What went wrong since then?  How would one explain the outbreak of violence on May 5, when the military arrested several hundred people and imposed a curfew?  Could it be that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) (al-Maǧlis al-ʾAʿlā lil-Quwwāt al-Musallaḥah) is showing its utter lack of political knowledge regarding its own country?  Alternatively, is it possible that the SCAF is so afraid of the probable takeover of an Islamist president that it does not wish to give up power without sufficient guarantees about its own economic future?  After all, the ownership of economic prerogatives of the Egyptian Army is a well-known fact of that country.  Still, one has to look for deeper explanations—which might be a mixture of the aforementioned ones—for why the Egyptian Army appears bent on creating chaos before the most important presidential elections of that country scheduled to be held on 23^rd and 24^th of May.

Any regime change that is brought about as a result of a revolution has the potential of either being guided or taken over by the armed forces, unless the revolutionary forces succeed in taking measures to discourage or outmaneuver the military leaders from sabotaging the intent of the revolution.  The success of the Chinese communists in defeating the forces of Chiang Kai Shek is an example of the “guiding” role of the armed wing of China’s communist party.  The Islamic revolution of Iran of 1979, on the contrary, was an impressive example of the success of the revolutionary forces in discouraging the leaders of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s armed forces about taking counter-revolutionary measures that were aimed at defeating the revolution.  Those leaders were either so confused or so dispirited about the sudden collapse of the imperial regime that they found no courage to do anything to sabotage or defeat the revolution, even though the United States was very much in favor of seeing such an outcome.

The Algerian Army, on the other hand, by anticipating the electoral victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in the second round of general elections—since they handily won the first round on December 26, 1991—cancelled the electoral process on January 15, 1992, and implemented a massive and brutal crackdown of the FIS.  The total number of deaths in Algeria stands close to 200,000 persons.  The brutality of the Algerian Army killed the prospects of democracy from that country for a long time.  Today, Algeria stands as a bloody example of the resolve of its military not to allow the return of democracy in their country, which, especially in the wake of the Arab awakening, has escalated the prospects of return of Islamist-dominated in that country.

Even though, as Francis Fukuyama astutely observed that Political Scientist Samuel P. Huntington explained the return of chaos in developing societies in the 1950s and 1960s by arguing that,  “[w]ithout political development, the other aspects of modernization could lead to bad results—to tyranny, civil war and mass violence,” one also has to keep in mind that the SCAF might also be primarily concerned about the implications of democratic rule on the privileged economic situation of the military. Consequently, it is concerned about how the potential election of an Islamist presidential candidate would affect that status, even though the Muslim Brotherhood—unlike the FIS in Algeria in 1991—has refrained from making outlandish statements threatening the privileged status of the military.  In fact, Mohammed Morsi, presidential candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, declared that “he intends to consult closely with the generals over matters the military rather than impose his will…”  Another leading liberal-leaning Islamist presidential candidate, Abdel Moneim Fatouh, said that “he too intends to consult with the generals…” Still, one can understand the apprehension of the unknown on the part of SCAF.  That might be one reason why it has acquiesced in the decision of Egypt’s election commission in declaring the ineligibility of a number of Islamist candidates.

Another reason for the bizarre behavior of the military might be that it wishes to create a managed chaos that is aimed at defeating an Islamist presidential candidate.  Perhaps that would improve the chances of the election of Amr Mousa, who was the former Foreign Minister of Egypt and the former Secretary General of the Arab League.  He is more of a known quantity for the military than any other presidential contenders.

Regardless of its apprehension about democracy, the latest outbreak of violence in that country demonstrates that the SCAF appears to be playing dangerous games.  One does not have to go to the extreme of drawing parallels between the role of the Egyptian military and the one that played by the military of Algeria in 1992.  However, given that Egypt is so close to the establishment of democratic rule for the first time in its dark experience of autocratic rule, one has to remain highly concerned.

