ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 applies the model to the US-Pakistan relation. Because of its enduring rivalry with India, Pakistan has historically sought protection from a patron. The United States, as a global dominant socializer, fit the bill. The analysis points out that because of its ontological insecurity, Pakistan has strived to maintain an appearance of well-socialized agent, limiting its provocation and behavior of deviance. Thus, while Pakistan has tried to altercast the US as a patron, Washington has alternately adopted and rejected this role while blurring normative boundaries. The chapter argues that the perceived incompatibility in US-Pakistan roles is in fact the result of social role misunderstandings and mixed social signals: each country tries to fit the other into a role that the other does not want to adopt fully while sending contradictory signals. Nuclear proliferation illustrates that social ambiguity in expectations and boundaries creates the ground for deviance. The analysis finds that the difficulty of US-Pakistan relations does not lie in their respective NRCs and their (in)compatibility, but rather in role expectations. This result explains that Pakistan has used nonconformity as a power multiplier, while its national role conceptions remain largely compatible with the global leaders.
