That’s a big judgement on someone. I hope it is not so because they aren’t doing Paksiatn’s bidding anymore.
I would call them super smart. They have realised what real politik is and have played it quite well in the recent past. Saudi has spread it’s wings and has shown a hint of a finger to the US. Qatar and UAE have prospered and have shown decent policy maturity. Relations with Israel is another pragmatic step.
It is Paksiatn that has failed to gauge the drift. It is blaming Ummah for leaving it in lurch, while all it’s ills are it’s own doing.
You Indians, if you follow your own anti-Pakistan blogger Shehkar Gupta, would know that Pakistan's indicators were ahead of India from 1947 and well into the 1980s. Mostly the same class of judiciary, the same class of military officials, the same class of intelligentsia, the same class of beauracracy as now but Pakistan wasn't as bad as now. The rot in Pakistan has multiple causes, the primary being the blowback from Pakistan's involvement in the USA-USSR war in Afghanistan. But, yes, Pakistan has its own major drawbacks: Feudal culture which restricts women's participation in large parts of Pakistan. A military which engineers regime-changes mostly for wrong reasons. A very large, semi-literate population.
And the infusion of foreign cash since 1979 has destroyed the socio-political fabric of Pakistan.
BUT... the
root cause of Pakistan's problems are Pakistan being a 'Security State', which itself is because of the conflict over Kashmir. I doubt if Pakistan were a 'normal' State in 1979 Pakistan would have got involved in the USA-USSR proxy war in Afghanistan so stupidly with drastic affects on Pakistan which exist to this day.
Also, while Pakistanis are in perpetual breast-beating mode, why not compare with Sri Lanka's recent misfortunes? There, an island nation with no more the internal conflict, continuity of power and policies, and no significant external enemy, still managed to falter spectacularly! In case of Pakistan, it is Pakistan's foreign affairs which have messed up Pakistan both externally and internally! Look at Iraq: A country of much better educated people AND with huge natural resources ended up where it is because of foreign policy blunders starting 1979. Look at Somalia too: Similar foreign policy blunder destroyed a once promising country a few decades ago.