This is where one has to hope that the administration of President Barack Obama would be playing a role in strongly urging the Egyptian military to let the democratic process produce its results.  Any postponing or sabotaging of democracy in Egypt would be a tragedy of immense proportion.  More to the point, such a potential development would create highly deleterious spillover effects in the general emergence of democracy in the rest of the Arab world at large.

One option for the SCAF would be to conduct behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Muslim Brotherhood on its future status, especially considering the fact that both Morsi and Fatouh have remained quite reasonable about not threatening the status of the military.

In the opening pages, Rashid establishes one of the major themes of the book when he writes, “All parties to the conflict in Afghanistan and to the deterioration of Pakistan have made terrible mistakes.  Almost all the major players have shown arrogance, hubris, rigidity, and stubbornness; all have, to some degree, lived in the past and have been unable to change their thinking.”  The author is particularly candid in his criticism of the Obama administration.  “Obama and his senior officials have a major part of the blame because their failure to act as a team has resulted in contradictory policies, intense political infighting and uncertainty about US aims and objectives in the region.”

President Barack Obama entered the office of the presidency with a highly publicized endeavor to earnestly study what went wrong in America’s defeat in Vietnam so that he could avoid that type of outcome in his own handling of the Afghan conflict.  That was, indeed, a thoughtful start.  However, the American presidents – despite the often-repeated shibboleth that they arguably hold the most powerful office in the world – remain in an incessantly reactionary mode to the topsy-turvy world events that constantly demand their respective attention.  They do not have the luxury of remaining focused for long on any issue of foreign policy, no matter how important.  Thus, Obama had to give top priority to pulling America out of the global economic meltdown, while still making sure that the war in Afghanistan did not fall through the cracks.

Since Obama became president with virtually no experience in, and even less understanding of, world events, he had to rely on vice president Joe Biden – whose chief claim to fame was his tenure either as a chairman or the ranking leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – a coterie of experts on South Asia, and the top military brass.  In Joe Biden, Obama had a trusted adviser who wanted the brunt of America’s involvement in Afghanistan-Pakistan to be guided by the tactic of counterterrorism (CT) – i.e., use of military force and drones to eradicate al-Qaida and the Taliban forces.  Since Obama’s top priority included the killing of Usama Bin Laden – who had disappeared from America’s radar in 2001 – Biden’s approach was quite appealing to him.  In the meantime, General David Petraeus – who had acquired legendary status through his successful use of counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq – preferred a repeat of that approach in Afghanistan.  As a compromise, a hybrid to both approaches was adopted by the Obama administration.  The result was quite impressive from Obama’s perspective of eradicating the top leadership of al-Qaida and the Taliban.  On May 2, 2011, US Special Forces succeeded in killing bin Laden.  Supposedly unbeknownst to the Pakistani Army, he was hiding in Abbotabad, only a stone’s throw from that country’s top military academy.  Still, the chief flaw underlying the US involvement was an absence of a strategy to win the war in Afghanistan, a strategy that had a nuanced comprehension of the security concerns of Pakistan.  No matter what happens in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the coming years, the first term of President Barack Obama will be noted for its lack of understanding –worse than that, even its lack of serious efforts to comprehend – Pakistan’s security interests.

Pakistan On the Brink is also a brutal analysis of Pakistan.  For the past three decades or more, that country’s misfortune has been that it has remained a mushrooming place for highly incompetent and equally corrupt corps of civilian and military leaders.  When that country was finally liberated from the ten-year-long rule of General Pervez Musharraf, it came under the rule of an even more incompetent civilian government headed by Asif Ali Zardari.  On the military side, Pakistan has General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who is virtually obsessed by a highly paranoiac India-phobic worldview of the Cold War years.  That particular frame of reference does not allow him any flexibility to consider security arrangements that are not fully focused on India.  Unfortunately, Kayani is not alone in that regard.  The entire senior Pakistani military leadership shares that paranoia.  Indeed, if Rashid’s and other analyses on the subject are correct, a deep fear of India seems to have become a vital precondition for promotion to a senior ranks within the Pakistani Army.  The junior military officers might be even worse, since they are not only indoctrinated in the India-phobic paradigm – which is very much a part of the curriculum of the Pakistani military academies – but they are also given ample doses of the stridently anti-American perspective.  A very large number of them were deprived of the opportunity to visit their counterparts in the American military educational institutions largely because of the thoughtless implementation of the Pressler Amendment by the United States during the Cold War years.  One can comprehend the implications of that action on the senior flag officers of Pakistan from the following observation recently made by General Martin E. Dempsey, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Referring to the Pressler Amendment, he said, “I am not an advocate of breaking contact with military-to-military relationships that we’ve taken decades to establish.  We lost about 10 years of contact with our Pakistani military counterparts – they weren’t coming to our schools, they didn’t train with us, there weren’t any exercises, no military sales program, no technology transfer, no security cooperation.”[1]

