Rarely have Pakistan and
U.S. strategic interests converged.
One of the few
remarked-upon passages in Hillary Clinton’s otherwise unenlightening Hard
Choices was her recollection of the decision not to inform Pakistani
authorities of the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden. In her retelling, the
suggestion that the U.S. should tend to the diplomatic sensitivities of its
ally was summarily dismissed by the most senior officials in the room. This
would pose too great an operational risk given the known links between the
Pakistani military and terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and the
Taliban, even, scarily, at the risk that Pakistani authorities might mistake the U.S. incursion for a fully-fledged military attack
by someone else.
So well
known are these terrorist connections, in fact, that sponsorship of terrorism
by various elements of the Pakistani state has its own Wikipedia page,
and analysts consider the use of terrorist groups as proxies to be an established
operating principle of Pakistani foreign policy. Among senior U.S. officials
since 2001, Clinton has been the most willing to openly discuss the
contradictions in U.S. policy. She coined the memorable phrase “snakes in the
backyard” to describe the impunity with which militants operate in Pakistan’s
northwestern provinces. John Kerry has taken a much softer approach. His visits
to Pakistan have been accompanied by lavish promises of aid and a generally
polite glossing over of the strategic contradictions in one of Washington’s
most complicated diplomatic relationships.
Ensnared by History
Like
Gulliver, the U.S. is ensnared by its history with Pakistan and the flawed
logic behind decades of strategic involvement of the region. Despite its great
power and wealth, Washington has only limited means of influencing Pakistan,
and few viable options for rethinking its current policy in the short term.
This is not a new problem for the U.S. At relatively few points in history do
we see a really clear convergence of strategic interests between Pakistan and
the U.S., and it is the U.S. that tends not to get the better side of the
bargain. Though the stakes have rarely been higher, Washington is continuing in
a sort of policy paralysis, leaving other players to exercise a decisive
influence on the stability of the region.
Take U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement last
month that the United States would provide an additional $250 million in
humanitarian aid. This joins about $26 billion in total assistance –
military, economic and humanitarian, but most of it military – since 2001,
which now works out to about $1.5 billion annually after peaking at $2 billion
in 2010. These astronomical sums have so far been insufficient to substantially
influence Pakistan’s behavior in the direction the U.S. wants. Kerry announced
the disbursement after months of Pakistani military operations against Al Qaeda
and the Pakistani Taliban in Waziristan. The government had effectively ceded
control of the border province to the Pakistani Taliban in 2006. As the
shocking killing of 150 schoolchildren in the province in December indicates,
militant operations have not been completely disrupted, and many worry that the
despite (or because of) the latest outrage a real commitment to do so is still a long way off.
But if
the $250 million in humanitarian assistance was intended as a reward for
credible action on the anti-terrorism agenda, then the unintentional signal of
giving this relatively small sum is that most American aid is actually not contingent
on Pakistan supporting the U.S. in its core strategic objectives in the region:
combatting terror and promoting stable governance. And humanitarian assistance
might not be the best lever on the highest echelons of the military that are
unaccountable to the people, and that benefit most from U.S. military aid. In
fact, the only credible pressure that has been exerted on the Pakistani
military in the past few years seems to have been from the Taliban.
Time will
tell how effective and committed Pakistani military action against the
Pakistani Taliban will be, and whether new groups with the tacit or active
support of Pakistani officialdom will fill the vacuum it leaves. There has been
a long tradition in Pakistan of this kind of selectivity. The Haqqani network –
worryingly, one of the most globally “connected” terrorist
organizations in the region – is perhaps the most notorious player
that evidently enjoys official impunity. Despite the U.S. expressing many times
its wish to see the Haqqani network outlawed, Pakistan has only just designated
it a banned organization, and many observers fear it will continue to operate freely
despite that designation. The Islamic State also has South Asia in its sights,
ensuring that the Pakistani military’s ambivalence in the fight against terror,
the ongoing flow of U.S. aid, and the suffering of local populations are set to
continue.
