to take advantage of the situation, given their greater ability to mobilize, access
to illicit resources, and anti-Western ideology that would be energized by wors-
ening relations with Washington.
By treating Pakistan as an adversary or “rogue” state without holding out the
serious prospect of improved relations and without inducements to potential
25 For a summary of current status and future plans for U.S. missile defenses in Europe, see Tom Z.
Collina, “The European Phased Adaptive Approach at a Glance,” Arms Control Association, June 2012, http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Phasedadaptiveapproach.
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213
allies within the Pakistani state or society, the United States would reinforce
a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pakistanis who tend to support better relations with
the United States would find themselves increasingly isolated. Anyone with the
means to leave Pakistan would be more likely to exercise that option, resulting
in a new “brain drain” that the country can ill afford.
Defensive insulation would play into the negative expectations held by much
of Pakistan’s public, reinforced by the history lessons about U.S. “abandon-
ment” taught by the likes of General Baig. The more Pakistan’s military leaders
become convinced of hostile American intent, the more their insecurity would
lead them to take the “weapons of the weak” – the nuclear warheads and
terrorist proxy forces originally developed for use against neighboring India –
and repurpose them for duty against the United States. By this logic, Wash-
ington’s threatening actions intended to deter could actually encourage greater
Pakistani recklessness and magnify the threat that the United States would then
need to defend against.
As suggested by the assessment of future regional geopolitics in Chapter
6, all of the challenges of Pakistan-as-spoiler would have to be factored into
Washington’s calculations of the costs associated with a strategy of defensive
insulation. Pakistan would be that much more inclined to foment trouble in
India, to find common cause with other anti-Western regimes, and even, if the
price were right, to again sell its nuclear technologies. To these threats there
would be no end in sight; defensive insulation does not begin to “solve” the
challenges posed by Pakistan – it only mitigates or blunts potential threats as
long as the defenses are reinforced.
Chapter 6 also identifies several of the potential flaws in a U.S. strategy
that depends upon an alliance-like relationship with India. First, India may
not want to play ball, at least not on U.S. terms. India may instead keep
its sights set on “strategic autonomy,” pocketing Washington’s willingness
to share intelligence and support India’s beefed up defenses against Pakistan
without offering a matching contribution of its own.
Second, an American tilt toward India is likely to increase Pakistan’s entan-
glement with China. Washington and Beijing would find themselves on oppo-
site sides of another ugly regional flashpoint if a hostile Pakistan assumes a
role in the U.S.-China relationship similar to that played by North Korea. At
the very least, new and active diplomatic maneuvers would be needed to keep
U.S.-Pakistan tensions from spiraling into a wider conflict.
Finally, one of the challenges in implementing an effective strategy of defen-
sive insulation over the long haul would be sustaining U.S. vigilance and allo-
cating resources sufficient to address potential threats even as those threats
would appear more and more distant the longer the strategy works. This is a
challenge inherent to any long-term strategy, but especially those that lack a
vision of “victory” and demand a perpetual wartime footing.
Given these weaknesses, the best way to think about defensive insulation is as
a stopgap solution under conditions in which greater U.S.-Pakistan cooperation
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No Exit from Pakistan
proves impossible. Its long-term costs would be high, even if the savings from
cuts to U.S. assistance in Pakistan might appear significant at the outset. Its side
effects would include a lasting hostility with Pakistan and a difficult regional
dynamic. Nor would it be a simple matter for Washington to sustain the
strategy indefinitely. Pieces of the strategy, however, are necessary components
to any American defense posture in a world where Pakistan’s full cooperation
is not – and can never be – assured. The question is whether Washington could
implement a version of the strategy in ways that would improve U.S. defenses
while holding out the possibility for better relations with Islamabad over time.
