■Vietnam, Afghanistan, East Pakistan — and Trump’s “No” to MBS■
What is the value of an American promise when an American calculation changes?
That is not an academic question for nations that have built their security around Washington’s assurances. It is a question written in blood across the modern history of international politics.
Vietnam. Afghanistan. East Pakistan. The Kurds. Iran. Iraq. Hungary.
The circumstances were different. The actors were different. The wars were different. And none of these cases can honestly be reduced to one identical formula.
Yet a recurring pattern is difficult to ignore: an ally places confidence in American power; circumstances change; American interests are recalculated; and the ally eventually discovers that friendship between states has limits.
Lord Palmerston expressed the cold grammar of great-power politics with remarkable bluntness:
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal.”
There it is.
Interests.
Not friendship.
Not gratitude.
Not even yesterday’s promise.
Interests.
That principle becomes especially uncomfortable when viewed through the Qur’anic warning about human beings becoming consumed by competition for more:
“The mutual rivalry for piling up worldly things diverts you.”
— The Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-Takathur 102:1
I have been searching for a modern political vocabulary for the force described by this verse—not merely the hunger for money, but the relentless accumulation of wealth, power, influence, territory, institutions, information and control.
Perhaps we may call it the *Takathuriya class*: the class of those whose appetite is never satisfied by having enough, because the next objective is always more.
More wealth.
More power.
More influence.
More control.
And in modern America, this phenomenon is no longer confined to old-fashioned industrial capitalism. It reaches into finance, defence, energy, technology, data, digital platforms and the enormous machinery surrounding national security.
The American state is not simply a government.
It is an ecosystem of institutions, interests and permanent structures.
Presidents come and go.
The machinery remains.
And that brings us to a scene unfolding today.
Saudi Arabia has once again found itself looking toward Washington as the security environment around Yemen deteriorates. Houthi forces have advanced along the Red Sea coast toward the strategic Bab el-Mandeb, while attacks connected to the conflict have increased the pressure on Saudi Arabia and on one of the world’s most important maritime routes.
According to reports, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sought President Donald Trump’s support and urged direct American strikes against the Houthis.
Trump said no.
Washington has offered support, intelligence and targeting assistance, but has so far resisted direct military intervention in Yemen.
That “no” may be temporary.
It may be strategic.
It may change tomorrow.
But that is precisely the point.
A powerful ally can say yes today and no tomorrow—not necessarily because the friendship has disappeared, but because the calculation has changed.
And when the calculation changes, the smaller ally may discover how little control it actually possessed over the relationship.
I could almost hear the tiny bells of BāBā Tāl from my rooftop Eyrie.
“BāBā-Tāl” [ the Bell-man] who is my wandering Darvesh guide, who appears anywhere any time. He always wears navey blue Robe, having tiny brass bells stitched with. Blue jeans torn near his knees and white joggers.
He had been unusually quiet.
Then he stirred his coffee and said:
“Bacha!”
I looked toward him.
“Do not study only what presidents say. Study what survives after presidents leave.”
He was right.
Vietnam provides one of the clearest examples.
The United States invested enormous military and political power in South Vietnam. American troops fought there for years. American lives were lost. American taxpayers carried the burden. American presidents repeatedly assured allies of American commitment.
And then the political calculation changed.
The American withdrawal came.
Saigon fell.
For those who had trusted American power, the lesson was devastating: an ally may be essential while its protection serves a larger strategic purpose—and suddenly become expendable when that purpose changes.
Afghanistan offered another painful lesson.
For two decades, the United States and its allies built an enormous military and political project there. The Afghan government and security forces were trained, equipped and supported.
Then came the withdrawal.
The images of Kabul in August 2021 became a symbol of the limits of external guarantees.
Again, the circumstances were different.
Again, the history was complicated.
But again, people who had built their lives around the assumption of continuing American protection discovered that American policy had an expiration date.