Kerry has
long been an advocate for humanitarian aid as a means to combat terrorism by
enhanced development and supporting civilian institutions. As a senator in 2009
he sponsored a bill authorizing a much-expanded civilian aid program for
Pakistan. The humanitarian help is badly needed, but it is wrong to expect it
will be decisive for the U.S. counterterrorism agenda. “Carrots” are ultimately
ineffective without “sticks,” and the United States is too constrained by its
current obligations to offer any credible disincentives to Pakistan’s “double game.” The
United States has given so much aid to Pakistan over the years that it must
come up with ever more astronomical sums to impress the Pakistani leadership
with sufficiently enticing “carrots.” If we recall the economic concept of
marginal utility, then it is hardly unexpected that the “return” in the form of
purchased loyalty on each additional dollar the United States gives is
diminishing.
Drone Strikes
In place
of the viable military effort on Pakistan’s part that the U.S. has hoped for,
Washington has depended instead on its own drone strikes program to pursue
counterterrorism operations. However, drone strikes are deeply controversial,
damaging to America’s reputation, and prod some local populations towards
terrorism. Nor can drone strikes solve the problems that make joining or
supporting Islamist militants attractive to local publics. Only a real
commitment by the Pakistani military and government, one that involves a
well-crafted civil-military strategy, and then economic development, can
achieve this.
The
history of U.S.-Pakistani relations shows that Pakistani and U.S. strategic
objectives have been in alignment on very few occasions. The prevailing wisdom
is that Pakistan was a solid supporter of Washington’s interests during the
Cold War, but in fact it did so only up to a point and for reasons of its own.
In 1954 the U.S. pursued a strategic alliance with Pakistan in the hope that,
as a newly independent and Muslim-majority state, engagement with Pakistan
could act as a bridge to a multilateral strategic alliance in the Middle East.
This
constituted a fundamental misreading of Pakistan’s core strategic concerns on
Washington’s part – its prime strategic focus was not the Middle East, but
rather South Asia and its rivalry with India. In the end Washington cobbled
together Mideast and Southeast Asian treaty frameworks, with Pakistan in both,
but neither provided much more than symbolic value to U.S. interests during the
Cold War. Meanwhile, U.S. military aid to Pakistan was profoundly important in
stoking Indo-Pakistani tensions and alienating India from the United States.
This was
precisely why Pakistan had courted the U.S. as a military backer since its
earliest days as an independent state (it also forced Eisenhower’s announcement
of a not-yet-finalized deal by leaking details of it to the U.S. press). While
India’s vocal, non-aligned status was politically vexatious to the United
States, Washington had no strategic interest in jeopardizing Indian security.
As the largest non-Communist, democratic state in Asia, Washington had a stake
in seeing India stable even if it was non-aligned. Thus, while Pakistan had
some utility to U.S. Cold War objectives, they were never one and the same.
Washington’s failure here was in being too quick to dismiss the difference
between its own strategic interests and Pakistan’s actual strategic interests.
The 1960s
and 70s offer similar examples. JFK entered office determined to tilt to India
for the sake of cultivating warmer ties with the non-aligned bloc. Pakistan
threatened to pursue military aid from China in retaliation, and eventually did
so in 1966. There has been good deal of attention recently to the
Pakistan-Bangladesh war of 1971 and Nixon and Kissinger’s shameful role in it.
Despite warnings that genocide was occurring, Nixon continued to offer
diplomatic and the possibility of military support to Pakistan.
The
striking thing about the archival record of Nixon’s policies is the extent to
which the U.S. administration felt it had no leverage to exert over Pakistan
after being so committed for so long. The U.S. interest in South Asia was in a
stable region outside the Communist sphere of influence, yet the repercussions
of 1971 would seek an Indian treaty of “friendship” with the USSR and ongoing
military ties between China and Pakistan (which were, admittedly, less
worrisome with the opening of U.S. diplomatic relations), and nuclearization.
Pakistan had enjoyed a privileged status as a Cold War ally and China was
waiting in the wings to extend its influence – even had Nixon been more moved
by the humanitarian implications of the events in Bangladesh, he would have
needed to consider what opposing Pakistan’s crackdown and dropping its ally
might mean for the credibility of U.S. grand strategy.
