New Delhi: US President Donald Trump’s recent lunch for Field Marshal Asim Munir underscores the enduring resilience of institutional ties between Washington and the Pakistan army – despite prolonged spells of strained, often bitter relations, and Islamabad’s deepening strategic and military alignment with China.

While New Delhi viewed the June 18 invite to Field Marshal Munir as a political and diplomatic slight, it should not be surprised over the incident as it simply echoed a familiar and well-trodden pattern in US-Pakistan military relations: cycles of mutual suspicion, followed by tactical reconciliation and periodic displays of great bonhomie.

Even after repeated breakdowns over the decades – marked by sanctions, boycotts and recurring accusations of duplicity and betrayal – the US has constantly compartmentalised its differences with the Pakistan army, relied on backchannel communication and quietly rebuilt ties.

The result is not a deep strategic alliance, but a functional, transactional relationship grounded in shared security interests and institutional familiarity – one that appears to have intensified in recent weeks, as evidenced by Field Marshal Munir’s landmark presence at the White House by himself.

Beyond Trump hosting Munir, the durability of US-Pakistan defence ties were reinforced a week earlier by General Michael Kurilla, head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), who described the Pakistan army as a “phenomenal partner” in the global counterterrorism effort during his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in Washington.

This constant cycle of estrangement and re-engagement between the American and Pakistani militaries is anchored in deep, historically rooted ties that have proven difficult to shake. These were sustained not by grand strategy, but by enduring institutional linkages – defence attaches, military education exchanges and backchannel communications – that had endured even during moments of public and seemingly irresolvable rupture.

From Cold War alliances like the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (1954-71) and the Central Treaty Organisation (1955-79), through the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and to the post-9/11 War on Terror, the Pakistan army has consistently positioned itself as a dependable – albeit slippery and transactional – strategic partner to Washington.

And, though often sharply divided over issues like Afghanistan and Islamist militancy, both sides had sustained their military ties, grounded in tactical necessity and overlapping security interests.

In return, the US had extended the Pakistan army vast funds, weaponry, access to premier military training institutions and strategic latitude – despite being fully aware that the latter frequently pursued parallel agendas, particularly regarding the Taliban and other Islamist assets it had fostered.

Even prolonged periods of estrangement – such as the 1990-2001 breakdown over Pakistan’s nuclear tests, the army-facilitated proliferation of nuclear weapons know-how to Libya, Iran and North Korea, or the subsequent fallout from Osama bin Laden’s discovery in Abbottabad in 2011, amongst numerous other transgressions – were eventually followed by quiet, deliberate re-engagement and bouts of mutual back-slapping geniality.

In 2018, for instance, President Trump suspended $1.3 billion in security aid over Pakistan’s ‘duplicity’ in Afghanistan, but high-level military contacts resumed within a year. Senior US CENTCOM officials had flocked to Rawalpindi, and the previously frozen International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme was reinstated in 2020.

Simultaneously, the Pentagon re-established regular engagement with Pakistan’s General Headquarters, even as the US state department remained largely sidelined.

The US, it appeared, willingly accepted the strategic logic that a complete rupture with the Pakistan army would be more destabilising than a difficult but ‘managed’ relationship.

Exchanges between Pakistani, US armies since the '50s have provided enduring linkages

Tracking the evolution of this long-lasting affiliation offers valuable insight.

After independence, the Pakistan army consciously orientated itself away from its Indian roots, seeking instead to emulate and align with British military doctrines, training procedures and traditions.

Shortly thereafter, in the early fifties, the Pakistan army turned to the US for patronage, training and equipment – seeking prestige, resources and of course, distance from its shared institutional past with India.

Notably, the IMET programme played a key role in the early years in this shift becoming institutionalised for Pakistani officers. Many trained – and continue to receive instruction at premier US military institutions like the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and the National Defense University in Washington, DC.

All these exchanges did more than merely enhance operational competence – they significantly shaped the worldview of successive generations of Pakistan army officers by instilling in them US strategic thinking, civil-military norms and a strong sense of institutional prestige.

Many of these officers invariably forged lasting professional and cultural linkages with the US military establishment – connections that endured even when bilateral political ties soured.

Many retired Pakistani military officers – particularly those from the Strategic Plans Division that oversees the country’s nuclear arsenal – secured post-retirement placements in influential US think tanks, where they often became articulate advocates for Islamabad’s strategic perspective and found favour within Pentagon circles.

Institutionally, the US also valued – and was notably grateful for – the Pakistan army’s role as a Cold War conduit to China.

