Pakistan-US relations are marked with a long history of mistrust. Part of this mistrust arose from our unrealistic expectations from the US and part has been due to the failure of both the countries to develop strong linkages based on mutual interests. It has remained a transactional relationship, necessitating coming together whenever the need arises. There had been two major alliances between Pakistan and the US: One was against the Soviets during the Soviet-Afghan war and the other was against terrorism after 9/11. In the former alliance Pakistan had been the blue-eyed boy with the freedom to nurture the jihadists to be used in the Afghan war. In the latter, the job was reversed. Now Pakistan had to eliminate the jihadists who had spread across the globe from Afghanistan after the US had hastily withdrawn from there once the Soviet Union was defeated in 1989. For almost a decade, Afghanistan simmered in civil war. The cauldron ended with the Taliban coming to power until they initiated a series of laws that violated human rights. The responsibility for Afghanistan’s turbulence lies squarely on the US, on Pakistan and on the Afghans. If the US had dumped Afghanistan after defeating the Soviets, Pakistan is equally responsible for creating the Taliban to keep its foothold in Afghanistan. However, saying that it was the US policies that had brought Afghanistan to this pass and that terrorism in Pakistan is as well the result of US wrong policies is going a bit too far. Defence Minister Khwaja Asif needs to revaluate the statement he has made about US-Pakistan relations in the context of Afghanistan and the war against terrorism, in which he has accused the US of a trust deficit between both the countries. This trust deficit that both the countries have developed over the years has been the result of wrong polices pursued by both Pakistan and the US. The onus cannot be laid on the US alone. If we feel betrayed by the US, so does the US feel betrayed by us. These feelings are based on facts and the facts are that we differentiated between the good and bad Taliban during the war against terrorism, and we supported the Afghan Taliban and provided them the wherewithal to defeat our ally, the US. Neither did we serve the US interest during these 13 years nor ours, with the result that Pakistan is fighting its own war against terrorism. The lesson to learn here is that states serve their own interests and that realism rather than false expectations make relations stronger between states. *