The roots
of the present problem of Islamist terrorism lie with the U.S.-backed
Mujahideen forces that Pakistan hosted and trained during the Soviet invasion
of the 1980s. It seems to be only here that we can find a deep alignment of
U.S. and Pakistani interests. Yet the legacy of this phase of U.S.-Pakistani
cooperation is as brutal as it is well known. Its effects pose a devilish
irony: Washington has expended its blood and treasure to establish a
post-conflict government in Afghanistan that seems to be interested in
stability and combatting terror. Yet the flow of aid from the United States to
Pakistan depends on the ongoing cross-border insurgency, and Pakistan has a
vested interest in this continuing.
‘Strategic Depth’
Hillary
Clinton has criticized the notion that Pakistan should pursue “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. What she acknowledged
here was the fact that Pakistan has traditionally favored a weak government
in Afghanistan, most especially one that India can’t influence. India, on the
other hand, regards Afghanistan as a natural ally and has recently committed
substantial sums to rebuild Afghanistan. We thus find that it is India’s
interests, and not Pakistan’s, that are in alignment with Washington’s. As the
U.S. seeks a stronger relationship with India, the threat to India from
Islamist terrorism has proven an ongoing irritant. India took exception, in
fact, to Kerry’s aid deal as a stamp of approval of Pakistan’s military efforts
against the Taliban. A Ministry of External Affairs spokesman alleged that
Pakistan has done very little of
substance to disrupt terrorism, and other analysts see merit in that
assessment.
Other
longstanding American national interests are undermined by its aid relationship
with Pakistan. Pakistan is considered the most likely country in the world to
proliferate nuclear weapons. Behind closed doors U.S. officials must be
painfully aware of their limited ability to deter Pakistan from undesired
behavior, particularly given that the transfer of sensitive information or
materials could be accomplished in relative secret and by relatively few
individuals.
Another
key U.S. interest in the region is in strengthening democracy, yet in Pakistan democracy
is chronically fragile precisely because the military has long seen itself as
the arbiter of government, and the military benefits most from the relationship
with the U.S. In September last year, and capitalizing on high poverty rates,
weak and failing institutions, poor infrastructure and tribal tensions, the
military flexed its muscles over the civilian government by orchestrating a
month of mass demonstrations designed to destabilize Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif. This raised the specter of the fourth outright military coup in
Pakistan’s history. If humanitarian aid of the kind Kerry announced is the
lever with which to influence Pakistani policy, the U.S. must consider what the
vastly larger sums it gives in military assistance really does to the balance
between civilian and military power inside the country.
Nor has
U.S. civilian aid seemed to make much of a dent in the Pakistani poverty rate,
which hovers at 20 percent according to the
UNDP. While the Pakistani government claims the cost of conflict to Pakistan
since 2001 to be in the order of $100 billion (or half its current GDP), the
capacity for foreign aid to bridge the gap and act as a stimulus to balanced
economic development is limited. Hence, boosting civilian aid probably isn’t
going to directly influence those who are playing Pakistan’s “double game” and
is unlikely to create the conditions for change from underneath their feet.
In the
wake of the school massacre, the Pakistani government asserted that it
would no longer discriminate between “good” and “bad” terrorists in its
counter-terrorism efforts. Time will tell if the outrage leads to a fundamental
change of position for the Pakistani military. What is true is that a matter of
significance to U.S. regional strategy is still largely out of Washington’s
control. If she becomes president, Clinton will confront the longstanding
dilemma that dropping Pakistan will make a bad situation worse. As the Afghani
government strengthens, the U.S. will seek to wind back its commitments to
Pakistan, and Clinton is probably well placed to manage that process since her
tough talk already conveys a resolve to do so. Can the U.S. get out of its
unrewarding friendship for good? Probably not, but it should be considering all
possible options. After all, Pakistan’s acknowledgment that terrorists can be
“good” as well as “bad” was a very frank admission about what its real position
has been – an admission that U.S. officials, in the traditional tactful mode,
let slide.
Sarah
Graham is a lecturer in U.S. foreign policy at the US Studies Centre at the
University of Sydney, and a former postdoctoral fellow at the University of
Southern California. She earned her PhD at the Australian National University.
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