B2 · Upper Intermediate
14 min
diplomacygeopoliticssouth asian historycold war legacy
The Useful City: Pakistan and the Art of Impossible Diplomacy
La Ciudad Útil: Pakistán y el Arte de la Diplomacia Imposible
The Wall Street Journal reports that Iran and the United States may resume talks in Islamabad next week. That piece of news opens a deeper question: why Pakistan, and why always Pakistan? Fletcher and Octavio dig into the extraordinary history of a country that has survived by making itself indispensable to everyone at once.
El Wall Street Journal informa que Irán y Estados Unidos podrían reanudar sus conversaciones en Islamabad la próxima semana. Esa noticia abre una pregunta más profunda: ¿por qué Pakistán, y por qué siempre Pakistán? Fletcher y Octavio exploran la historia extraordinaria de un país que ha sobrevivido siendo indispensable para todo el mundo a la vez.
7 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| intermediario | intermediary, go-between | Pakistán ha actuado como intermediario entre potencias que no pueden hablar directamente. |
| indispensable | indispensable, essential | Un país puede sobrevivir en una región peligrosa si se hace indispensable para todos. |
| alinearse | to align oneself, to side with | Durante la Guerra Fría, Pakistán decidió alinearse con Occidente en lugar de mantenerse neutral. |
| canal diplomático | diplomatic channel | Kissinger utilizó a Pakistán como canal diplomático secreto para abrir relaciones con China. |
| por delegación | by proxy | Los conflictos por delegación permiten a las grandes potencias luchar sin enfrentarse directamente. |
| contención | restraint, containment | La contención que mostraron ambos países después de los ataques fronterizos fue sorprendente. |
| subjuntivo | subjunctive (mood) | Es importante que uses el subjuntivo cuando expresas duda o posibilidad en español. |
Ninety kilometers from the Afghan border, at the foot of the Margalla Hills, there's a city that has spent its entire sixty-year existence being useful to people who can't talk to each other directly.
Islamabad.
And this week, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Iran and the United States may sit back down there next week.
Y lo que me parece fascinante no es la reunión en sí, sino el hecho de que nadie se sorprende de que sea en Pakistán.
And what I find fascinating isn't the meeting itself, it's the fact that nobody seems surprised it's in Pakistan.
Como si fuera algo completamente natural.
As if that were completely natural.
Which is, when you actually stop and think about it, a genuinely strange thing.
Pakistan shares a border with Iran.
It's also one of the United States' longest-running and most complicated allies.
And somehow, it has kept both relationships alive simultaneously for decades.
Claro, y esa capacidad de mantener relaciones contradictorias al mismo tiempo no es un accidente.
Right, and that ability to maintain contradictory relationships at the same time isn't an accident.
Es una estrategia de supervivencia que Pakistán ha perfeccionado desde su fundación en 1947.
It's a survival strategy that Pakistan has been perfecting since its founding in 1947.
Let's back up, because the history here is genuinely rich.
Pakistan was born in 1947 out of the partition of British India, and from the very beginning it made a geopolitical calculation that shaped everything that came after.
La decisión fue alinearse con Occidente.
The decision was to align with the West.
En la Guerra Fría, cuando India eligió el no alineamiento, Pakistán eligió a Estados Unidos.
In the Cold War, when India chose non-alignment, Pakistan chose the United States.
Se unió a la SEATO en 1954 y a la CENTO en 1955, que era básicamente el equivalente de la OTAN para el sur de Asia.
It joined SEATO in 1954 and CENTO in 1955, which was basically the NATO equivalent for South Asia.
And the logic was pretty clear: Pakistan needed a great power patron to balance India, and the US needed a frontline state bordering the Soviet Union and later the USSR's sphere of influence in Afghanistan.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y eso creó una relación que siempre ha sido muy transaccional.
And that created a relationship that has always been very transactional.
No es una alianza basada en valores compartidos, como quizás la de Estados Unidos con el Reino Unido.
It's not an alliance based on shared values, like perhaps the one between the US and the UK.
Es una alianza basada en la conveniencia mutua.
It's an alliance based on mutual convenience.
I covered that relationship for years, and 'transactional' is the polite word for it.
The Americans have needed Pakistan enough to tolerate things they would never accept from an ally in Europe.
The Pakistanis have taken the money and the weapons and retained enough independence to do things Washington hated.
