives. This has undermined
Pakistan's post-colonial democratic institutionalization and
represents a structural faultline in the relationship.
The United States has taken advantage of indigenous
military coups by perpetuating dictatorships that have lasted
almost half of Pakistan's political life. None of the four U.S.-
supported dictators would have survived for as long as they
did without the United States' backing. Washington's modus
operandi has not changed following Pakistan's transition to
procedural democracy in 2008.
The Pakistan Army's top brass has been the primary
benefactor in this equation, receiving military hardware,
technology, and economic support in return for
counterterrorism operations and helping fight two wars in
Afghanistan. These were wars which the Pakistani people had
nothing to do with. Recognizing this nuance is critical for
Washington to achieve its foreign policy goals in Pakistan,
even if the will to do so remains elusive.
Over 220 million Pakistanis, of whom two-thirds are under
30, have lived through the most vociferous waves of anti-
Americanism, sparked by the Pressler sanctions (1990-2001)
and the War on Terror (2001-?). Pakistanis have had to
reconcile Washington's military-centric engagement with
their changed lives. It is unfortunate that Pakistan's ongoing
sacrifices in the War on Terror - 80,000 killed on the street,
at weddings, in their houses, in school, at checkpoints, on
their way to work, and in places of worship, not to mention
economic losses - fall on deaf ears in Washington. By
choosing to fixate on the United States' engagement with the
military's top brass, Washington overlooks the consequences
of its approach to Pakistanis' lived experience. This active
choice increases anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
I grew up during the War on Terror. Like many Pakistanis,
I heard Washington's calls for Pakistan to "do more" to fight
terrorism. This was puzzling to me as a student since most
Pakistanis I know were directly or indirectly impacted by
terrorism. In just one of many examples, after the school
massacre in Peshawar in 2014 - when the Pakistani Taliban
killed 132 students and 17 staff members - the government
permanently increased security measures across educational
institutions, which inadvertently made kindergartens,
schools, and colleges a vessel for policing and fear.
My schoolmates and I were rigorously searched as we
entered our newly erected, prison-length school walls topped
with layers of barbed wire. Instead of going to class, we
rendezvoused at the school ground for daily morning terror
prevention drills. Watching four government-mandated
snipers slowly patrolling roof corners as we completed the
drill, I thought I had a clear idea of who the enemy was - as I
imagine the snipers did too. But when told we weren't doing
enough against terrorism, I began questioning who the
enemy might be.
Washington's "do more" ask may have been geared toward
Rawalpindi and not even related to the Pakistani Taliban.
Still, the public drumming at every seeming opportunity felt
like a ploy to humiliate Pakistanis for something they had no
control over - and indeed suffered from daily. I felt that
empathy was lacking.
Imran Khan taps into some of these dynamics as he
galvanizes his supporters on trumped-up charges of regime
change. On the one hand, he functionalizes simmering
sentiments stemming from a lack of historical reckoning. On
the other hand, his narrative successfully distracts voters
from domestic structural fault lines and veils the factor of his
questionable decision-making as a cause for his ousting.
Pakistani anti-Americanism structurally stems from a
military-first, people-second engagement approach.
However, this prism remains less relevant for the future. The
United States has placed India's strategic interests above
Pakistan's because of a newfound common adversary.
Washington ignored Pakistan's decade-long cautionary
advice on Afghanistan, which is now home to the worst
humanitarian crisis in the world. There is a real chance that
the United States will see Pakistan through red-tinted glasses
as it gears up for great power competition with China.
Instead of fighting these changing dynamics and Pakistan's
changed geostrategic alignments, the Pakistan-U.S.
relationship should move away from military-centrism and
instead focus on new opportunities to tackle non-traditional
security threats, such as climate change and geoeconomics.
The COVID-19 pandemic may have also provided a litmus
test for this thesis. As of April 28, 2022, the United States had
donated the most vaccines to Pakistan through its global
distribution program. It is bemusing how few Pakistanis
know about this. There is no replacement for on-ground
engagement in civil society and public diplomacy. Other
countries have demonstrated the benefits of direct
engagement after stepping outside embassy walls or hushed
military conference rooms.
Moving from traditional security to non-traditional security
collaboration will also make it more conducive for the United
States to meaningfully work with democratic governments
instead of direct engagement with the military. It would
reflect at least a surface-level appearance that the United
States still considers democracy in Pakistan as something
worth enabling rather than undermining. Doing so will create
space for civilian leaders-who have mics and pulpits that
military officials do not-to debate Pakistan's relationship with
all superpowers.
