“It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, or Hispanic or Asian, or Native American, or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight,” President Obama told his crowd of supporters gathered in Chicago. “You can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.”

Boy, how they tried — and succeeded. Obama, the first African American to become president of the United States, made history again. A record number — 20 — of female US senators were elected.

America’s first Hindu congresswoman, Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, was elected to the US House of Representatives and will be sworn in with her book of faith, the Bhagavad Gita. For the first time ever, gay marriage was approved by popular vote in the states of Maine, Maryland and Washington.

At face value, the result of Tuesday’s polls reflects the diversity the US is best known for. Some could also attribute it to the “Obama effect” — the president’s ability to inspire minorities to political participation simply by virtue of his own background.

More than any other reason, Tuesday’s election results indicate the US is a nation in transition. Conservative television commentator Bill O’Reilly said: “It’s not a traditional America anymore.” I don’t typically agree with O’Reilly but this time he is right.

The demographics of the US are in flux, as are the voting behaviours, identity politics and political participation of minorities.

Many political analysts, myself included, predicted that conservative Tea Party Republicans and their sympathisers would show up last Tuesday to vote against President Obama. But in fact, the opposite happened. Exit polls showed that all kinds of minorities — women, gays, Mus- lims, African Americans — turned up to vote for President Obama.

More importantly, they voted against Republicans whose party espouses increasingly isolationist rhetoric and policies with negative implications for their communities.

Unfortunately, there are too many examples of this: Congressman Todd Aiken’s comments about “legitimate rape”; Congresswoman Michelle Bachman’s wildly inappropriate campaign against Muslim American political figures whom she claimed had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood; former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum’s statement that he did not want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money. The list goes on.

The huge minority turnout sends a strong message that this type of politics is no longer acceptable and that it will be politically costly. This does not mean that politics will be any less polarised. However, it can no longer continue at the expense of civil rights nor can it challenge the ideals the United States was formed upon.

I am confident this sentiment is here to stay and it will impact future political activity. It has ushered in a more open and accessible atmosphere for minority participation in politics. It also serves as an excellent recruitment tool for minority youth who are often discouraged from certain professions simply because their communities have not traditionally participated in them.

Finally, it will allow minority communities to better represent and address their concerns by influencing policies, laws and decision-makers more directly.

O’Reilly fell short in his discussion of traditional America. I believe the introduction of more minorities into politics will eventually trigger a necessary dialogue between the traditional and ‘non-traditional’ Americas — a must if the two Americas want to achieve their own special interests.

I am reminded of another time in the history of the United States where two Americas were in conflict with one another. The country witnessed the emergence of new social movements in the 1960s and 1970s that resulted from tensions over race, religion and gender.

That era produced the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., the prominent Muslim American leader and activist Malcolm X, the nation’s first Catholic president John F. Kennedy, and women’s rights movement figure Gloria Steinem.

Society at the time was engaged in an intense debate over civil liberties at home while the United States implemented controversial policies overseas, namely the Vietnam War. The struggles of the 1960s and 1970s offer undeniable comparisons to today’s struggles of gays, Muslims, African Americans, illegal immigrants and other communities seeking to remedy official disenfranchisement.

At the same time, the US, under President Obama’s leadership, seeks to rebalance the American footprint abroad not only as it relates to wars in South Asia and the Middle East, but more broadly in terms of American partnerships with other countries to solve global problems.

In all aspects domestic and foreign, America is indeed a nation in transition. President Obama must successfully lead America through that transition — a job responsibility he understands and has boldly accepted.

He stated during his victory speech that we should want an America “that moves with confidence beyond this time of war, to shape a peace that is built on the promise of freedom and dignity for every human being”.

This will be President Obama’s biggest challenge — moving beyond war and a slew of other difficult tasks before him such as the fiscal cliff, unemployment, terrorist threats to the homeland, US interests overseas, the defence budget and climate change to name a few.

It will be no easy task to take on these challenges as he also tries to reconcile the differences between the interests of the new America and those of the ‘traditional’ one. But, as his campaign theme indicates, we must move forward.

The writer served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the White House National Security Council from 2010 to 2011.

But more than the substance of his policy platform, Americans drew their support for Obama from two factors. First, the combination of his family background, personal history and achievements proved the American dream was possible.

