Hillary Clinton has been a vocal critic, and Pakistan will be able to get away with much less than it would like under her watchful eye. There are going to be US administration press conferences and statements that will give Pakistani diplomats sleepless nights if she finds herself in charge. We might worrying too much in advance, she might just lose, but she is a powerhouse and one of the most accomplished politicians of her time. 81 percent of Democrats have said in a poll that they would consider voting for her. Clinton will enter the race with a strong support base that dwarfs that of her potential rivals.
As Secretary of State, Clinton has defended the government’s use of drone strikes, calling them “one of the most effective and controversial elements of the Obama Administration’s strategy”. This, and her book Hard Choices, has made her very unpopular in Pakistan. She has also said: “dozens of senior terrorists had been taken off the battlefield by drones.” She will be executive over a country in with majority of the population approve of US drone strikes targeting extremists in counties like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. We can expect less talk and more action from her, and she will not be shy of hard moves like Obama has been.
With rivals like Conservative Senator Ted Cruz, who has been fighting tooth and nail to destroy the Iran deal negotiations to be replaced by more sanctions on Iran, countries like ours may as well like to take our chances with Clinton, just to preserve our way of life. We are just one Republican away from an intervention into our business, and we would rather preserve our own democracy than have America impose its own version.
What matters to Pakistan is how the next president deals with the issue of security in the Middle East. We are, quite sadly, bound to the region, as the recent furore over intervention in Yemen has shown. Yemen’s fate and Iran’s nuclear deal will determine what course regional terrorism takes and how we have to structure our policy with or against Iran. The role that the US will play, is unpredictable, especially based on who will win. Between Clinton and Obama, we knew that Obama would be the lesser evil. We don’t know if there is a lesser evil to root for anymore.