That issue will be revisited at the end of the chapter.
military-first security cooperation
In Beijing, Chinese government officials and policy analysts – who are all more
or less affiliated with the state and work hard to toe the party line – are
more than happy to lecture American visitors about how the Pakistanis hate
to be lectured. Undoubtedly, projecting some of their own frustrations with
the United States and perhaps reflecting more than a little time spent talking
with Pakistanis like General Baig, the Chinese explain that Pakistanis worry a
lot about saving face. They stress that public hectoring is precisely the wrong
way to seek leverage with the politicians in Islamabad or the generals in nearby
Rawalpindi. For the most part, the Chinese practice what they preach on this
score. Public Chinese scolding of Pakistan is exceedingly rare; exceptions to the
rule send shockwaves through Pakistan’s media.26
Some Chinese analysts even go so far as to blame the United States for
destabilizing Musharraf’s military regime, which had been a trusted friend and
comfortable partner for Beijing.27 Wrong as this interpretation of Pakistani his-
tory might be, it reveals Beijing’s underlying bias in favor of the “stability” born
of government repression. Although China has accommodated Pakistan’s civil-
ian governments, it is whispered in Beijing and Islamabad that China always
preferred Musharraf and the army.
The Chinese claim that democratic practices in Pakistan are destabilizing
for some of the same reasons as they fear democracy in China. As far as it is
possible to gauge views in an authoritarian country, China’s South Asia analysts
appeared to read the 2008 return of Pakistan’s civilian rule as a passing fad
more than a first step toward the consolidation of anything resembling stable
26 Two recent examples are illustrative: first, following the 2011 terrorist attacks in Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, China, local Chinese officials complained about the role of Pakistan-based terror groups (see Michael Wines, “China Blames Foreign-Trained Separat
ists for Attacks in Xinjiang,” New York Times, August 1, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/
asia/02china.html? r=2&pagewanted=all); second, Prime Minister Gilani’s offer for China to assume management of Pakistan’s Gwadar port was summarily rejected by Beijing. For more, see Michael Wines, “Pakistan and China: Two Friends Hit a Bump,” New York Times, May 26, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/world/asia/27beijing.html.
27 Author interviews in Beijing, April 2011.
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America’s Options
215
democracy. All told, China’s official self-perception and its prevailing biases
about Pakistan combine to favor a military-to-military relationship.
The same cannot be said for the United States. Americans are inherently
people. By and large, Americans also accept the dictum that democracies avoid
wars with each other.28 Even though many Pakistanis accuse Washington of
preferring to deal with their generals rather than their politicians, history sug-
gests otherwise. The dominance of Pakistan’s military has marred and compli-
cated even the best periods of cooperation with the United States dating all the
way back to the earliest stages of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship described in
Chapter 3. No American president likes to be charged with coddling dictators.
U.S. relations with relatively liberal Pakistanis (like the renowned lawyer Aitzaz
Ahsan) have also suffered as a consequence of the periods in Pakistani history
when Washington’s aid buttressed the ruling generals.
The Bush administration’s fumbling during the Musharraf era was an excel-
lent case in point. As Chapter 4 reveals, the White House publicly professed a
commitment to promoting democracy. Privately, however, the president was
determined to honor his pledge not to undermine Musharraf. This balancing
act was ultimately unsustainable. As Musharraf’s regime collapsed, Washing-
ton was caught betwixt and between, unable to condone the sort of ruthless
crackdown that might have permitted Musharraf to maintain his grip on power
and yet unwilling to offer a full-throated call for him to step aside in favor of
elected civilians.
Some U.S. relationships with undemocratic regimes – including the close
partnership with Saudi Arabia – withstand their inherent unpopularity in Wash-
ington because the stakes are high and appreciated by the public. Could Wash-
ington overcome its reluctance and again adopt a “Chinese-style” working
relationship with Pakistan? The answer is a qualified yes.
The Bush administration chose a military-first strategy for most of its term
and would have stayed the course if not for unexpected political changes
wrought by Pakistanis themselves. Later, after Musharraf left the stage, it
did not take long for the Obama administration to start dealing directly with
Pakistan’s generals. However much Obama’s national security team might
have wished to signal support to Pakistan’s civilian leaders and take a prin-
cipled stand in favor of democracy, they recognized that all major security
issues were still the bailiwick of the military. Pakistan’s army fiercely resisted
the attempts by civilian politicians to assert control over foreign and defense
policy. Washington had little to say in the matter.29
28 This dictum is supported by political theory that traces its roots to Immanuel Kant and by a generation of scholarship on the so-called Democratic Peace. For more, see Michael W. Doyle,
“Liberalism and World Politics,” American Political Science Review, 80, no. 4 (December 1986), pp. 1151–69.
