SOME people don’t learn, do they? Even after all that has happened since May 2, we continue to behave like a jilted lover, complaining of America’s infidelity, hoping in the process to shame Washington into starting the old affair again.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s interview with Time magazine — his first after the great debacle and, of course, to an American magazine — typifies this mindset.

Mr Gilani unfurled a lengthy list of complaints, the most obvious one was why the US flew solo to slay Osama bin Laden when it could have co-shared the trophy with Pakistan. Then in the pitiable tradition of broken hearts looking for solace through compensation, he demanded that the US immediately do “something” to restore trust.

It is obvious that Mr Gilani — and there are many others like him — have not got the message: the US is not available as a partner, or as a friend (whatever that means in the context of international relations), or even as an agony aunt on whose shoulders we can cry about our strategic problems with India.

If anything, Washington is all geared to use to its advantage the emotional black hole, caused by decades of addiction to the drug called USAID — our decision-makers find themselves in.

It would have been useful if the prime minister had read American and British media reports, or even transcripts of press briefings by the State Department, the White House etc, and paid some attention to how they characterise Pakistan in the post-May 2 events. The description matches that which is generally reserved for officially designated pariah states like North Korea.

Even the most fair and balanced assessment of Pakistan’s status would put the country above the Taliban as a threat to Washington’s core national interest (that means whatever the US wants it to mean at any given point in time) and global peace (this also means whatever the US wants it to mean at any given point in time).

Congressmen have moved legislation to stop the supply of aid to Pakistan. Others are calling for de-nuclearisation and imposition of a stringent sanctions regime. Those nursing a visceral hatred for Pakistan like Zalmay Khalilzad have openly argued for tightening the screws on the country. He believes that because the country is on the defensive the time is ripe for getting maximum concessions out of it on Afghanistan, on Taliban resistance leaders and also on peace with India.

Farid Zakaria — known for using his pen like a poisoned sword when it comes to Pakistan — has also been on a rubbish-this-state campaign. He has conveniently concluded that the country’s intelligence is guilty of both incompetence and abetment. And these are just two names out of a daily heap of commentary that shows Pakistan to be a country that deserves the knockout punch as part of the so-called final solution.

It is inconceivable for the waters of this broken dam of distrust that are flowing Pakistan’s way not to fundamentally alter the shape of Barack Obama’s policy towards Pakistan. The administration itself has unleashed these charging waters of change.

The US believes it has have Pakistan against the ropes and now is the time to lay into its security apparatus and seek total compliance.

Pakistan’s survival in this changed environment depends on the ability of the political and military elite at the helm of affairs to first and foremost appreciate that the old era is over. There is no point in hankering after a past that can’t be retrieved or rebuilt. What once was cannot be anymore.

More importantly, the ruling elite must see this change as an opportunity to do something that it espoused in theory but never took up in practice: conceiving a more balanced foreign and defence policy that optimally uses the space for fresh diplomatic action created by a failed friendship with the US.

This is not to suggest that Islamabad must give up on repairing the damage caused to bilateral ties. Nor is this an argument for simply ignoring US concerns about the intelligence slippage that allowed Osama bin Laden to live in Pakistan for such a long time. And most certainly this is not an invitation for anti-American demos and pandering to churlish reactions like the demand to expel the US ambassador from Pakistan.

This is frivolous behaviour that we must avoid. It only proves right all the unreasonable stereotype notions that the world has about us. Moreover, sometimes this irrationality of extreme reaction is also used to block debate on the need for internal reform and accountability. We need not waste precious energies on burning US flags. There is so much mess that we have at home that must be put right.

What this means is that Pakistan for the first time in its history has an occasion to seriously and methodically redesign its relations with the US. It can move from the status of a slave state to a free entity whose economy, defence and politics do not hinge on America’s wishes —an entity that might not be powerful enough to stop high-flying drones or low-flying helicopters but has the capacity to sustain itself in a tough world on its own.

It would be a monumental folly if the ruling elite continued to insist that May 2 has been a “tactical deviation” and the strategic goals of the US and Pakistan are the same. Pakistan and the US are not on the same strategic page. They are not friends. They are two different countries with different interests and different requirements.

This time around it is not about trust deficit that can be narrowed. There is no romantic long-term goal for which long bridges need to be built for the two to meet again and exchange roses. It was never a great relationship, and now that it is over, both need to learn to coexist rather than attempt to be the odd couple again.

The writer is a senior journalist at DawnNews.