Upholding the business-as-normal approach will not only
perpetuate anti-Americanism but could give rise to different
forms of the phenomenon not substantively seen in Pakistan
to date, with dangerous downstream consequences. Engaging
with Pakistan's democratic institutions, changing prisms of
cooperation, and reckoning with Pakistanis' fundamentally
altered lived experience after the War on Terror represent
perhaps the only opportunities to mitigate anti-Americanism
in Pakistan.
Is Moon Jae-In South Korea's Merkel?
ThomAs ChAn
When South Korean
President Moon Jae-In took
office in May 2017, the Asian
edition of TIME magazine
hailed him as "the negotiator."
Moon's five-year tenure did
hold true to this name in a
way, as his presidency was
peppered with negotiations
and compromises with
Pyongyang and Beijing. Yet
tensions between Seoul and
Tokyo remain high as
historical strife between the
two states persist, much to the
dismay of U.S. decisionmakers
who anticipated
cooperation between the
Asian allies to push back on
China's ambitions in the Asia-
Pacific. More recently,
Russia's invasion of Ukraine
and the subsequent
international sanctions
against Moscow have left
South Korean business
interests uneasy, and North
Korea's ongoing missile tests
since January 2022 serve as a
reminder that Moon failed to
keep Pyongyang at bay.
Moon's term ends on May
9, and his economic and
foreign policies are up for
scrutiny. Like Germany's
long-time Chancellor Angela
Merkel, he has defined his
country's foreign policy as one
cornered into appeasement in
terms of economics and
energy. As a result, both
countries have their hands
tied at a time when
assertiveness is most needed.
Moon and Merkel share the
same traits of appeasement.
Moon's attempts to end North
Korea's nuclear and missile
development through
engagement took up most of
his five years of diplomacy.
Since the inter-Korea
summits in 2018, Moon has
continuously appealed to
Pyongyang for peace on the
Korean Peninsula, sometimes
with economic incentives. But
North Korea's hostile actions
intensified after the failed
North Korea-U.S. summit in
Hanoi in February 2019.
Pyongyang declared to further
advance its weapons
technology during the 8th
Party Congress in January
2021 and closed
communication channels
with Seoul and Washington.
Moon was flustered when
North Korea demolished the
inter-Korea joint liaison office
in June 2020. After
expressing "regrets and
warnings," he continued to
call for dialogue, including
offering two end-of-war
declarations at a United
Nations. Although Kim Jong
Un said inter-Korea ties could
improve in recent letters
exchanged with Moon, his
statement rings hollow as he
later vowed to "further
strengthen" North Korea's
nuclear arsenal.
Pyongyang launched seven
missile tests in January 2022,
consisting of the latest
hypersonic, short-range, and
intermediate-range ballistic
missiles. It further extended
its provocations by allegedly
launching an intercontinental
ballistic missile and a
platform for delivering tactical
nuclear weapons during
continued testing in March
and April.
When dealing with the
simmering China-U.S.
competition, the Moon
administration adopted
"strategic ambiguity" as the
core of its policy. It was not
south Korean President moon Jae-in and his wife Kim Jung-sook.
Photo: lee Jin-man
hesitant about hedging its
alliance with the United States
by establishing close
relationships with China.
Back in his speech at the
Beijing University in 2017,
Moon went as far as stating
that "China is a country high
as a mountain, and even
though South Korea is a 'small
country,' it would be honored
to share the 'China dream.'"
He has also kept silent upon
Beijing's controversial policies
on Hong Kong and alleged
abuses in Xinjiang.
Moon's cautious China
policy came from three main
factors - trade, sanctions, and
North Korea. South Korea's
economy is highly dependent
on China, as about 25 percent
of its total exports are sent to
the Chinese market. Hence,
South Korea's economic
vulnerability to China creates
a persistent fear of damaging
such economic benefits
should the government in
Seoul displease an
increasingly sensitive Beijing.
South Korea's vulnerability
was made clear when China
imposed unofficial economic
sanctions on South Korea
starting in 2017. Beijing
targeted South Korean
industries after Seoul deployed
the U.S. Terminal High-
Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) missile defense
system in July 2016. Beijing
views THAAD as a direct
security threat, despite
reassurances from South
Korean and the U.S. that
deployment was only aimed at
defending against the North
Korean missile threat. After
THAAD deployment, China
prohibited imports of South
Korean cultural products, such
as movies and dramas, and
informally banned Chinese
nationals' tourism in South
Korea. The economic cost
amounted to a 18.7 trillion
Korean won ($15.7 billion) loss
for the South Korean tourism
industry alone.