Como desarrollar armas nucleares, por ejemplo.
Like developing nuclear weapons, for example.
En los años ochenta, mientras Estados Unidos financiaba la yihad afgana contra los soviéticos a través de Pakistán, Pakistán estaba construyendo su bomba atómica en secreto.
In the eighties, while the United States was funding the Afghan jihad against the Soviets through Pakistan, Pakistan was secretly building its atomic bomb.
Y Washington hizo la vista gorda durante años.
And Washington looked the other way for years.
The Reagan administration certified every year that Pakistan didn't have a nuclear weapons program, which was, let's say, a creative interpretation of the available evidence.
Y ahí está la clave de por qué Pakistán puede actuar como mediador hoy.
And there's the key to why Pakistan can act as a mediator today.
Porque durante décadas ha demostrado que puede guardar secretos, que puede mantener canales abiertos con enemigos declarados, y que tiene la suficiente credibilidad con todas las partes para ser útil.
Because for decades it has demonstrated that it can keep secrets, that it can keep channels open with declared enemies, and that it has enough credibility with all sides to be useful.
Now, the Iran side of this equation is equally complicated.
Pakistan and Iran share a nine-hundred-kilometer border, a border that cuts through some of the most desolate and lawless terrain on earth, Balochistan.
And that border has been a source of both connection and serious tension.
Antes de la Revolución Islámica de 1979, Irán y Pakistán tenían relaciones relativamente cordiales.
Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran and Pakistan had relatively cordial relations.
El sha de Irán era un aliado de Occidente, al igual que Pakistán, y compartían intereses de seguridad comunes en la región.
The Shah of Iran was a Western ally, just like Pakistan, and they shared common security interests in the region.
And then 1979 happens, and suddenly Pakistan's two key relationships are pointing in completely opposite directions.
Washington despises the new Iranian government.
Tehran despises Washington.
Pakistan is stuck in the middle holding both their phone numbers.
Y eso se complica aún más por la dimensión religiosa.
And it gets even more complicated by the religious dimension.
Pakistán es mayoritariamente sunita, e Irán es el gran poder chií del mundo islámico.
Pakistan is predominantly Sunni, and Iran is the great Shia power in the Islamic world.
Cuando Irán trató de exportar su revolución chií en los años ochenta, eso generó tensiones sectarias dentro de Pakistán que todavía existen.
When Iran tried to export its Shia revolution in the eighties, that created sectarian tensions inside Pakistan that still exist today.
There were years in the nineties when Pakistani Sunni extremist groups, some of them with ISI connections, were killing Shia Pakistanis in the streets.
And the Iranians were supporting certain Shia groups in response.
It was a proxy conflict running inside Pakistan's own borders.
Es que la historia interna de Pakistán es, en muchos sentidos, un reflejo en miniatura de todas las tensiones de la región.
The internal history of Pakistan is, in many ways, a miniature reflection of all the region's tensions.
Tienes al mismo tiempo la influencia de Arabia Saudí, la influencia de Irán, la sombra de India, la frontera con Afganistán.
You have at the same time Saudi influence, Iranian influence, India's shadow, the border with Afghanistan.
Es un país que gestiona demasiadas presiones al mismo tiempo.
It's a country managing too many pressures at once.
And yet it's still here.
Still functioning, still nuclear, still hosting international diplomacy.
There's something almost perversely impressive about that.
Completamente de acuerdo.
Completely agree.
Y hay un precedente histórico muy importante que mucha gente olvida.
And there's a very important historical precedent that many people forget.
En 1971, fue precisamente a través de Pakistán que Henry Kissinger voló en secreto a Pekín para preparar la visita de Nixon a China.
In 1971, it was precisely through Pakistan that Henry Kissinger flew secretly to Beijing to prepare Nixon's visit to China.
Islamabad fue el canal secreto que abrió el mundo.
Islamabad was the secret channel that opened the world.
The Kissinger back-channel.
Right, he flew out of Islamabad on what was officially a stomach ailment, landed in Beijing, and set in motion one of the most consequential diplomatic openings of the twentieth century.
Pakistan's role in that is almost entirely forgotten.
Y eso no fue casual.
And that wasn't accidental.
El presidente Yahya Khan facilitó ese canal de forma deliberada, porque Pakistan entendió que ser útil en ese momento le daba una influencia enorme con Washington.