29 Three examples from the 2008–9 period are illustrative of the massive power disparity between Pakistan’s civilian government and military. First, President Zardari was overruled by the military when he tried to revise Pakistan’s nuclear security doctrine through offering India a “no first Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 17:39:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107053755.007
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No Exit from Pakistan
The Obama administration also maintained quiet military-to-military links
and CIA-ISI ties even through some of the darkest days of 2011 and 2012.
Pakistan still kept its prized F-16 jets flying with American support, even when
much of Washington’s military assistance was suspended and many of its per-
sonnel and contractors were forced to leave Pakistan.30 Most revealingly, over
the course of the seven months that Pakistan closed its ground supply routes to
Afghanistan, U.S. planes continued to shuttle personnel and equipment across
Pakistani airspace.31
These examples suggest that if military officials in Washington and Islam-
abad agree to work together without fanfare, they can make progress even on
fallen into this category. From the start, U.S. officials have recognized that
publicizing the nature of American assistance would jeopardize cooperation
since anti-American critics in Pakistan would portray it as part of a plot to
compromise the nuclear program. Washington left it to Lieutenant General
Khalid Kidwai, the long-serving head of the army’s Strategic Plans Division,
which manages the nuclear arsenal, to brief the public on security measures
and to explain the nature of U.S. assistance in his own terms.32
This is not to suggest that a military-first strategy is already being followed
by Washington. Contrary to the Obama administration’s approach, a Chinese-
style strategy with Pakistan would mean refraining from sharp public criticism
of Pakistan’s military. Instead, Washington would curry favor with the military
by deferring to its authority inside Pakistan. Rather than using U.S. aid to bol-
ster democratically elected leaders – as envisioned in the Kerry-Lugar-Berman
legislation described in Chapter 5 – Washington would step back and allow
the army a greater say in directing the flow of U.S. assistance dollars. When
possible, funds would support military-backed construction projects, such as
use” guarantee (Michael Traub, “Can Pakistan Be Governed?” New York Times, March 31, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/magazine/05zardari-t.html?pagewanted=all). Second, just hours after Prime Minister Gilani announced that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) would be brought under the control of the civilian Interior Ministry, the government reversed its decision under pressure from the military (M. Ilyas Khan, “Spy Agency Confusion in Pakistan,” BBC, July 28, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south asia/7528592
.stm). And third, the civilian government was forced to retract its public offer to send General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, head of the ISI, to India in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks when the Pakistani military objected (Jane Perlez and Salman Masood, “Pakistanis Deny Any Role in Attacks,” New York Times, November 29, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/world/
asia/30pstan.html).
30 Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez, “U.S. Is Deferring Milli
ons in Pakistani Military Aid,” New York Times, July 9, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/asia/10intel.html?pagewanted=all.
31 Kamran Yousaf, “Pakistan Secretly Permitting Lethal NATO Supply via Air,” Express Tribune, July 1, 2012, http://tribune.com.pk/story/401852/pakistan-secretly-permitting-lethal-nato-supply-via-air/.
32 Simon Cameron-Moore, “Pakistan Seeks to Allay Fears on Nuclear Security,” Reuters, January 26, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/26/idUSISL66546.
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America’s Options
217
roads and other much-needed infrastructure, which would serve the dual pur-
pose of promoting development and enhancing the military’s standing with the
Pakistani public.33
In closed-door negotiations, the United States would use high-tech military
equipment as a bargaining chip. Pakistani officers know that when it comes to
blunting India’s advantages in conventional weaponry, especially in the skies,
the United States is their best option. Pakistan’s JF-17 jets (jointly manufactured
with China) do not hold a candle to upgraded U.S. F-16s.34 This will remain
true for years to come. Other U.S. equipment, like P-3 Orion surveillance
aircraft, also offers anti-India defensive capabilities that Pakistan would oth-
erwise find difficult to match. Along the Afghan border, U.S. drones have pro-
vided real-time overhead imagery to the Pakistani military, leaving Pakistanis
awestruck and clamoring to have similar drones for themselves.35
Unfortunately, dangling the carrot of new military technologies has never
been enough of an incentive to get the Pakistanis to change their fundamental
security strategies. Then again, before the relationship took a nosedive in 2011,
U.S. inducements did yield incremental, constructive changes in Pakistani poli-
cies. For example, by improving Pakistan’s ability to wage a counterinsurgency
campaign with new training and tools like helicopters and night vision goggles,
troops based along the Afghan border were better able to take on militants
who had challenged the writ of the state.