groups. Pakistan – for reasons explained throughout this book – has refused.7
Should differences over Afghanistan warrant jeopardizing the entire U.S.-
Pakistan relationship? Stepping back from the immediacy of the Afghan war, an
argument could be made that the Haqqani network, the Afghan Taliban, even
all of Afghanistan are of such minor scale and importance to the United States,
at least when compared to Pakistan itself, that Washington should not hold its
relationship with Islamabad hostage to them. As one senior U.S. policymaker
explained, the Afghan war is fading into history and as the military departs
Americans will appreciate – as they have in Iraq – just how limited their
interests really were in that distant, landlocked country. Why, that official
asked, compound the costs of the Afghan war by allowing its endgame to drive
the wedge even deeper between the United States and Pakistan?8
This argument has merit. It is true that U.S. interests in Pakistan extend well
beyond what happens in Afghanistan or even in Pakistan’s tribal borderlands.
These interests begin with Washington’s vital concerns about the safety and
security of Pakistan’s nuclear program, which are tied up with broader ques-
tions of Pakistan’s stability and the trajectory of its state and society. Even the
most sophisticated security precautions will offer cold comfort if the hands that
rest upon Pakistan’s nuclear buttons become far more belligerent or irresponsi-
ble because the military has crumbled or turned completely anti-Western in
its orientation. As Chapter 2 of this book makes clear, Pakistan’s jihadists do
not today threaten an Iran-style revolution, but the future favors change over
stasis, as the power of traditional elites and their institutions erodes day by day.
Beyond that, America’s emergent interests extend to the geopolitics of the
region, as explained in Chapter 6. The future may have some similarities with
the Cold War past. Whereas U.S.-Soviet conflict structured U.S. policies in
South Asia from the 1940s through the 1980s, the U.S.-China relationship is
likely to dominate Washington’s worldview of the future. Within this context,
Pakistan’s close ties with China and its historical animosity toward India have
important implications for U.S. plans in Asia. If Pakistan breaks with the United
States and reverts to its old, violent patterns with India, it would diminish or
delay New Delhi’s rise to global leadership. That, in turn, would undermine
U.S. aspirations for a strong Indian partner in Asia. Also worrisome, a Pakistani
spoiler state that relies upon Chinese patronage would represent a new point
of tension between Washington and Beijing, not entirely unlike North Korea.
Neither Washington (nor Beijing at this point) relishes such a prospect.
7 For a revealing look at opinions of Pakistan’s foreign policy establishment on U.S. and Pakistani policy toward Afghanistan, see Moeed Yusuf, Huma Yusuf, and Salman Zaidi, “Pakistan, the United States, and the End Game in Afghanistan: Perceptions of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Elite,”
Jinnah Institute, August 25, 2011, http://www.jinnah-institute.org/images/ji_afghanendgame
.pdf.
8 Author conversation, November 2011.
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204
No Exit from Pakistan
For these reasons, the United States had, and continues to have, every reason
to avoid a scenario in which the Afghan war becomes a stumbling block to
working with Pakistan on other important fronts. The history of U.S. relations
with Pakistan is replete with shortsightedness. Washington’s tendency to be
driven by crisis and short-term or narrowly conceived interests is a theme that
plays out again and again through Chapters 3, 4, and 5. These patterns need
not be repeated.
Yet Washington would find it politically, if not strategically, impossible to
look past the Afghan war in its relationship with Pakistan. As the war has taken
a turn for the worse, many U.S. officials lay the blame at Pakistan’s doorstep.
many fellow soldiers, commanding officers, families, friends, and elected rep-
resentatives hold Pakistan-based insurgents responsible for their deaths. Many,
echoing the words of Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, see these groups as veritable arms of the Pakistani state. Few Amer-
icans leave the battlefront in Afghanistan without harboring anger toward
Pakistan.
For years to come, these political realities are likely to frame the way Wash-
ington deals with Islamabad. Democratically accountable U.S. leaders face stiff
political headwinds when they attempt publicly to justify assistance to, or close
cooperation with, Pakistan. America would be better off if its leaders are able
to brave the political storm; to seek cooperation with and even assistance for
Pakistan if and when it serves U.S. interests, whatever Islamabad’s perfidy in
Afghanistan. Washington might be better able to manage that difficult feat
if its Pakistan policies were handled through quiet consultations between the
executive branch and Congress, away from the media spotlight. Yet the often
tumultuous character of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is likely to complicate
that sort of under-the-radar approach.
