Shun US policy that is racist to the core

Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward "Eddie" Gallagher is a man of many sins. According to military prosecutors in the United States, Gallagher is responsible for brutally stabbing and murdering a teenage so-called Islamic State fighter, using his sniper rifle on ordinary Iraqis, and boasting about racking up his "kills" to others.

To top it all off, Gallagher is also guilty of taking a triumphant photograph of himself with the young alleged IS fighter whom he had killed. Gallagher was tried and convicted by a military court earlier this year, and was to be deprived of his rank and booted out of the US Navy SEALs.

The US president could not tolerate this. Despite having been told by top military and defense officials that he should leave the issue alone and allow the navy to handle what happened to Gallagher, he decided to intervene and reverse war criminal Gallagher's demotion. This angered the US Navy secretary, who incidentally was made to step down.

The story is important because it can easily be considered a metaphor for how American power is likely to operate in the next decade.

First, it is of course not "news" that the US, either via its armed forces or through other officials, cares little for the lives of brown and black people in places such as Pakistan or Afghanistan or Iraq. The massive death toll in the Iraq and Afghan wars, the crushing depravity of Abu Ghraib, and the torture carried out on suspected terrorists at the CIA black sites are only the incidents that we know of. Others in greater numbers may also have taken place, their perpetrators never caught and their victims never avenged. In simple terms, the exercise of American power in the past two decades has been brash and brutish.

And yet those years before the current president took office represent the ones in which there were still limits to American power. In the past decades, the US, as the liberal democratic giant of the world, tried, at least in name, to toe the line of the rule of law and enforce human rights principles. Many, or even most, times it failed, but it did appear to try.

Human rights reports were regularly issued by the US State Department, and officials routinely weighed the records of every country. In sum, US foreign policy at least tried to pay some sort of lip service to human rights and fair play.

The next decade is going to be different. The US may be making an exit from expensive ground wars, but the use of its special forces to carry out missions such as the killing of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are all examples of what American warfare will look like in the future.

Condoning the deeds of a man such as Gallagher further suggests that the US civilian leadership, particularly if the presidency stays with the Republicans, is going to be completely unfettered in the mayhem it inflicts on enemies, real or imagined. The US president pardoned Gallagher because he has little patience for the rules and procedures that are supposed to ensure how US soldiers exercise their power.

In the US leadership's simple and murderous world, might makes right－and the US has plenty of might. With this world view, the US leader is likely to provide carte blanche to any and all exercises of US power, regardless of whether or not they are humane. The weakening of liberal limits on the exercise of power that began under former US president George W. Bush will now lead to complete evisceration under the incumbent president. The future of the US is likely to be illiberal. The restoration of the rank of a man who did not fight fairly and the commander-in-chief's disregard for the lives of non-white peoples is likely to be a fixture of US foreign policy in the future.

Already, the US has set about eliminating foreign aid to non-Christian states. US aid to Gaza and the West Bank has been indefinitely discontinued; already disbursed aid to Iraq has been left without proper administrators. The liberal constraints that would have functioned as a buffer against overt discrimination against aid-recipient countries based on their religion are no longer regarded as such.

The cumulative impact of these developments requires Pakistan to be very vigilant of the kind of help it accepts from the US in the near future. Despite the criticism offered by US officials vis-à-vis the debt burden incurred by Pakistan in the implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Pakistan should continue to diversify its options and relationships with emerging superpowers.

With such uncertainty as the basis of US foreign policy, the most prudent path would be to maintain a safe distance. If not, Pakistan may end up being like one of the victims of Gallagher's killing sprees－nameless and powerless, and chased by a monster.