Second, Obama was not George Bush, the folksy president hailing from a political family who went to war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

Electing the anti-Bush — even when Bush was not contesting the election — reflected just how fed up America was with status quo politics. Identity, opportunity and what it meant to be American. These were some of the most important ideas that shaped voter behaviour in 2008.

The Obama campaign is once again promoting the president’s non-establishment credentials. One campaign ad quotes Obama: “a mixed kid from Hawaii born to a single mom is not likely to become President of the United States but in America it can happen because of education.”

As a first-generation immigrant from Pakistan, I personally connect with this message but this narrative doesn’t seem to be resonating with most Americans the way it did in 2008. And despite a healthy list of domestic and foreign policy achievements, his lead in the polls is no more. Obama and Mitt Romney are now in dead heat.

What happened? Many think the Oct 3 presidential debate did Obama in. Historically, the first debate is tough for incumbents.

This one was no exception. Gallup polling revealed that 72 per cent believed Romney did a better job than Obama.

But changes emerged months before. Polls indicated a recognisable shift in support in March, unsurprisingly coinciding with rising gas and fuel prices and weaker confidence in the economy. The economy plays a role in voting behaviour but the relationship doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So what other forces are at work?

The answer goes back to those same ideas that were important in 2008 — identity, opportunities and what it means to be American.

But this time the Republican Party’s most conservative constituents dominate the narrative, challenging Obama’s suitability to represent “their country”. They have distorted his identity by claiming he is not an American citizen or is professionally unqualified to be president.

It is hard to ignore the racism, hyper-nationalism, or simple lack of education at the root of most of these comments — and we should not. Unfortunately, there is an audience for these views in the US, pointing to deep societal cleavages on issues — namely race inequality and immigration — that many thought the US had worked out.

Such ideas are also indicative of an extreme polarisation in public opinion and politics that is likely here to stay and will shape the outcome of Tuesday’s election. Whereas in 2008 a large segment of Americans came out to vote for Obama because of who he was, in just two days another large segment of the population could cast ballots against him also because of who he is.

Because the race is so close, it’s difficult to predict how many will turn out to vote against Obama — a question more easily answered if Pakistanis had a choice in voting for the new US president. A recent BBC poll found that 20 out of 21 countries preferred Obama over Romney. The only country in the world with a preference for Romney was Pakistan.

This finding suggests that Pakistanis believe a Romney government would better accommodate Pakistan’s interests. But history teaches us that relations will not be less conflicted under Republican leadership.

During the Reagan administration, the US provided aid through Islamabad for the anti-Soviet Mujahideen fighting in Afghanistan. The US was happy with this arrangement because it won the war against the Soviets. The military in Pakistan was equally sanguine because it received billions of dollars in US support and strengthened its influence in Afghanistan.

But recently declassified US government cables from the National Security Archive in Washington show a more tense relationship, strikingly similar to that of today.

American arms control officials wrote that Gen Ziaul Haq “has lied to us again” about Pakistan’s procurement of nuclear weapons-related technology. The White House and State Department, not wanting to jeopardise aid to the Mujahideen, pushed back in hopes that “building a strong bilateral relationship would dissuade Pakistan from building nuclear weapons”.

This sounds a lot like the early efforts of the Obama administration to build a strategic partnership to elicit more Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan — and it is precisely the same view advocated by Romney’s foreign policy team. Romney adviser Mitchell Reiss stated in September that a Romney administration would treat Pakistan with a “little bit more respect” but as a means to get Pakistan to do more in Afghanistan.

The convergence on foreign policy was most evident in the Oct 22 presidential debate when Romney endorsed most of Obama’s positions.

Whether Romney or Obama wins on Tuesday, Pakistan will stay a priority and national security will still dominate the agenda.

The next American president will stay the course on counterterrorism as long as anti-American terrorist attacks are planned or financed from safe havens in Pakistan. He is going to take US troops out of Afghanistan because of the cost to the US taxpayer.

There is a chance that a Romney administration could prolong the troop drawdown. However, there is neither domestic

appetite for an extended military mission, nor do the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan support it. It’s hard to disagree when American lives and the economy are at stake.

The writer is an analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior South Asia fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the White House National Security Council from 2010 to 2011.

Early voting in some states has already started. Washington’s policy wonks are planning their election night parties, while campaign workers gear up for the home stretch, making last-minute phone calls to voters asking for donations and reminding them to vote.