President Yahya Khan facilitated that channel deliberately, because Pakistan understood that being useful in that moment gave it enormous leverage with Washington.
La diplomacia del intermediario tiene su propia lógica de poder.
The diplomacy of the intermediary has its own logic of power.
There's a phrase for countries that operate this way.
Some scholars call them 'pivot states,' others say 'swing states,' though that phrase means something different in American politics.
Countries whose geographic position or multiple allegiances make them uniquely useful as go-betweens.
Y Pakistán es quizás el ejemplo más extremo de ese tipo de estado en la historia moderna.
And Pakistan is perhaps the most extreme example of that type of state in modern history.
Piénsalo: tiene frontera con Irán, con Afganistán, con la India, y con China.
Think about it: it borders Iran, Afghanistan, India, and China.
Es nuclear.
It's nuclear.
Tiene el sexto ejército más grande del mundo.
It has the sixth-largest army in the world.
Y ha sobrevivido décadas de inestabilidad interna que habrían destruido a casi cualquier otro estado.
And it has survived decades of internal instability that would have destroyed almost any other state.
Four military coups.
Three wars with India.
A civil war that resulted in Bangladesh being carved out of its eastern half.
The assassination of two prime ministers.
And still, Islamabad is where you go when you need someone to hold the door open between enemies.
Aunque también hay que ser honestos sobre los límites de ese papel.
Although we also have to be honest about the limits of that role.
Pakistán no es un mediador neutral, como podría serlo Suiza o Qatar.
Pakistan isn't a neutral mediator, the way Switzerland or Qatar might be.
Tiene sus propios intereses muy definidos, y esos intereses influyen en cómo gestiona los canales diplomáticos.
It has its own very defined interests, and those interests influence how it manages diplomatic channels.
That's a fair pushback.
The ISI has its own foreign policy that doesn't always track with the civilian government's.
There have been times when Pakistani intelligence was simultaneously fighting a US-backed war on terrorism and sheltering the people the US was trying to fight.
Osama bin Laden lived in Abbottabad for years.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y esa ambigüedad es parte de lo que hace a Pakistán tan interesante y tan peligroso al mismo tiempo.
And that ambiguity is part of what makes Pakistan so interesting and so dangerous at the same time.
No es un actor que actúa de buena fe en el sentido convencional.
It's not an actor that operates in good faith in the conventional sense.
Es un actor que actúa según una racionalidad propia, que a veces coincide con los intereses occidentales y a veces no.
It's an actor that operates according to its own rationality, which sometimes coincides with Western interests and sometimes doesn't.
And the Iran-Pakistan border is also worth pausing on, because it's been active in a different way recently.
Earlier this year there were actual cross-border missile and drone strikes between Iran and Pakistan, after Pakistan said Iran had hit a village in Balochistan killing two children.
Sí, fue un episodio muy tenso que la gente olvidó rápidamente porque la atención estaba en otras partes.
Yes, it was a very tense episode that people quickly forgot because attention was elsewhere.
Irán atacó lo que dijo eran bases de un grupo militante sunita, el Jaish al-Adl, que opera en el lado pakistaní.
Iran struck what it said were bases of a Sunni militant group, Jaish al-Adl, operating on the Pakistani side.
Pakistán respondió atacando objetivos en la provincia iraní de Sistán-Baluchistán.
Pakistan responded by striking targets in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province.
Y luego los dos países decidieron llamarlo diplomacia y seguir adelante.
And then both countries decided to call it diplomacy and move on.
Which tells you something.
Two nuclear-armed states exchanged missile strikes and within days decided that was enough and pulled back.
That restraint is partly geography, partly economics, partly the fact that both countries have bigger problems than each other.
Y eso refuerza por qué puede funcionar ahora como sede.
And that reinforces why it can work as a venue now.
No es que Pakistán e Irán sean amigos.
It's not that Pakistan and Iran are friends.
Es que tienen suficiente historia de lidiar el uno con el otro, incluidos los conflictos, como para poder sentarse en la misma ciudad sin que todo colapse.
It's that they have enough history of dealing with each other, including conflicts, to be able to sit in the same city without everything collapsing.
And there's one more layer to this that I think gets underreported.
China has spent the last decade pouring money into Pakistan through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure.
And China has also been deeply involved in trying to broker regional stability around Iran.
