Combat Terrorism on Your Own Soil, US Secretary of State Tells Pakistan

New Delhi: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, outlining the foreign policy of the Donald Trump administration as the President prepares to mark one year since taking office next month.

Tillerson, who said in the Op-Ed that he was “proud” of American diplomacy had terse terms for Pakistan, whom he chastised once more for the lack of effort it has shown in combating terror emanating from its soil. He said while the United States was willing to partner with Pakistan to combat terrorism, India’s neighbour must show the willingness to work with the US as well.

Talking about the Trump administration’s strategy in Af-Pak region, Tillerson wrote, “A commitment to stopping Islamist terrorism and extremism also motivated the administration’s decision to adopt a new South Asia strategy, which focuses on Afghanistan. That country cannot become a safe haven for terrorists, as it was in the days before the September 11 attacks.”

While much of the opinion piece focused on the US’s containment strategy vis-à-vis North Korea, Tillerson also spoke of a rising China with caution. “A central component of our North Korea strategy is persuading China to exert its decisive economic leverage on Pyongyang. China has applied certain import bans and sanctions, but it could and should do more. We will also continue to pursue American interests in other areas of our relationship, including trade imbalances, intellectual property theft and China’s troubling military activities in the South China Sea and elsewhere. China’s rise as an economic and military power requires Washington and Beijing to consider carefully how to manage our relationship for the next 50 years,” he said.

Throughout his tenure as President so far, Donald Trump has been beleaguered with allegations that he won the 2016 elections with help from Russians, who colluded against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

While Trump has been less than willing to take a harsh stand against Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, Tillerson said, “On Russia, we have no illusions about the regime we are dealing with. The United States today has a poor relationship with a resurgent Russia that has invaded its neighbours Georgia and Ukraine in the last decade and undermined the sovereignty of Western nations by meddling in our election and others’.”