As the Obama Administration gears up to throw a red carpet welcome to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif later this month, a noted American scholar today cautioned not be "fooled" as the sharp differences between the two countries will burst back into the open.
"Expect a 'focus on the positive' approach to be on display later this month when Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Washington for meetings with President Obama and other senior US officials.
"But don't be fooled," wrote Daniel Markey, Academic Director of the Global Policy Programme at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Adjunct Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Narrow cooperation should not be mistaken for genuine partnership. The disputes between Washington and Islamabad are simply too serious to be papered-over indefinitely, and the only questions are when and how they will eventually burst back into the open," wrote Markey, author of "No Exit from Pakistan: America's Tortured Relationship with Islamabad", and served on the Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department from 2003-2007.
Referring to the sharp rise in tension between Pakistan and US after Abbottabad attack by American troops that killed Osama bin Laden, Markey said in his commentary titled 'Superficially Normal' published yesterday that in the past few years, US-Pak disputes have not disappeared.
They were either swept under the carpet or managed more discretely behind closed doors, he wrote in The Cipher Brief.
A survey of these disputes begins in Afghanistan, he noted.
Earlier this year, American and Pakistani diplomats found a fleeting consensus in their efforts to jump-start talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
Those talks temporarily masked fundamental disagreements over Afghanistan's future, including the question of whether and how the Taliban could ultimately be accommodated within Afghanistan's nascent democracy.
More generally, US policymakers remain unconvinced that Pakistan has demonstrated sufficient will or capacity to destroy terrorist safe havens, he said.
And because the roots of violent extremism run so deep in Pakistan, few US policymakers anticipate that ongoing military operations will have more than a temporary effect unless followed by improved civil administration-in policing, justice, education, and infrastructure, he added.
Noting that the chasm between US and Pakistan on India is also growing, Markey said as US-India ties have warmed to a "strategic partnership", Americans are inclined to see India as a fellow democracy and victim of Islamist terrorism.
By failing to take clear action against anti-Indian terrorist groups, especially the perpetrators of the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, Pakistan has lost the sympathy of many US policymakers and politicians, he said.