For foreign policy enthusiasts, this election has been less than thrilling. With the exception of Iran and Israel, foreign policy is not a priority in this election.

Of the four debates scheduled, only one — on Oct 22 — is exclusively devoted to foreign policy. The next president will be elected almost entirely on the basis of domestic issues, namely the economic health of the country, which most Americans rightfully prioritise over foreign policy.

But the focus away from foreign policy will not last long. The next American president will have to almost immediately begin tackling international issues. In case anyone needs reminding, the world is in turmoil.

The Middle East is still coping with the political reverberations of the Arab Spring. Hawks in Tel Aviv, Tehran, and Washington are honing in on the question of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Europe’s financial crisis continues to weigh down the American recovery. The United States is still running a war in Afghanistan.

US relations with Pakistan are on the mend but there could be more turmoil ahead if the two countries cannot come to agreement on national security and counterterrorism policy related to Afghanistan.

When foreign policy is discussed in the campaign, Pakistan ranks high in the pecking order. Most mentions of Pakistan are in conjunction with the May 2, 2011 unilateral raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Understandably, the raid is a source of tension in Pakistan. But for Americans, the death of the mastermind behind the Sept 11 attacks is a major step towards closure in a conflict many believe has dragged on too long. It is no surprise the Obama campaign will want to take credit for it.

But I wouldn’t expect too much more bravado from the Obama or Romney campaigns on foreign policy achievements or failures, especially in the final days of the election — history has taught them otherwise.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter was handicapped in his re-election bid by his inability to free American hostages in Iran, including by covert military force.

Just three years after the Sept 11 attacks, in 2004, many Americans were more supportive of a second term for George W. Bush simply because “changing a horse in midstream” would have damaged nascent war on terror efforts.

No one wants to hurt their chances at power — not even America’s partners across the world. Pakistan, like many other countries, is likely waiting to take any big decisions regarding the United States until after the elections because it knows foreign policy does not get advanced in a campaign season. But it also makes sense to wait because the election could usher in an entirely new set of government characters to work with.

Even so, many continue to hone in on and parse each campaign’s specific mentions — or rather, lack of mention — of Pakistan.

Partisan rhetoric usefully highlights the differences in how the campaigns view Pakistan.

Despite the recent history of strained US-Pakistan relations, the Obama campaign does a better job than Romney at explaining Pakistan’s importance to the American people. Obama for America campaign adviser Michèle Flournoy recently called Pakistan a strategic partner in counterterrorism, highlighting its many sacrifices in the fight against Al Qaeda, while at the same time noting a genuine interest on both sides to improve a relationship that has faced several ups and downs.

Romney took on a more paternalistic role when he said “we need to help bring Pakistan into the 21st century, or the 20th century for that matter”.

But something has been ignored in the over-analysing of words and the hesitation to make bold foreign policy statements in an election year: the fact that partisan politics in the United States is not likely to change the policy on Pakistan.

No level of partisanship will alter the most urgent national interest at stake: that the two countries must cooperate on Afghanistan in the short term to facilitate the Nato drawdown, which is scheduled to conclude in December 2014.

A policy that is expected to stay on track means that controversial security and counterterrorism policies will also remain sources of tension between the US and Pakistan — unless there are new solutions to decades-old problems. The next American president will have the daunting task of figuring that out.

At the top of the to-do list will be many critical issues, including: managing the Nato drawdown via Pakistan routes; participation in an Afghanistan reconciliation process; rebuilding the non-security relationship with Pakistan; redefining security assistance as the US and Pakistan transition away from ‘war on terror’ cooperation.

Ultimately, it is not individual quotes or campaign rhetoric that will determine the future of US policy on Pakistan. The policy will be determined by the pursuit of US interests.

We should all be thankful for that. Romney’s comments that the US needs to bring Pakistan into the 20th century reflect a level of arrogance and lack of education that the bilateral relationship simply does not need right now.

There’s no stopping candidates from making statements like this to use foreign policy to make domestic gains — a phenomenon that is also alive and well in Pakistan — but very rarely do such moves alter national interests or strategies already in place.

The writer is an analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior South Asia fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the White House National Security Council from 2010 to 2011.

