Najam Interviewed on US-Pakistan Relations After Trump Tweet
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston Univeristy, was interviewed by multiple media outlets, particularly in Pakistan, on U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweet threatening to stop assistance to Pakistan.
In an appearance on Dawn News discussion show Doora Rukh on December 22, 2017, soon after the UN vote against President Trump’s decision to accept Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Najam had suggested that Pakistan should soon accept some strong action from the Trump administration. This, he argued, would come mostly because the administration was poised to do so for its own Afghanistan policy reasons, but also because President Trump had indicated that it would make an “example” of some of the countries that had voted to condemn his decision, and that Pakistan would be an easy target. (Watch full show here).
Interviewed on the Voice of America (VOA) Urdu service program View360 on January 5, 2018, Najam suggested that the sanctions that had followed President Trump’s new year tweets were not surprising in any way, but they were a very clear signal that US-Pakistan relations are now about as bad as they have ever been, and there is little to suggest that they will improve anytime soon. (Watch full show here).
— Adil Najam عادل نجم (@AdilNajam) January 6, 2018
Najam made a similar argument in the popular Pakistani TV discussion show, Aaj Kamran Khan Kay Sath on Dunya TV, also on January 5, 2018. However, he emphasized that Pakistan itself has always seen its relationship as transactional and should now not be surprised when the US is wanting to get out of the transaction with Pakistan. (Watch full show here).
Appearing on the show Breaking Views with Malick on 92 News TV on January 7, 2018, elaborated on the argument that US-Pakistan relations were now at the lowest ebb, but this was not simply a factor of the Trump Presidency but would have been the same even if there had been a difference President in the While House. He suggested that instead of responding tweet-by-tweet, Pakistan should be re-evaluating its foreign policy as a whole in light of whether these relations – as well as Pakistan’s other relations – now stand.
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School and was a former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore Pakistan. Learn more about him here.