Matt Yglesias

23 Responses to “The Future of Pakistan Policy”

1. Ikram Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am

   I feel bad that you do so many (good) Pakistan posts and get so few comments. Maybe you should append the phrase “John McCain is a doody-head” to the end of these posts, to get more traffic.

   I get the feeling that you must have known a few scions of the Pakistani elite at Harvard — maybe the son of a Corps Commander, or the daughter of a textile industrialist? Your posts have an .. intersting flavour.

   Anyway, I agree that a proper US-Pak alliance would recognize that Pakistan has its own interests, which are generaly not American interests, and an effective alliance has to make these co-incide.

   The Chinese get it, which is why Pakistan is so responsive to Chinese pressure. Recall that the government assault on the Lal Masjid occurred only after the Jamia Hafsa women attacked a Chinese brothel in Islamabad. Yes — Musharraf ranked the welfare of Chinese prostitutes above the American government.

   The Pak defense establishment sees Kashmir, and the Indian threat, as their number one concern. That leads to the doctrine of strategic depth, in which the Pak army will be able to retreat to Afghanistan and continue fighting in the event the plains of Punjab are overrun by the Indian army. Which means that Afghanistan must have a weak or puppet government, preferably a Pushtun government. Which leads to the current Pak-backed anti-Karzai agitation (Karzai went to school in India). Which is bad for American interests, not to mention American and Canadian lives.

   All that might lead you to think that a Kashmir settlement, one Pakistani military would agree to, would be the best way to advance American interests in the region.

   But I think that’s wrong. The Pak establishment’s obsession with Kashmir for 60 years has created a garrison state, crippled civil society, and stunted the country’s development. Kashmiris don’t like India (witness the current riots) but they probably would hate Punjab-dominated Pakistan even more (Hell, even some Baluchis and Sindhi’s aren’t crazy about Pakistan, and the Bengalis got out years ago — why would Kashmir be different?).

   A better solution would be for Pakistan to agree that the LoC be the permanent border in exchange for some sort of defense guarantee that ensures Pak security. It would have to be combined with mobility across the LoC for Kashmiris, and a restoration of Kashmiri autonomy on both sides of the line (e.g. restore article 381 of the Indian constitution, and real freedom for Azad Kashmir), to prevent the issue from flaring up again.

   Why would Pakistan agree? — because civilian politicians that want to keep the military in the barracks will recognize that the Kashmir conflict is the real source of all those coups, and they can be free to govern (i.e. loot the country) if the military didn’t have a Kashmir excuse.

   (The Kashmir conflict also causes a few problems in Indian domestic politics, by empowering Hindu-bigots who use Pakistan as a way to distract from domestic issues — see Narendra Modi. But its smaller in magnitude).

   I think there are signs that Zardari recongizes that conflict in Kashmir enourages coups, as does Nawaz. An American-sponsored peace deal that speaks to the interest of civilian Pakistanis, not Pakistani Generals, is possible now that the military is (temporarily) weakened and chastened. But I’m not sure the American government is stratgic or ambitious enough to do mroe than stick with old, failed, policies.

   Anyway, this has been an overly long and dull comment, and its still a bit skimpy. But I’ll take my own advixce, stop here, and remind everyone — “John McCain is a doodyhead”.

2. Lakshmi Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

   But Matt, what happens when Pakistan’s interests are completely the opposite of our own? It is not in the interest of the United States to antagonize India, but that is what we have been doing for 61 years and it is precisely what Pakistan wants us to continue to do.

3. Richard Steven Hack Says:
   August 19th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

   Matt does not do “good” posts on Pakistan and Afghanistan, as this post illustrates.

   Matt continues to believe that the US has to embed itself in every country that conceivably could have problems that might spill over to affect US national security. The “embedding” might be military – he still thinks Kosovo was a good fight – or it might be “full spectrum” (whatever the hell that means), but to him it’s always the US is the primary actor.

   Nothing could be further from the truth. The US has no national security objectives in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. The US has nothing whatever to gain and everything to lose by involving itself in any way in either country. The population of both countries have no particular liking for the US and no desire to see more US involvement in them. The problem for Musharraf was precisely that he was viewed as an American puppet – and a corrupt, dictatorial one at that.

   It’s also hard to conceive how the US can develop a “full-spectrum” involvement in Pakistan without being directly connected to the Pakistani military and ruling elites in that country. Those people aren’t going to ALLOW you to deal directly with the Pakistani people, by definition.

   Matt really has no clue how things work in the real world.

4. Reality Man Says:
   August 20th, 2008 at 4:00 am

   The Chinese get it, which is why Pakistan is so responsive to Chinese pressure. Recall that the government assault on the Lal Masjid occurred only after the Jamia Hafsa women attacked a Chinese brothel in Islamabad. Yes — Musharraf ranked the welfare of Chinese prostitutes above the American government.

   Then again, the Chinese get it because they are largely interested in Pakistan as a hedge against India, especially since the war in 1962. We have no real interests in antagonizing India. But I do agree with your greater overall point. The best thing we could do would probably to sincerely provide good offices for negotiations while maintaining complete impartiality. In the end, I think that an independent Kashmir acting as a buffer state would probably be best, but the path from here to there is probably unrealistic.

5. Ikram Says:
   August 20th, 2008 at 10:26 am

   Ok — My point did not come through clearly. I’ll try again:

   A effective US-Pak alliance need not be anti-India if it is madde with the right Pakistanis, and accompanied a strategic shift on the part of the Pakistani establishment.

   Or, in simpler terms, the US should ally with civilian Pakistani politicians against the Pakistani military — that’s the only way to succeed in Afghanistan without antagonizing India.

   So I’m realy not calling for “complete impartiality” — that’s silly. The US has interests in Kashmir, and it should use its influence to achieve those interests, not waste them by being impartial.

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