Tens of millions of Pakistanis are voting Thursday for a parliament that will elect a prime minister whose grip on office will depend on his willingness to cooperate with the country’s real power holders, the leaders of the armed forces.

It’s because of this reality that the White House and State Department are refraining from taking sides in elections in which the main American concern is competing with China for influence in a country in which both Washington and Beijing are pouring billions in arms.

It’s all part of The New Great Game in which Washington remains acutely aware of Pakistan’s historic hostility with neighboring India, whom America is trying to draw into its defensive alignment against China.

“I think most Pakistani voters will tell you that Pakistan’s democracy is badly damaged,” said a senior fellow at Brookings’  Center for Middle Eastern policy, Madiha Afzal. “Pakistan’s elections have always been managed. Pakistan’s military has always kind of determined the outcome.”

It’s clear that General Munir and his top aides have already decided that a three-time former prime minister, 74-year-old Nawaz Sharif, is the man to lead a country whose 245 million citizens average in their early 20s.

Mr. Sharif, in three previous terms as prime minister, has clashed with the military, been convicted of corruption, exiled to London, won a reprieve — and is fully expected to carry on welcoming arms from both China and America. 

China now is Pakistan’s biggest arms supplier, and has built a road through the high Himalayas to Pakistani ports on the Arabian Sea — the biggest success of its Belt and Road initiative for vastly increasing Chinese trade to the middle east, Africa and Europe.

Far from condemning a system in which the most popular candidate, the former cricket star and former prime minister, Imran Khan, has been convicted of numerous crimes and safely jailed away from the madding crowd, neither President Biden nor the State Department are scolding Pakistan for ignoring basic democratic principles.

Rather, a State Department spokesperson came out with the usual mealy-mouthed obfuscation, saying “We’re continuing to monitor Pakistan’s electoral process quite closely” and “have concerns about all incidents of violence and restrictions on media freedom; freedom of expression, including internet freedom; and peaceful and  peaceful assembly and association.” And so on.

Quite aside from the desire not to upset the Pakistani regime, whoever is in charge, Washington does not feel too sorry for Mr. Khan, who as prime minister, pointedly visited President Putin at Moscow shortly after the Russians invaded Ukraine. After his ouster in a no-confidence vote in April 2022, Mr. Khan blamed Washington for plotting to get rid of him before deciding the army was to blame.

Regardless of who has what title, military or civilian, Washington cannot feel happy about Pakistan’s nuclear program. Months after Mr. Khan’s ouster, Mr. Biden upset the Pakistan government by characterizing Pakistan as “maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world” for possessing nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

It was Mr. Sharif in May 1998 who ordered Pakistan’s first five nuclear tests, soon after India had already tested its own first five, and Washington has to reckon with the need to deal with him in reining in a nuclear program that remains unpredictable in view of Pakistan’s relations with India.

And it was the foreign minister in a caretaker government headed by Mr. Sharif’s younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, who called in the American ambassador in 2022 to protest Mr. Biden’s comment about Pakistan’s nuclear program. 

That foreign minister was Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who, now that Mr. Khan is in jail, is the only serious possibility other than Mr. Sharif for prime minister in the next government. At an incredibly young 35, he’s expected to kindle interest among young people, many of whom think the whole show’s a sham.

Mf. Bhutto has an extraordinary pedigree.  He’s the grandson and  son of two former prime ministers whose lives ended badly. His mother Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007 after serving twice as prime minister, and his grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979.