In 1971, President General Yahya Khan secretly facilitated national security adviser Henry Kissinger’s covert trip to Beijing, an initiative designed to counterbalance Soviet power. This pivotal move not only paved the way for President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit the following year, but also positioned the Pakistan army as a key geopolitical intermediary – cementing its strategic relevance in the eyes of both Washington and Beijing.

Meanwhile, from the late 1970s, the Pakistan army grew increasingly Islamist under President General Zia-ul-Haq, but despite this transformation, Washington largely looked the other way – prioritising tactical cooperation in its anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, and later during the post-9/11 War on Terror.

Pakistan scholar Christine Fair, author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, argues that this Islamisation embedded a dual-track identity in the army: one rooted in Western military professionalism and training, and the other steeped in religious ideology and jihadist narratives, or a kind of pragmatic dualism.

But, she stated that despite the US and the Pakistan army often holding fundamentally divergent priorities, Washington continued the bilateral relationship, prioritising tactical cooperation over ideological concerns.

While Pakistan's army has looked to China for survival, it has looked to America for identity

Alongside, Pakistan-China strategic and military cooperation that began to take shape in the early 1960s, driven by shared hostility toward India and Pakistan’s frustration with Western arms embargoes after the 1965 war, burgeoned exponentially. China emerged as a major supplier of conventional weapons to Pakistan and ably supported Islamabad’s covert nuclear weapons and missile development programme throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Over the following decades, this partnership deepened into high-value joint ventures – most notably the co-production of the JF-17 ‘Thunder’ fighter aircraft – and expanded to cover tanks, naval platforms, missile systems, intelligence sharing, joint training and strategic coordination across land, air, maritime, space and nuclear domains.

Yet, despite this deepening partnership, the Pakistan army never fully pivoted away from the West, maintaining a distinctly pro-US orientation in doctrine, military education and institutional culture. It consistently sought engagement, affirmation, validation and access from Washington and its NATO partners, with its cultural comfort, operational confidence and professional identity remaining firmly anchored in its association with these Western militaries.

Its officer corps continued to value Western military education, share doctrinal norms with US and European counterparts, and above all operate in English – advantages China could not and still cannot replicate. For though military ties with Beijing had grown exponentially in materiel significance, they lacked the depth of institutional affinity and shared ethos that marked Pakistan’s defence engagement and comfort with the US.

Senior Pakistani army officers further fortified their ties with the US by sending their children to study in the US, acquiring real estate and, in many instances, settling there after retirement.

By contrast, China’s model of military cooperation – rooted in political ideology, centralised command and Communist Party control – has remained inward-looking and largely localised. This sits uneasily with the Pakistan army, which sees itself as both militarily and politically autonomous – and above all forms of civilian oversight.

Fair observes that while Pakistan has continued to acquire the bulk of its military hardware from China, its officer cadre “continues to prefer Western military educational programmes” – a habit that has helped sustain institutional linkages with the US. She emphasised that this Western training had traditionally shaped the strategic mindset of Pakistan’s military leadership, making them more attuned to US operational thinking and doctrines.

General Jehangir Karamat, former Pakistan army chief for two years till 1998, concurred.

“The Pakistan army was trained in the Western system and thinks in those terms,” he once declared. “Our engagement with the US military helped us keep our standards high, and we have always sought to benchmark ourselves against Western militaries, not Eastern ones,” he added in a veiled reference to Pakistan’s deepening ties with the People’s Liberation Army.

Karamat himself received instruction at Fort Leavenworth, and like a myriad of other Pakistan army officers had placements at Brookings and other Western think tanks after retirement.

Other analysts said that this Western orientation was largely about military professionalism and access to advanced operational concepts – something Beijing, despite its growing material footprint, has yet to replicate.

In turn, this spawned a further dual-track contradiction that while the Pakistan army depended on China for survival, it looked to the US for identity. Simply put, it seeks Chinese money and arms but craves American recognition and Western respectability.

It also remains wary of being ‘absorbed’ fully into Beijing’s orbit, especially if that means giving up its carefully guarded operational autonomy and its residual leverage with Washington. From the US side, it explains why the Pentagon and not the state department remained the primary channel of engagement with the Pakistan army; it simply knows how to work with Rawalpindi, and vice versa.

Hence, this dynamic, rooted in institutional continuity between the respective militaries, is precisely what unnerves Delhi as it signals that Washington’s strategic disassociation from Pakistan was not only incomplete but with Munir’s lunch at the White House, intact.

But the Pakistan army was also walking a tightrope if it failed in delivering whatever the Trump administration wanted it to deliver as it mulled its future course of military action over Iran. Such ambivalence may serve Rawalpindi’s and Munir’s short-term interests, but it also highlighted the limits of Pakistan’s strategic clarity in an increasingly polarised global order.

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