Those of us in Washington watch with especially pointed curiosity — what will the elections’ outcome mean for the United States? Surely some in Pakistan have the same question. A
healthy debate on the future of relations is a good thing, especially given recent efforts by both countries to get things back on track.

However, analysts on either side of the divide are not even in a position to answer those questions because both sides are trapped in a paradigm that views the relationship in stark black and white terms.

Consider the difficulty pundits have in their view of Imran Khan. He is currently the most popular politician in Pakistan. Khan’s anti-corruption and anti-establishment agenda appeals to urban middle-class youth yearning for change in a political system dominated by family dynasties and landed gentry.

Unsurprisingly, his criticism of the United States, dismissive attitude towards women’s rights and sympathy for the Taliban do not win confidence in Washington. Khan’s playboy past, his Jewish ex-wife, and history of frequenting London nightclubs add to the paradox. Only one question matters: is Imran Khan anti-American?

Pakistan repays the favour by painting American experts, policymakers, and journalists who cover Pakistan in equally simplistic terms. There are the ‘friends of Pakistan’ who always make positive statements, sometimes at the risk of sounding incredulous.

Then there are those that write about Pakistan’s jihadist problem, who are (of course) anti-Pakistan. Some are hand-in-glove with the US government. And members of the diaspora must be pro-Pakistan because of their heritage, right?

As someone who writes regularly about Pakistan and US national security for a western audience, I often struggle with this personally. I understand the need to explain Pakistan’s
challenges in a more balanced way.

For example, I regularly encounter — and counter — the canard that Pakistan is the world’s most dangerous place. At the same time, I must be honest about Pakistan’s serious security problem and the government’s role in managing it.

Ignoring these facts hurts Pakistan by ceding political space to militant groups who threaten the country’s internal stability. More importantly, it damages the ability of analysts to act as honest brokers and credible voices.

There is very little depth or nuance left to the way the United States and Pakistan view one another. Instead, it is easier to portray individuals and institutions in extremes because the issues at play are so challenging.

I believe that a defining moment in creating this dynamic in which caricatures prevail was the day after the Sept 11 attacks.

The infamous meeting in Washington between US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage and Pakistan’s intelligence chief Mahmoud Ahmed set the tone for how the two countries would view one another for the next 10 years.

Armitage presented Ahmed with a choice: you’re either with us or against us. Pakistan could support the Afghan Taliban or it could support the US. Armitage described the choice as “black and white, with no grey”.

The trauma of Sept 11 and American fears of another major attack on US soil allowed this type of binary thinking to take hold within the US government. But it could be the more pragmatic explanation that Pakistan was simply in the way.

Given its historical ties to the Afghan Taliban, the United States had to either separate Pakistan from the Taliban or deal with it in kind. The fact that defining the foreign policy in such minimalist terms could be ultimately damaging did not matter to the neoconservative thinkers in the Bush administration.

In the short term, this simplification made the relationship easier. Armitage’s ultimatum did not leave then president Pervez Musharraf with a real choice to make.

Defying the United States and actively supporting the Taliban as it sheltered Al Qaeda would have been internationally devastating for Pakistan. Yet by offering this blanket cooperation, Musharraf came to be perceived in both Pakistan and the United States as pro-American.

This obviously helped him in Washington. When in 2010 Musharraf began to consider a return to politics in Pakistan, he initially sparked the interest of some in the US political establishment who saw benefit in supporting him. But it soon became clear to Washington that what seemed to be a positive relationship with the United States was a political liability
in Pakistan.

The presumption that certain viewpoints translate either into clear-cut policy gains or disadvantages for Pakistan or the United States no longer holds. Things are just not that simple anymore.

As the 2014 draw-down scheduled for Afghanistan nears, the two countries must find common ground. Pakistan’s own stability will be determined by the transition in Afghanistan, and the United States still needs Pakistan’s support to conduct an orderly withdrawal.

For that reason alone, I have no doubt that the United States will work with whoever is elected in Pakistan. For the very same reason, any future government in Pakistan will not be in a position to cut off ties to the world’s superpower.

The writer is an analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior South Asia fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the White House National Security Council from 2010 to 2011.

It is hard to imagine a truly clean slate for the two countries given the preponderance of differences on national security. But Corker probably did not mean as much. Rather, he likely meant that being perceived as too forward-leaning on Pakistan during an election year would lead to more opposition attacks on the Obama administration’s foreign policy. A similar dynamic exists in Pakistan for the incumbent Pakistan People’s Party government as it heads into national elections. Without the threat of being kicked out of office, both governments may finally be able to figure it out.