JAmes GuIld
The last several months have
been a wild ride for
Indonesia's palm oil sector,
culminating last week in a
blanket ban on exports of both
crude palm oil and its refined
products, such as cooking oil.
Right up until the end the
government sent a flurry of
mixed messages, walking
back its initial plan by saying
that exports of crude palm oil
would be allowed before
reversing itself again at the
last minute.
Indonesia is the world's
largest supplier of palm oil, so
depriving global markets of
the commodity is a big deal. It
will, among other things,
effect the cost of basic goods
like cooking oil at a time when
food prices are already being
squeezed. Trade partners will
not be pleased. So why did
Indonesia take this
extraordinary step?
The simple answer is that
it's about prices. According to
the Indonesian Palm Oil
Association, local production
of crude palm oil fell in 2021
compared to 2020, even as
global demand surged. When
demand increases and supply
falls or remains constant, all
else being equal, prices will
rise. And that is exactly what
has happened. In April 2020,
a ton of Indonesian crude
palm oil was fetching around
$545 on the European
market. Two years later, that
jumped to $1,700.
This has been good for
exporters, and for Indonesia's
current account. As I wrote
last week, booming global
demand for commodities
that Indonesia has in
abundance, such as coal and
palm oil, has reversed a
persistent current account
deficit and placed the rupiah
in a relatively solid position
as the U.S. Federal Reserve
begins raising interest rates
this year. It's also drummed
up increased revenue for the
Ministry of Finance.
But a roaring commodity
export market presents a kind
of paradox, because while it
Why Indonesia banned
palm oil exports
A view of a palm oil plantation in Bogor, Indonesia. Photo: Achmad Rabin Taim
benefits exporters and the
current account, the
Indonesian government does
not want domestic consumers
to pay the global market price
for these commodities. A key
priority for the government is
to ensure that the price of
staple goods - such as
gasoline, electricity, rice, and
cooking oil - remains stable
and affordable. Certain types
of gasoline have already seen a
(quite modest) price hike, and
the government is especially
sensitive right now to further
inflationary pressures.
The problem is that this
creates dueling incentives for
key actors. The political
interests of the state in
keeping domestic prices low is
at odds with the commercial
interests of palm oil producers
and exporters, who want to
sell as much palm oil as they
can at the highest price the
market will support.
Something has to give, and
clearly the government
believes that palm oil
companies chasing export
profits is diverting supply
away from the domestic
market where profit margins
are lower. This has caused the
price of cooking oil to surge,
and shortages and hoarding
were widely reported earlier
this year.
To bring the price down, the
government first tried some
regulatory fixes such as export
quotas, domestic market
obligations, and price ceilings
for cooking oil. Investigations
have been launched into palm
oil executives and trade
officials. But these have been
rushed and confusing. They
did not bring the price down
fast enough and with the
Lebaran holiday approaching,
when millions gather to
celebrate the end of Ramadan,
the government felt it needed
to be seen taking more decisive
action and finally announced a
blanket export ban.
Whether this will actually
have the desired (or any)
effect, on the price of cooking
oil in Indonesia is almost
irrelevant since I doubt the
ban will be in place for long.
More fundamentally, this is
meant to send a message
about the power of the state to
discipline markets when it's in
the national interest to do so.
It echoes actions taken earlier
this year, when coal exports
were banned to ensure a
sufficient supply was available
for domestic power plants at
below market prices.
As I wrote at the time, that
was also primarily about
sending a message, which is
that the Indonesian economy
is pro-market - but only up to
a point. When commercial
interests are at odds with the
political and national interests
of the state, the state will
intervene to protect these
interests. Each time they do
this there is a risk of
overplaying their hand, as
trade partners and investors
will not look on these actions
kindly, especially when
demand for these
commodities is not so hot
anymore.
But for now Indonesia
controls the raw supply of
things like coal and palm oil
which are in high demand, so
their reach can extend pretty
far when they want to send a
message. And that message -
that the domestic market
needs to be supplied first and
at affordable prices, even if it
forces exporters to leave
profits on the table - is coming
through loud and clear.