B Y the beginning of 1982, the United States and Pakistan were ready to renew a defence relationship that had been in suspension since 1965. Congressional waiver of the anti-proliferation Symington Amendment lifted the aid ban imposed on Pakistan in April 1979 and cleared the way for President Ronald Reagan's Republican administration to move ahead with the first instalments of a six-year $3 2 billion programme of economic and military assistance. By failing to adopt a concurrent resolution to block the administration, Congress also approved a foreign military sales transaction of $1 1 billion (to be paid for, in part, by Saudi Arabia) for forty highperformance F16 tactical aircraft, six of which were to be delivered within one year. The programme dwarfs the Carter administration's $400 million aid offer, made in February 1980, an offer which Pakistan's President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq disdainfully dismissed as 'peanuts'. Divided roughly in half between economic aid and military 'assistance programme credits, the Reagan administration package gives Pakistan access to an array of sophisticated military hardware, including attack helicopters, self-propelled howitzers, armoured personnel carriers, medium tanks, guided missiles and radar equipment.' The decision thus to revive America's erstwhile partnership with Pakistan runs parallel to security agreements which the Reagan administration has been attempting to fashion with other friendly regional powers. No less than in these other cases, Washington's courtship of Islamabad has given rise to debate among United States foreign policy observers. There were several motives for Washington's action-alarm over the chaos in Iran, the shock of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and the belief