The ongoing run-up to the American presidential elections later this year is already quite colourful, for lack of a better word. While nominee race for the Democrats seems to be fairly in favour of Hillary Clinton now, it is the unexpected juggernaut of one Donald Trump from the Republican camp that has caught everyone by surprise.

Whoever replaces Barack Obama in the White House later this year will have his or her plate full as far as foreign policy is concerned. The Syrian crisis, which currently is in midst of a laughable ceasefire loosely brokered by the international community, will need most of the new president’s bandwidth.

But there have been some long-lingering questions of US foreign policy as well that no one seems to have many answers to, and this includes Washington’s bend towards Pakistan. This relationship between the two countries is often perplexing at best, and seems to be on autopilot with no one sure how to disengage it.

The recent decision by the US to sell eight F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan brought back the central question that policy makers, particularly from India, have been asking for years. Why does Washington keep arming the Pakistan military complex despite knowing very well that the very same complex is also responsible for creating terror strikes against American interests, and India?

The answer to this is as opaque as the Pakistan–US relationship itself. Analysts believe that the US is always on the brink of paranoia, expecting another military coup in Pakistan and death of another civilian government there. Secondly, the US also is under constant pressure over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal and the hypothesis of them falling into the ‘wrong hands’ clearly keeps the US State Department up at night.

However, the above concerns exist at the very end of two varied spectrums of debate. Republican Senator Rand Paul had recently invoked the Arms Control Act of 1976 combined with a resolution raised in the senate in an effort to block the sale of the jets.

"The US and Pakistani relationship has been a troubled one. Though the government of Pakistan has been considered America’s ally in the fight on terrorism, Pakistan’s behavior would suggest otherwise. While we give them billions of dollars in aid, we are simultaneously aware of their intelligence and military apparatus assisting the Afghan Taliban," said Senator Paul.

"In addition to Pakistan's duplicitous nature, it also has a deplorable human rights record. Pakistan often isolates and unjustly jails religious minorities and Christians to include Pakistani Christian Asa Bibi. Only after an international outcry did Pakistan commute Asa Bibi’s death sentence. In addition to Pakistan’s support of terrorism and deplorable human rights record, it continues to imprison Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped the US locate and kill Osama Bin Laden."

Even after his efforts and an ensuing "dogfight" in the US senate, the sale was cleared. This saw the Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, whose committee has jurisdiction over foreign arms sales, to maintain a "hold" on US subsidies being provided for the sale of the jets. Corker cited Pakistan’s "duplicity" in America’s fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan for his committee’s actions.

India has lobbied against the sale of the F-16s openly, and made its displeasure known over Washington’s go ahead. It is, in fact, not about the eight units of the aircraft, but the larger principle of the aid being predominantly used as deterrence building capability against India instead of exclusive anti-terror work. "I am not sure who runs the American policy on Pakistan at times," an Indian government official close to these matters told me recently. "The US presidency itself most of the time seems to be detached on how to deal with Islamabad, and this condition surpasses just individuals as presidents being a problem."

In Jeffery Goldberg’s recent article for The Atlantic titled ‘The Obama Doctrine’, the author gives a small but significant section to Obama on Pakistan via the president’s views on "long-standing assumptions" that riddle American foreign policy processes. Goldberg writes vicariously via many people who have worked with the president and states that Obama "questions why the US should avoid sending its forces into Pakistan to kill Al Qaeda leaders, and he privately questions why Pakistan, which he believes is a disastrously dysfunctional country, should be considered an ally of the US at all."

When I talked with some US officials personally over the years on the issue, which one has to prod around tactfully as it is a topic not many in the US State Department’s middle-ring like to talk about, one finds very little clarity on how exactly the US wants to deal with Pakistan’s well known use of terror as a state policy. While there seems to be unanimous consideration that engagement with Pakistan is critical for American foreign policy overtures, there is also significant confusion. The fact that they know the Pakistani military complex more than often works to undermine American interests in the region, specifically in Afghanistan, in a crude way allows it to keep asking the US for increased aid under the guise of fighting terrorism seems to be well accepted, but Washington as yet has not figured out on how to call this bluff by Pakistan.

Despite the power of the US presidency, however, the chair in itself seems to be kept in captivity by certain policy ruses orchestrated by sections of bureaucracy within the US State Department and perhaps the Pentagon as well. This is not a condition prevailing just under Obama, but has been so since the 9/11 attacks. However, if Goldberg’s sources are to be believed, Obama questioning the very roots of US–Pakistan alliance through his eight-year presidency but not being able to forcefully challenge it speaks volumes.

The way the current presidential race is going in the US, it is likely, as many polls have also predicted, that Democrat front-runner Hillary Clinton could well become the next US president if her Republican challenger turns out to be Donald Trump (which is also highly likely). Under Clinton, who is part of the traditional spinal column of Washington’s ‘establishment’, it may become harder for the American policy machinery to adjust its engagement with Pakistan to a more appropriate bend, which is to call out Islamabad for using its double-edged sword in milking Washington on funds, and undermining it and New Delhi’s security severely in the region via non-state actors.