The odds were uneven: four former US presidents representing continuity pitted against a ruinous incumbent.

On 18 June 2026, former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden joined Barack Obama at the inauguration of the Obama Presidential Centre and Library in Chicago. President Donald J. Trump was absent.

Trump was in France to attend the G7 meeting in Evian. He arrived there late with the faux apology: “I am the Boss!” – a Trumpism akin to King Louis XIV’s arrogant declaration: "L'État, c'est moi!" [I am the State!].

Later, at a banquet in Louis XIV’s sumptuous palace at Versailles, Trump with dramatic flair signed the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding. That document should have been printed in vanishing ink, for in Hamlet’s words, it may well suffer being ‘more honour’d in the breach than the observance’.

Trump’s haste to extricate himself from a war he started at Netanyahu’s Iago-like urging is understandable. Each of his four predecessors had been tempted by Israel’s anti-Iran promptings, but resisted. Trump caved in. He should have heeded Louis XIV’s better advice: ‘Impatience for victory guarantees defeat.’  

Trump’s presidential archives will give his gilded version of events, unlike the records (some necessarily redacted for security reasons) contained in the 14 presidential libraries established  by U.S. presidents from F. D. Roosevelt (1941) to Barack Obama (2026). Outgoing presidents were allowed to retain custody of their papers, except for Richard Nixon whose archives were detained by the U.S. government after he left office in 1974. They were released gradually, from 1994 until 2007.

In 2001, I had the chance to research in Nixon’s papers held by the National Archives in College Park, MD. I asked for the papers connected with Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in 1971. The files were brought and laid on a trolley. Suddenly, everyone was ordered to vacate the building. It was 11 September [9/11]. New York and Washington were under attack. Mercifully, the next morning, the National Archives reopened and I was able to complete my research.

Today, thanks to the American system that encourages remote research,  anyone can access records on aspects of US-Pakistan relations since 1947. Researchers in Pakistan can know that in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the US was already aware of Pakistan’s production of ‘fissible material’, its ‘cold testing’ prototype nuclear weapons, and the production of weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium. U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan gave the Pakistani bomb a low priority, in exchange for Islamabad’s assistance in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

U.S. presidential records reveal that in June 1976, Ambassador H. Byroade reported on PM Bhutto’s ‘deep, strongly nationalistic, commitment’ to his nuclear program. The U.S. suspected that ‘some unnamed country’ [Israel] might destroy Pakistan’s budding program. Bhutto expressed his chagrin at President Gerald Ford’s letter of March 1976, advising against the purchase of a reprocessing plant from France. Bhutto argued that his decision was ‘irreversible’ and that to ‘back down now would be disastrous for him as a political leader’. Bhutto emphasised that the ‘confidence and morale’ of the people depended on Pakistan achieving nuclear security. Abandoning the programme would demoralise ‘the Pakistani people as a whole, even including the illiterates.’

Such accessibility to archives abroad has spoiled researchers in Pakistan. Those aspiring to research our national archives in Islamabad need to ‘formally contact both the National Archives of Pakistan and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs outlining their proposed research’.

I tried in 2003. Despite the permission of the Cabinet Secretary nominally responsible for the archives, the only declassified files made available to me were of the Simon Commission of 1927, twenty years before Independence.

No Pakistani president or leader has thought fit to endow a library.  Few have read or even written books on their own, unlike U.S. presidents who feel obliged to author at least one.

Barack Obama, opening his library in Chicago, referred to himself as ‘a mixed race kid with a weird back story and a name nobody could pronounce’. He described 1776 as a time when ‘the strong dominated the weak [;] the many were ruled by the few’. Without naming Trump, Obama said: ‘Our military and law enforcement owe allegiance not to any president or political party but to the people and our Constitution.’  And without mentioning the attack by disgruntled Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol building on 6 January 2021, Obama reiterated his belief in ‘the peaceful transfer of power after the people have spoken in fair and free elections’.

His feisty wife Michelle went directly for Trump’s jugular. She reminded her audience that, unlike Trump, her husband had ended a war and won a peace prize.

No wonder Trump preferred Versailles to Chicago.  

F. S. AIJAZUDDIN        

[Dawn, 25 June 2026]