For the curious, a few choice excerpts from the right’s war on terror experts regarding “How do we solve a problem like Islamabad?”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (Ancient Greek Lover):
In the decades past, helping Pashtun fighters repel the Soviets gave us Osama bin Laden operating in the Pakistani border regions. Taking a hands-off approach allowed Pakistan to obtain an arsenal of nuclear missiles. Cutting off of aid stirred up nationalist fervor that empowered demagogues and terrorists. Playing India off against Pakistan led to accusations that we were either too naïve or too cynical. Today, entering Pakistani airspace to blow up suspected terrorists kills more extended family members than actual jihadists — and makes us wonder why Americans are fretting over the waterboarding of three known terrorists in Guantánamo, when we execute suspected terrorists in Waziristan every week without broadcasting to them rights of habeas corpus or dropping leaflets explaining their Miranda rights.
Given all that, I think the conventional wisdom about Afghanistan — that “the problem is really in Pakistan” — means little. Of course Pakistan is the problem; it always will be. But the best U.S. strategy is not to enter Pakistan, bully it, or try to adjudicate between Warlord A, General B, Corrupt President C, and Mullah D, who in the end will hate us more than they do each other.
Actually, under the Reagan and Bush I administrations, the US government actively assisted Pakistan in its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons because Pakistan’s generals were considered loyal allies against the Soviet Union, but I guess to Hanson that counts as a “hands off” approach. To his credit, at least he doesn’t suggest invading Pakistan (or nuking it) would be a good idea. However, his comments about torture, Miranda rights and habeas corpus in this context are extraneous and nonsensical, at best. I guess he couldn’t help himself from criticizing “liberals” for their support of civil liberties.
JONATHAN FOREMAN (Author of The Pocket Book of Patriotism and Movie Critic — really):
The Obama administration should understand that there is likely to be a military coup in Pakistan no matter what policy the U.S. adopts towards Pakistan. In any case, the Obama administration has already learned that Asif Zardari is not a reliable ally — and it is learning, to its consternation, that his rival Nawaz Sharif is unlikely to be any more effective, given the rise of armed Pashtun-Taliban power in parts of Pakistan. {…]
The Obama administration seems poised to repeat the mistake of all its predecessors by believing Pakistan’s promises that it will get serious about everything from counterinsurgency, to Afghanistan, to replacing madrassas with normal schools, in return for yet more U.S. aid.
Cutting off aid is problematic for several reasons, but its unlikely to happen so long as the US Defense Industry needs buyers for its products. Even if Obama could stare down the Military Industrial Complex, I’m not certain that Pakistan’s government or military would react to a cut off in aid in the way he thinks they would. An increase in regional tensions between India and Pakistan is a far more likely outcome in my view of the US cutting off all aid to Pakistan.
I also don’t like his fatalistic appraisal that a military coup is inevitable. Certainly if we cut off all aid to the Pakistani government, that’s a legitimate concern, but I don’t think Obama should assume that the newly elected government is doomed regardless of what we or other countries might do to support that government.
SUMIT GANGULY (Director of research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University, Bloomington, and an adjunct senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles.):
The Taliban have also been exploiting the porous and largely unrestricted border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, to wreak havoc on the International Security Assistance Forces. Meanwhile, the able and adroit Pakistani diplomatic corps in Washington is keeping up a steady propaganda barrage about the need for Congress to swiftly pass legislation that would provide funds and weaponry to the Pakistani military. Faced with this particular conundrum, what should the Obama administration do?
. . . If President Obama wishes to make any serious progress toward the restoration of some semblance of political order in Afghanistan, it needs to unequivocally inform the Pakistani military establishment that the days of hunting with the hounds and running with the hares has come to a close. If they wish to continue receiving U.S. assistance for counterinsurgency operations, the Pakistan military must end its ambiguous stance toward the Taliban. The Pakistanis need to act — now.
I have the same concerns with this advice that I did with Mr. Foreman’s recommendations. Easy to say this is what should be done, but much harder to actually carry out. And of course, the law of unintended consequences always applies.
DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS (Neocon):
America’s two top goals should be to halt the Taliban’s advance and prevent Pakistan’s government from being destabilized. Though the current fighting in Buner district is Pakistan’s way of trying to contain the Taliban, we’ve read this script before. If Pakistan remains true to form, this round of fighting will be followed by “peace deals” with the Taliban or local government officials that kick the problem down the road rather than actually deal with it. […]
So the U.S. is left without great options for addressing a situation that has grown worse for several years. The Taliban have been able to field battalion and brigade-sized units in Swat and Buner. Their gains will not be reversed overnight. I suspect that U.S. strategy, for now, will amount to muddling through and seeing if a mix of policies can create new opportunities. Much as I dislike such a course, I’m not certain that there’s anything clearly superior to it.
Not sure what he’s advocating when he says our best approach is just to “muddle through” but then I’m not sure he knows what he means either.
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What strikes me the most about the analysis offered by these NRO experts regarding the situation in Pakistan are two things. First, that no one is arguing for an increase of US military action. I suppose its possible that even conservatives have been chastened by how ineffective our unilateral use of the “military option” in Iraq and Afghanistan has been. Or perhaps their calculus is simply different when the country in question has nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Second, the fatalistic tone of their comments surprised me a little. From the people who were trumpeting America’s exceptionalism, military prowess and the need to use our position as the sole remaining superpower to remake the world in our image only a few years earlier, this is as close to an admission that their core beliefs and ideology were misguided and wrong as we are ever likely to see.