Es cierto.
That's true.
China bróker el acuerdo de normalización entre Arabia Saudí e Irán en 2023.
China brokered the normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023.
Así que si ahora Pakistán, que está muy ligado a China económicamente, alberga conversaciones entre Irán y Estados Unidos, eso sugiere que puede haber una coordinación más amplia entre bastidores que no vemos.
So if Pakistan, which is very tied to China economically, is now hosting talks between Iran and the United States, that suggests there may be broader coordination behind the scenes that we don't see.
Which would be remarkable, genuinely remarkable, if Washington is effectively using a Chinese economic partner as the venue for its most sensitive Iran diplomacy.
That's either a sign of how desperate the situation is, or a sign of how pragmatic everyone has gotten.
O las dos cosas a la vez.
Or both at the same time.
Mira, lo que me parece más significativo históricamente es esto: durante setenta años, Pakistán ha conseguido sobrevivir en un vecindario imposible siendo, como dijiste antes, útil para todo el mundo.
Look, what I find most historically significant is this: for seventy years, Pakistan has managed to survive in an impossible neighborhood by being, as you said before, useful to everyone.
Eso no es debilidad.
That's not weakness.
Es una forma de poder muy particular.
It's a very particular form of power.
The power of indispensability.
It's the same logic that kept small medieval city-states alive when empires were grinding each other down on either side.
You make yourself too useful to destroy.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y la pregunta que me hago es si eso puede durar.
And the question I ask myself is whether that can last.
Pakistán tiene una deuda pública enorme, una economía frágil, y tensiones internas que no desaparecen.
Pakistan has an enormous public debt, a fragile economy, and internal tensions that don't go away.
Es posible que esa capacidad de ser indispensable tenga un límite.
It's possible that this capacity to be indispensable has a limit.
History doesn't guarantee continuity.
Countries that seemed structurally necessary have vanished before.
But for now, Islamabad is the room where it might happen.
And that is a sentence that would have sounded completely insane twenty years ago when I was writing about Pakistan after the bin Laden raid.
Oye, hace un momento usaste la palabra 'indispensabilidad', que es perfectamente correcta en inglés.
Hey, a moment ago you used the word 'indispensability', which is perfectly correct in English.
Pero en español diríamos 'indispensabilidad' también, o más naturalmente 'ser indispensable'.
But in Spanish we'd also say 'indispensabilidad', or more naturally 'ser indispensable'.
Lo que sí me llamó la atención fue cuando yo dije 'es posible que esa capacidad tenga un límite'.
What did catch my attention was when I said 'es posible que esa capacidad tenga un límite'.
¿Te fijaste en cómo construí esa frase?
Did you notice how I built that sentence?
Actually, yes.
'Es posible que tenga'.
Not 'tiene'.
Why not just say 'tiene un límite' directly?
Porque en español, cuando introduces una idea con 'es posible que', el verbo que sigue tiene que ir en subjuntivo.
Because in Spanish, when you introduce an idea with 'es posible que', the verb that follows has to go into the subjunctive.
No es una certeza, es una posibilidad.
It's not a certainty, it's a possibility.
Si dices 'es posible que tiene', suenas como alguien que acaba de llegar al idioma.
If you say 'es posible que tiene', you sound like someone who just arrived to the language.
Como tú, hace tres años.
Like you, three years ago.
Fair.
So 'es posible que tenga', 'es probable que sea', 'es importante que sepamos'.
The subjunctive kicks in whenever you're expressing something other than a straight fact.
Eso es.
That's it.
Duda, posibilidad, deseo, expectativa.
Doubt, possibility, desire, expectation.
En cuanto añades ese tipo de incertidumbre con una expresión impersonal, el subjuntivo es automático.
As soon as you add that kind of uncertainty with an impersonal expression, the subjunctive is automatic.
Aunque te digo que hay estudiantes de español que estudian esto durante años y todavía dicen 'es posible que Pakistan tiene un futuro difícil'.
Though I'll tell you that there are Spanish students who study this for years and still say 'es posible que Pakistan tiene un futuro difícil'.
Well.
'Es posible que yo cometa ese error algún día.' How was that?
Perfecto.
Perfect.
Aunque la realidad es que es más que posible, Fletcher.
Although the reality is that it's more than possible, Fletcher.
Es prácticamente seguro.
It's practically certain.