The press conference that was held before the summit of the Pakistani and American leaders covered a lot of ground and lasted quite a while, but here are the most important takeaways for those who didn’t have time to watch it all or read the entire transcript:
* Trump revealed that Modi supposedly requested his diplomatic intervention in mediating the Kashmir Conflict with Pakistan, something that New Delhi has since denied after it’s become a raging domestic political scandal at home.
* Trump’s quip that “Pakistan never lies” takes on a newfound significance when contrasted with India’s denial of Modi’s reported Kashmir request, which from the American leader’s perspective is nothing but a lie from India and speaks to the serious distrust in US-Indian ties and especially Trump’s relationship with Modi.
* Pakistani-American relations have notably improved since Prime Minister Khan entered office last August, and Trump doesn’t blame his predecessors for supposedly not doing all they previously could in bringing peace to Afghanistan because “they were dealing with the wrong President”.
* Pakistan is now helping to “extricate” the US from Afghanistan and “saving millions of lives” after Trump said that the other option that he had at his disposal was to “kill 10 million people” in order to end the war, hinting that he could have done so by dropping countless other “Mother Of All Bombs” all over the country.
* Trump ambitiously wants to increase Pakistani-American trade by 10-20x its current level after heaping nothing but praise on its people and economic potential, strongly suggesting that Pakistan could replace India as the US’ preferred economic partner in South Asia if New Delhi continues to play “hard ball” on trade.
* Trump announced that he’d “love to go to Pakistan at the right time”, which could even be as early as the end of this year if he travels to India in November or December like is reportedly being explored and then pays a visit to its neighbor, especially if there’s a big breakthrough in the Afghan peace process around that time.
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The astounding success of the Khan-Trump Summit proved without a doubt that Pakistan is the global pivot state that’s mastered the policy of “multi-alignment” between the New Cold War‘s most relevant Great Powers, which enables it to flexibly adapt to this century’s rapidly changing circumstances in pursuit of its interests.
This article was originally published by Eurasia Future