Kick the Can Past 2014?
Since American anger over the war in Afghanistan makes it so difficult for
Washington to deal with Islamabad, the relevant question is whether the United
States will be better positioned to advance its long-term goals in Pakistan while
U.S. forces are still heavily engaged in the Afghan war or after they depart.
Many policymakers in Washington seem drawn to the conclusion that the
United States will find greater leverage in its relationship with Pakistan after
2014, when Afghan forces are supposed to assume a leading security role and
the remaining international forces, mainly American, will focus on training,
advisory, and counterterror missions.9 A far smaller NATO presence in
9 For more on possible endgame scenarios in Afghanistan, see Dexter Filkins, “After America,”
The New Yorker, July 9, 2012, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/07/09/120709fa fact filkins.
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America’s Options
205
Afghanistan will mean less need for Pakistani roads, ports, and airspace as
conduits for supplies, weapons, and personnel. Since the United States will
then be less dependent on Pakistan’s cooperation, the argument goes, it will
be easier to pressure Islamabad to comply on other issues with less fear of the
potential repercussions.
This argument was partially undermined over the course of 2012. Pakistan
closed its roads to NATO convoys after the Salala friendly fire incident in
Novembe
r 2011 but NATO managed to re-route its supplies into Afghanistan
by way of Central Asia for seven months until they were re-opened.10 This
Northern Distribution Network of rail, ship, and trucking routes was undoubt-
edly slower and more costly than the Pakistani alternative, but it demonstrated
that Pakistan did not necessarily hold a trump card in its dealings with Washing-
ton. In other words, the United States already had more leverage with Pakistan than many in Washington (and perhaps in Islamabad) had appreciated.
The notion that Washington will be in a better negotiating situation with
Pakistan after the Afghan war winds down has other problems as well. Wash-
ington’s ability to threaten coercive military action throughout the region
will diminish with the withdrawal of America’s heavy military presence from
Pakistan’s backyard. Fewer troops and resources devoted to Afghanistan will
also mean less concerted attention from senior American officials. Judging from
the history of the past decade, Pakistan requires routine cabinet-level attention
simply to deal with too-frequent crises when they break out. A more ambitious
strategy would require someone on the president’s national security team to
champion and implement new policies. At times, it would require intervention
by the president himself.
Given the wide variety of pressing domestic and international concerns that
face Washington, not to mention the fact that Pakistan represents a high-risk,
low-reward proposition, it is hard to believe that top policymakers will place
greater, more sustained attention on Pakistan after 2014 than they have in
recent years. It is revealing, for instance, that aside from Ambassador Richard
Holbrooke the Obama team has filled nearly all of the top jobs in Afghanistan
and Pakistan with career Foreign Service Officers or uniformed military
personnel.11 Such individuals are likely to be competent and professional,
to be sure, but they also tend to lack the political clout needed to shepherd
major policy initiatives. Rising political stars already view Afghanistan and
Pakistan as radioactive, career-ending posts.
10 On Salala, see Chapter 4. For a good map of what was termed the Northern Distribution Network, see Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Stuck in the Mud: The Logistics of Getting Out of
Afghanistan,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2012), http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/
137785/vanda-felbab-brown/stuck-in-the-mud.
11 Ambassadors in Kabul (Ryan Crocker, James Cunningham) and Islamabad (Cameron Munter, Richard Olson), Holbrooke’s replacement (Marc Grossman), and the top National Security Council staffer (Douglas Lute) all fit this pattern.
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206
No Exit from Pakistan
If the United States is unable to force (or induce) Pakistan to begin an
about-face in its dealings with groups like the Haqqanis and LeT while a large
American military contingent is in the region and top U.S. officials are focused
squarely on the matter, then Washington will be less likely – and less well
placed – to take another serious run at the issue later. All is not lost after 2014,
but it would be little more than wishful thinking to assume that the challenge
of dealing with Pakistan will get easier down the road.
