The American solution has been a robust package of assistance to Pakistan, beginning with the Bush administration in 2001. The United States sought to reimburse Pakistan for the costs of supporting our war in Afghanistan. In the eyes of the Pakistanis, this became payment for their war against domestic terrorism, which has cost Pakistan 50,000 lives and untold billions, and was widely perceived as a bad deal.

Despite an infusion of about $1 billion per year of development assistance during the Obama administration, money never gave the United States the leverage it desired. The Pakistani generals who run Afghanistan policy from their headquarters in Rawalpindi were never convinced that they had to choose between their relationship with the United States and their relationship with the Taliban.

I can vouch from bitter personal experience that I hammered away at the need to make that choice for four years, but never got any purchase. The generals knew that as long as the United States maintained an army in Afghanistan, it was more dependent on Pakistan than Pakistan was on it. This disconnect between Washington and Rawalpindi led to the decline in United States-Pakistan relations that was already highly visible in the last year of the Obama administration.

The harsh truth is that American leverage over Rawalpindi and Islamabad has been declining. And as United States aid levels have diminished — reflecting bipartisan unhappiness with Pakistani policy — aid from the Chinese has increased. China has invested around $62 billion in Pakistani infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an element of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Its magnitude and its transformation of parts of Pakistan dwarf anything the United States has ever undertaken.

Thus, the Trump administration’s attempt at humiliating and penalizing Pakistan is unlikely to work. Pakistan, like most countries, reacts very badly to public attempts to force its hand. It is likely to respond by showing how it can truly undercut our position in Afghanistan.

A better approach would be to privately convey, at the highest levels and without equivocation that the only way to preserve any relationship with the United States is to cut all ties with the Taliban, including the Haqqanis. The Trump administration, with its hard-line reputation and willingness to reject all previous United States policy, could credibly deliver this message.