Inside-the-beltway journalist, David Ignatius, writes about the US-Pakistan relationship in a new book. He was interviewed on NPR today. Remember, the US-Pakistan relationship, like our relationships with many nations, is wary, duplicitous, and necessary — as are all relationships between nations.

Ignatius says the case of CIA contractor Raymond Davis — who was arrested and released after a payment of blood money — eerily paralleled some of the plotlines of his book. In January, Davis shot and killed two Pakistanis on the street in Lahore. He said he acted in self-defense. “Here’s this real life CIA contractor,” Ignatius says, “who is arrested by the Pakistanis, who it turns out is part of a whole capability not known to the American public [and] not known previously to Pakistan. At the end of the day, he’s released through a payment of blood money.”

In recent months, Ignatius and others have used the phrase “double game” to describe what they say Pakistan is doing — working simultaneously with the U.S. and with militants. Ignatius has suggested that “double game” may be too simple a phrase.

“The [Pakistani] ISI [or Inter-Services Intelligence] is always playing both sides of the fence,” Ignatius says, partnering with the United States while also pursuing its own interests. “It’s always hedging its bets a little bit … it’s not really very different from the way the United States behaves. We conduct joint operations with the ISI but there’s a lot that we don’t tell them” … or don’t tell them until it’s too late. Take, for example, the policy of concurrent notification, he says. “Concurrent meaning after the missile has been fired, and the target has been incinerated on the ground,” Ignatius says. “…We’re telling [Pakistan] what we just did.”

It sounds dysfunctional, but given the fraught and complex relationship between the two nations, Ignatius says the system is actually working the way it was designed.