Looking even further into the future, the trends discussed in Chapter 2 sug-
gest that if Pakistan remains on its present trajectory, its population, nuclear
arsenal, and terrorist networks will grow while its economy, governing institu-
tions, and security conditions deteriorate. America’s leaders cannot assume that
their children or grandchildren will be better positioned to deal with Pakistan
than the United States is today.
u.s. options
In contemplating its options with Pakistan, Washington finds itself in an impos-
sible bind. Frustration over the Afghan war endangers cooperation, but other
concerns – from terrorism and nuclear weapons to regional geopolitics – make
cooperation more appealing, even essential. Pakistan’s pattern of political, eco-
nomic, and security crises will, in one way or another, force Washington to
pay attention even if American leaders would prefer to steer clear.
One possible response to the competing pressures to end cooperation and, at
the same time, to recognize the persistence of Pakistan-based threats, would be
to implement a strategy of “defensive insulation.” Simply put, the United States
would seek to protect itself from Pakistan’s terrorists, nuclear weapons, and
other possible dangers by erecting new layers of military, diplomatic, economic,
and other barriers around the Pakistani state. U.S. partners in the region,
above all India, would be bolstered as important components in the defensive
scheme.
If, on the other hand, Washington and Islamabad find a way to rekindle a
cooperative relationship, two models present themselves. The first would be a
return to the sorts of dealings that Washington had with General Musharraf in
the early post-9/11 period. That “military-first” approach would retain a tight
focus on pressing issues of national security and leave most of the rest – from
politics to economics – aside.
A second model, similar to what the Obama administration attempted dur-
ing its first two years in office, would strive for a comprehensive partnership
across military and civilian sectors. Whereas a military-first model would deal
with Pakistan as it is, a comprehensive cooperation strategy would aim for
the more ambitious goal of lending a helping hand to Pakistan as it navigates
through massive social and political change without falling into violent revo-
lution on the one hand or military dictatorship on the other.
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America’s Options
207
defensive insulation
Given the recent history of turmoil in U.S.-Pakistan relations, America’s lead-
ers must at least consider how best to achieve counterterror, nuclear, and
geopolitical objectives if ties with Islamabad fray or break. Under a defensive
insulation posture, Washington would address the threat of Pakistan-based ter-
rorism at multiple levels. Some of these are consistent with past practice, even
during periods of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation. Others, however, could poison
the relationship and kill prospects for cooperation, perhaps for decades to
come.
U.S. security and law enforcement would build upon existing efforts to inter-
dict terrorists before they reach the United States or other important targets.
Since 9/11, the United States has overhauled its homeland security as well as
its domestic and international counterterror programs to better meet the threat
posed by al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Between 2002 and 2011, America has
increased its homeland security spending by nearly $700 billion.12 $50 bil
lion
has been poured into aviation security alone.13 Terrorist networks have been
infiltrated and their financial flows disrupted. Of course, these jobs are never
done; terrorists pose a resilient and evolving threat, and are opportunistic in
their exploitation of vulnerabilities.
But defensive insulation would also require policies of coercion and deter-
rence that are not now a part of Washington’s tool kit with Pakistan. U.S.
officials could, for example, impose targeted sanctions and visa restrictions
on Pakistani officials suspected of ties to terrorist organizations, steps that
U.S. officials have contemplated but avoided to date for fear that they would
jeopardize other forms of bilateral cooperation.14
As long as the terrorist threat persists, defensive insulation would feature
a U.S. drone campaign inside Pakistan. To withstand a deteriorating U.S.-
Pakistan relationship, that campaign might also need to grow and change. If
the Pakistani military no longer clears airspace for American drones along the
Afghan border, or if U.S. officials decide to send drones into other parts of
Pakistan, like Baluchistan or Punjab, without Islamabad’s consent, the current
generation of slow, low-flying drones like the Predator would be fairly easy for
12 This figure reflects the increase, in the ten years since 9/11, in federal, state, and private sector expenditures on homeland security and intelligence, not including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When including opportunity costs (e.g., economic deadweight losses, airport pas-senger delays), the total increase in spending comes to over $1.1 trillion. For details, see John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart, Terror, Security, and Money (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 2, 4, 196–7.
13 Nancy Benac, “National Security: Ten Years after September 11 Attacks, U.S. Is Safe but Not Safe Enough,” Associated Press, September 3, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/
03/promises-promises-us-safe n 947688.html.
14 Bruce Riedel, “A New Pakistan Policy: Containment,” New York Times, October 14, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/opinion/a-new-pakistan-policy-containment.html.
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