Let’s hope that’s true, but let’s also not be naive. The US and Pakistan have been arguing since 2001 over some of the most vexing security issues either has faced. But what if we removed the issue of safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban from the debate? What if drones, cross-border incidents and Nato routes ceased to exist? What would a clean slate look like then?

Rather than propose oft-repeated strategies like containment or a predictable, issues-focused approach advocating for more aid or public diplomacy, I suggest we look to US ties with Indonesia and Israel — two countries the US occasionally spars with over controversial issues — for some perspective on a new US-Pakistan relationship.

Indonesia faces problems similar to those Pakistan does: terrorism, rising religious intolerance, civil-military imbalance and federal-provincial tensions. The US has an interest in these issues in Indonesia for the same reason it does in Pakistan — they can destabilise a strategically important partner. Indonesia lies along the Malacca Straits, a key international maritime route linking Asian economies to each other as well as to the Persian Gulf. Turmoil along the strait could seriously damage international commerce.

As with Pakistan, the US pressures Indonesia to do more to combat terrorism. Indonesia has endured terrorist attacks on foreigners and Indonesians alike. It has home-grown terrorist organisations. At the same time, Indonesians espouse modern and secular interpretations of Islam similar to the mindset of many Pakistanis. The US pumps millions of development dollars into Indonesia and is often the first and largest responder to humanitarian crises there.

For all their similarities, Indonesia and Pakistan have very different relations with the US. Even though Indonesia faces strong criticism of its human rights record in the US Congress, President Obama visited Indonesia twice, both times touting it as a moderate Muslim democracy. Meanwhile, Pakistan treads dangerously close to pariah status. The notion that terrorism keeps throwing US-Pakistan relations off-kilter no longer holds if we consider that countries like Indonesia face similar predicaments of striking a balance between hedging against the threat of home-grown terrorists and meeting international demands.

US ties with Israel are just as complicated as those with Pakistan. Popular sentiment in the US, bolstered by politically active Jewish and evangelical Christian communities, advocates for unconditional support to Israel. However, Israeli policies, such as a refusal to comprehensively address the question of settlements, work against US interests in the region by stalling the Middle East peace process. But this does not lead to a complete breakdown in relations — Israel continues to receive billions of dollars in US support. The two countries have also built strong diplomatic, military and intelligence relationships that can withstand episodic political crises. This type of relationship shows that the US can sustain strategic ties with independent-minded countries whose policy decisions are often at odds with US interests.

Building a US-Pakistan relationship beyond Afghanistan policy is not an easy task. I am convinced that neither country has a clear vision for what the relationship should be after Nato transfers combat responsibilities to Afghan National Security Forces in December 2014. Such a relationship did once exist. During the Cold War, Pakistan was a self-proclaimed ‘most allied ally’ of the US in combating the spread of communism. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy hosted Pakistani President Ayub Khan at George Washington’s Mt Vernon estate in Virginia as part of a state visit. In his official toast, Khan welcomed a greater American role in Pakistan’s affairs when he stated, “no country in the world has been able to develop or obtain a higher standard of living without some sort of outside assistance.” President John F. Kennedy likewise confirmed to Khan, “there is a link which binds your country and ours all the way across the globe.” The fact that Khan took power in a military coup and that the US used Pakistan in its game against the Soviet Union should not minimise the bottom line: the two countries can find common ground if they have to.

Those days are long gone, but they remind us that the US and Pakistan still have plenty of needs that warrant sustained links. US security interests in Pakistan will outlast the current war in Afghanistan, if for nothing but nuclear proliferation. Furthermore, the US must stay engaged in a region where anti-American sentiment thrives among militants. Pakistan could use a ‘big brother’ during times of economic crisis; China and Saudi Arabia do not always follow through. American companies do not drive relations but several of them enjoy profitability in Pakistan and would like ties to improve. Finally, while the Pakistani-American community is not as politically influential as other diaspora groups, it continues to help educate the US government on advancing US-Pakistan relations. Based on this list alone, the US and Pakistan have enough in common to begin with a clean slate today. Let’s just hope that the two countries won’t always require a fresh set of policymakers to reset their conflicts.

