Social media has transgressed into the political and diplomatic field. In the case of US President Donald Trump, this is hardly new. From the election campaign trail to the White House, he is by now infamous for firing off messages on Twitter that have more often than not embarrassed his own administration, annoyed allies and a host of countries around the world, and arguably made the task of keeping the US centre-stage in global politics that much harder. In Pakistan's case, Trump's views are hardly breaking news. In January 2018, soon after taking office, he cut off payments due as well as aid to Pakistan, citing a series of complaints of Pakistan not helping Washington in its longest running foreign war in Afghanistan. Undiplomatically irrepressible as he has proved, Trump set off a new controversy in an interview with Fox News the other day in which he castigated Pakistan in not so polite language as not doing anything to help the US despite receiving billions of dollars in aid. Of course we in Pakistan by now have our own tribe of twitterati, headed by no less an eminence than Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan. It was inherent in the nature of things then that the PM should choose Twitter to round on the US president, in the process reminding Trump that Pakistan had sacrificed 75,000 lives and billions of dollars because of disruption of peace, terrorism and the fallout of joining the War on Terror, a war the PM characterised as "America's war". This hardly came as a surprise either, since the PM's views on our joining in a war not of our making are pretty well known. In this war of words against the US president, not only ministers of the government but even leading lights of the opposition chimed in. In response to Imran Khan's and others' stinging replies, Trump, never one to take such responses lying down, also followed up his remarks in the interview with even more laden diatribes on Twitter. The whole exchange has brought the already fraught relations between Pakistan and the US to a new low.
US President Donald Trump can be maddeningly rude, obtuse and downright stupid. Nevertheless, it is up to us to cogitate appropriate responses to his provocations (this may well not be the last). It may have been more appropriate not to sink to Trump's level and attempt to conduct 'diplomacy' through Twitter. The US envoy having been summoned to have a protest demarche at Trump's remarks issued was and still is the more dignified course. Resorting to Twitter or social media means playing on Trump's wicket, on which he revels in being as outrageous as possible. A mature, considered, well argued response would have served us better, in the process avoiding the 'personalisation' of exchanges that ensued through traditional (GHQ-Pentagon) and diplomatic (Foreign Office-State dept.) channels. Had that course alone been tried, it may have strengthened the hands of those Trump administration officials who have been trying through most of this year to smooth the frictions in the relationship with Pakistan and solicit its help in finding a political solution to the unending Afghan conflict, apart from bringing to the world's attention the rudeness of Donald Trump and Pakistan's dignified response. It should be taken note of that perhaps Trump's renewed ire at Pakistan stems from frustration at not only not making progress in Afghanistan against a resurgent Taliban, but putting the blame entirely on Pakistan for harbouring the Afghan Taliban on our soil since 2001 and Osama bin Laden till he was killed by US Seals in Abbottabad. Pakistan's sticking to some level of support to the Afghan Taliban, whether in the form of safe havens on Pakistani soil or more, stems at least partially from strategic calculations surrounding who holds power in Kabul and who is that regime friendlier with. This is where Islamabad's concern about the Indian influence in Afghanistan comes into the picture. The gap between the current perceptions and future solutions to the conundrum of the Afghan war on both sides cannot be narrowed by Twitter wars. The solution lies in bilateral and multilateral efforts for a civilised dialogue amongst all the stakeholders.