On October 25th, AFPC Senior Fellow for Asia James Clad moderated the third in a series of ‘closed door’ Congressional briefings on Pakistan. Held in the US Capitol building, the recent briefing – entitled “Cutting Pakistan Adrift: Can it be done?” – drew congressional staffers from both the House and Senate sides.
Three prominent Asia specialists spoke at the briefing: Sahar Khan (Cato Institute), Michael Kugelman (Woodrow Wilson International Center), and former US diplomat James Schwemlein, now a World Bank consultant. Speakers focused on both the internal and external dimensions of Washington’s chronically frustrating relationship with Islamabad.
Since 2016, this series has focused on Pakistan’s negative impact on efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, reduce violent extremism, avoid recurrent macro-economic crises, and to restrain its nuclear weapons program.
At the October 25 briefing, speakers also focused on Pakistan’s recent parliamentary elections, on current domestic security trends, and on economic and fiscal mismanagement which has led, once again, to urgent requests from Khan’s government for more balance-of-payments support from the IMF.