The writer is an analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the White House National Security Council from 2010 to 2011.

Each time the routes closed, I recall US policymakers waiting with bated breath for them to open again. In those days the dependency on Pakistan for the transport of Nato supplies, especially fuel, was much higher than it stands today.

I also observed many senior US officials taking great pains to point out to Pakistan’s critics that the majority of Nato fuel made it to Afghanistan only with Pakistan’s cooperation. US officials were not publicly accusing Pakistan of complicity with militants in the war in Afghanistan. Congress was preparing to develop a long-term aid commitment known informally as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill. The US was advocating on Pakistan’s behalf with other bilateral and multilateral donors as well as international financial institutions. The routes would open up within a month’s time.

Those days are long gone. From my new perch outside government, I watched the latest route closure drag on for over six months. Both sides boasted about how they no longer needed one another, implying that waiting until the other side blinked would not hurt them. The US revealed it could depend entirely on the Northern Distribution Network through Central Asia — a deliberate effort on the part of the Obama administration to reduce dependency on Pakistan. Pakistan said it could live without American money even though its vulnerable foreign-exchange reserves indicated otherwise.

The prolonged time frame was not for nothing — 24 Pakistanis were left dead after the November incident at Salala. Even with this tragedy, I still expected the two countries to wrap up their latest tiff much quicker than they did for no other reason but the fact that both need each other when it comes to Afghanistan policy.

I was wrong. Afghanistan is what continues to drive both countries further apart. When the US did not formally apologise for the 24 deaths, it became harder for Pakistan’s military to sell cooperation with the US to its rank and file. For the US, apologising became a problem in itself, as many in the Washington policy community were alleging Pakistani state support
for Haqqani-network attacks against the US in Afghanistan.

But the challenges go beyond just Afghanistan. As both governments attempted to iron out deep-seated problems in their relationship, they were forced to contend with other political realities, such as national elections, weak economies and staunch opposition voices in both countries. Ironically, Barack Obama and Asif Ali Zardari — two presidents who couldn’t be more different — found themselves in very similar political situations.

It should come as no surprise that the American and Pakistani media, politicians and civil society have a lot to stay — mostly negative — about US-Pakistan relations. For two countries that have grown accustomed to playing cloak-and-dagger politics with (and sometimes against) one another, this is an unwelcome set of circumstances.

But perhaps this is the only way. For the relationship to mature and evolve into a partnership among equals, both sides of the aisle in both countries must critique, question, poke and prod the parameters of US-Pakistan ties. Pakistan’s parliament intended to do just that in April when it developed a 14-point agenda for relations with the US. American congressional
efforts to condition aid to Pakistan occur in the same vein.

But these approaches only scratch the surface of what needs to be done. The parliamentary review is not legally binding and the conditions Congress places on assistance to Pakistan often result in more bureaucratic work for US agencies rather than substantive changes in policy.

I, for one, still have many questions about the negotiations on Nato supply routes. I know others in Washington who follow the relationship are asking the same: how did the US come to finally apologise when it was so adamantly opposed to the idea? Did Pakistan receive more financial assistance beyond the delayed Coalition Support Funds? Did it push for a greater role in US negotiations with the Taliban? Did the US finally convince Pakistan to go after the Haqqani network? Will Pakistan close the routes again? Is Pakistan’s parliamentary review no longer relevant?

The two countries say they are close to finalising a memorandum of understanding on the supply routes. And in my many conversations with American and Pakistani policymakers in recent weeks, it is apparent that both sides share at least one thing in common: a genuine interest in getting back on track. I don’t expect the MoU to answer all of our difficult questions, nor is it likely to be a legally binding document. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of the relationship, “I have no reason to believe that it will not continue to raise hard questions for us both. But it is something that is in the interests of the United States as well as the interests of Pakistan”.

In this spirit, I do hope the resolution of the Salala incident and the MoU provide an opportunity to reset the tenor and attitudes of both countries when it comes to cooperation. It would behove each to stop asking the other if it is a partner or a adversary. We’ve heard enough talk like this, especially after a six-month standstill in relations, 24 Pakistanis dead and millions of dollars lost. It is simply too costly to go back to where we came from.

The writer is an analyst at the Eurasia Group and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. She served as director for Pakistan and Afghanistan on the White House National Security Council from 2010 to 2011.