East Pakistan was another chapter, with its own tragic complexity.
The crisis of 1971 unfolded amid a brutal political, military and humanitarian catastrophe. Pakistan expected that American strategic alignment would matter. The movement of the U.S. Seventh Fleet into the Indian Ocean became part of the drama surrounding the conflict, but American power ultimately did not prevent the breakup of Pakistan.
The country was divided.
Millions suffered.
And a national wound was left behind.
The lesson is not that America caused every disaster in which an American ally suffered.
That would be historically lazy.
The lesson is more uncomfortable:
An alliance does not necessarily mean that two nations possess identical interests.
The Kurds have learned versions of this lesson more than once.
The Shah of Iran learned it.
Iraqi Kurds learned it.
Others, from Hungary during the Cold War to partners caught in shifting Middle Eastern calculations, have learned variations of it.
And that brings us back to BāBā Tāl.
He held his coffee mug in both hands. The little brass bells on his navy-blue robe were almost silent.
“Bacha,” he said, “look beyond the presidents.”
He paused.
“In some countries, the armed forces and intelligence establishments are not merely institutions of defence. They become visible political forces when civilian institutions are weak, divided or unable to establish roots deep enough to command the confidence of the people. The uniform may not always sit in the presidential chair—but everyone knows where the real weight of power lies.”
His eyes became distant.
“Do you remember Turkey?”
I did.
The attempted military coup of 2016.
Tanks moved through the streets. Military units tried to seize strategic positions. The elected government itself was placed under threat.
And President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan did not simply disappear from public view.
He reached his people.
He called on them to come into the streets.
And they came.
Ordinary Turkish citizens poured onto the roads and confronted military vehicles with their own bodies.
Human beings became the barricade.
That night, the people demonstrated something that weapons alone cannot manufacture:
Legitimacy.
The tanks had armour.
The government had a people.
And the people stood.
BāBā Tāl stirred his coffee.
“Bacha,” he whispered, “that is what political leadership means when the state itself is challenged. A leader does not merely occupy the chair. He reaches the people.”
Then came the sharper part of his whisper.
“Now look across the Atlantic.”
America has changed presidents again and again for almost two and a half centuries.
Faces change.
Parties change.
Slogans change.
Presidents arrive with different visions of the world and different promises to the American people.
Yet behind every elected administration stand permanent institutions: the Pentagon, the intelligence community, the diplomatic bureaucracy, the defence establishment, strategic planners, contractors and the wider national-security machinery whose institutional memory does not disappear when an election ends.
This does not mean American presidents are puppets.
Nor does it mean the Pentagon secretly writes every American foreign-policy decision.
The reality is subtler—and perhaps more powerful.
Elected power changes quickly. Institutional power changes slowly.
A president has a term.
An institution has a memory.
A president inherits decisions.
An institution inherits generations of assumptions, relationships, budgets, doctrines and strategic interests.
That does not eliminate presidential power.
It constrains the environment in which presidential power operates.
And this may help explain something otherwise difficult to understand:
Why can America’s foreign-policy vocabulary change so dramatically from one president to another while certain strategic habits remain remarkably durable?
Why do alliances rise and fall while the larger architecture of American power continues?
Why do presidents promise change while the machinery of national security so often continues moving along established tracks?
Perhaps the answer is not a secret room in the Pentagon where invisible hands pull presidential strings.
Perhaps the answer is something more ordinary—and therefore more powerful:
Institutions have memory.
Presidents have terms.
Institutions have generations.
And that is where America’s relationship with its allies deserves another look.
The issue is not whether America has ever helped its friends.
It has.
The issue is whether a smaller nation can safely confuse American assistance with an unconditional guarantee.
There is a profound difference between:
“We support you because our interests align”
And:
“We will stand with you regardless of how our interests change.”
The first is international politics.
The second is a commitment.
Confusing the two can be fatal.
