Pakistan-U.S. Cooperation and the Recent Wave of Anti-Americanism in Pakistan

Abstract

People-to-people contacts between nations generally reinforce the formal interactions of states in the form of broad, multilevel collaborations between governments. Indeed, the establishment of ties between states is closely linked to increasing people-to-people interactions between nations, and, in this regard, Pak-U.S. collaboration is no exception. Bilateral cooperation between Washington and Islamabad has always been considered an essential dimension of Pak-U.S. relations given a general trust deficit between the two states. The changing patterns of cooperation between Pakistan and the United States cannot be divorced from the varying nature of anti-Americanism in the Pakistani society, especially its unprecedented growth in the past few months. The prevalence of the contemporary wave of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan is linked to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s public demonstrations and mass gatherings based on their anti-US rhetoric. This rhetoric that stemmed from an anti-imperialist discourse has now been recognized as an effective political tool for cultivating public support and political traction. This paper is an endeavour to examine this dramatic growth of public antipathy toward the U.S. in the past few months; analyze the structural features of the Pakistani society that encourage such anti-American sentiment; and provide recommendations for addressing this in order to facilitate more effective Pak-U.S. bilateral relations.