The Holy Qur’an warns believers about the moral weight of promises:
“And fulfil the covenant; surely the covenant shall be questioned about.”
— The Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-Isra 17:34
And the Holy Prophet Muhammad [Peace and blessings be upon him] warned against the moral danger of broken promises and identified breaking a promise as a mark of hypocrisy.
— Sahih al-Bukhari 33; Sahih Muslim 59
These teachings are not merely private morality.
They offer a standard by which political behaviour can also be examined.
But international politics has its own brutal grammar.
States calculate.
Governments change.
Interests collide.
And great powers rarely surrender their interests merely because a smaller ally believes that friendship has created a permanent moral obligation.
That is why Pakistan must look carefully at the present moment.
The Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, signed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye on August 7, 2026, is explicitly defensive in character. It declares that an armed attack against one member shall be regarded as an attack against all, consistent with the right of individual and collective self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
That is a serious commitment.
And precisely because it is serious, Pakistan must approach it with wisdom—not emotion.
A defensive agreement must not become an invitation to enter every regional conflict.
Nor should Pakistan allow itself to be drawn, step by step, into a war whose original objective has little to do with Pakistan’s own national security.
There is another danger here—one that demands even greater caution.
Imagine Pakistan becoming so emotionally entangled in a regional conflict that its political or military rhetoric begins casually invoking its nuclear capability.
The moment that happens, the world’s conversation could change.
The subject could cease to be Yemen.
It could cease to be Saudi security.
It could cease to be the Red Sea.
The subject could become Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
That would be a strategic nightmare.
A nuclear deterrent is strongest when it is credible, disciplined and restrained—not when it becomes a rhetorical weapon in speeches.
Pakistan should never hand anyone an excuse to transform a regional crisis into an international campaign focused on its nuclear status.
Perhaps that is the real “honey trap” we must guard against—not an imagined secret conspiracy, but the very real possibility of being drawn into a conflict whose consequences eventually fall most heavily on the country that entered it.
Pakistan has learned enough history to know that great-power friendships are not permanent insurance policies.
Neither should Pakistan become anyone’s disposable shield.
The Qur’an says:
“And do not throw yourselves with your own hands into destruction.”
— The Holy Qur’an, Surah Al-Baqarah 2:195
There is wisdom in that warning far beyond the battlefield.
A nation must know when to stand.
It must also know when not to be used.
BāBā Tāl’s bells chimed once.
“Bacha,” he said, “never confuse the man sitting in the chair with the entire house.”
Then he leaned back.
“The man may change.
The house remains.”
I looked toward the west window of my Eyrie.
Margalla Hills were becoming darker.
Below, my old mustard Foxy waited quietly, as if she too had heard the conversation.
And suddenly the entire argument became painfully simple.
America may change presidents.
America may change slogans.
America may change policies.
But America’s permanent institutions, interests and strategic calculations possess a continuity that no election can completely erase.
That is why the world must distinguish between American friendship and American commitment.
And that is why nations that place their survival in the hands of a great power must ask the most uncomfortable question before the crisis—not after it:
What happens when their interests no longer coincide with ours?
Because the history of Vietnam, Afghanistan, East Pakistan, the Kurds, Iran and others does not prove that America always betrays its allies.
History proves something more useful:
No ally should ever build its survival upon an assumption that has never been guaranteed.
And now, as Saudi Arabia looks toward Washington and hears a presidential “No,” Pakistan should listen carefully.
Not with panic.
Not with hostility.
But with memory.
For a country choosing a giant as its friend, there is one truth it must never forget.
■□■*”POETEARS”*■□■
[ coined by T. Hejazi- where tears become poetry and poetry becomes tears]
When you have chosen a giant for your friend,
Do not expect the sky to still defend;
Power keeps faith only with its own,
And leaves the trusting one to meet his end.
And perhaps that is the quietest warning of all:
A great power may be your friend today.
Your survival, however, must remain your responsibility.
■■■