Rashid points out that the Army’s domination of the politics of Pakistan is total, with 30 percent of the national budget being targeted for its consumption.   Under the tutelage of the Army, “…what makes this moment in Pakistan’s history exceptional is the threat it is seen to pose, simultaneously, to the security of its own citizens, to the welfare of its regional neighbors, and to the stability of wider international community.”  At the same time, Pakistan remains “the most fragile place in the world…the most unstable country and the most vulnerable to violence, political change, or economic collapse.”

Pakistan’s leaders followed their own instincts in terms of using the Islamist card as part of their country’s foreign policy in the Kashmir conflict from the very creation of that country.  That characteristic evolved further and with the wholehearted support of the United States in the 1980s.  The lone superpower was then busy defeating the Soviet Union, which had become an occupying power in Afghanistan.  After successfully using the Islamist card to defeat the Soviet Union, the United States left the region.  However, Pakistan’s own use of the Islamist card toward Afghanistan and India became an even more pronounced aspect of its foreign policy, starting in the 1990s.  Today, “Pakistan has become an abnormal state that uses Islamic militants – Jihadist groups, non-state actors – in addition to diplomacy and trade to pursue its defense and foreign policies.”

From the perspectives of economic development, Pakistan is also a basket case. Globalization “passed Pakistan by.  Many educated Pakistanis had no idea of the dramatic changes being wrought on the world stage…”  “In the past twenty years, it has not developed a single new industry or cultivated a major new crop, even though it is an agricultural country.”  It “has undertaken no major economic or social reforms since the early 1990s.”  Its ruling elite “refuses to tax itself or invest its wealth in modernizing industry and agriculture, the state-run industries are bleeding the country; and the army refuses to cut expenses, even as it has expanded its own tax-free business and property empires.”  Pakistan is a place where the Taliban of that country “call for the establishment of a state-based Shariah or Islamic law and for a caliphate, a supranational entity that would dissolve Pakistani borders and aid and abet Islamic extremism and al-Qaida.”  Consequently, “Pakistan’s new global identity was not as a model for innovation or modernity but as a refuge for multiple extremist groups.”

Despite the hoopla surrounding the Obama administration’s use of the phrase “AfPak approach” to win the war in Afghanistan, the approach itself seriously lacked a cohesive strategy.  Ideally speaking, such a strategy had to have three pillars.

The first should deal with the national security concerns and interests of Pakistan, while also taking into consideration its highly competitive and often antagonistic ties with India.  It should deal with India, not necessarily as a problem in the region, but as an actor that – if it really wished to remain an important player in the US-driven power play in South Asia – needed to be consulted as well as asked to create policy responses that would address Pakistan’s security concerns.

Second, a comprehensive US strategy had to create ample carrots and sticks for Pakistan so that it would abandon the use of the Islamist card against India and Afghanistan.  For that reason alone, the United States had to create markers of accountability for Pakistan.  At the same time, Washington also had to consider creating a strategic partnership with that country, which should at least partially resemble America’s strategic partnership with India.  However, except for the late Richard Holbrook, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, no one in the Obama administration was paying any attention to creating such a comprehensive strategy.  Admittedly, such a strategy would have been both capital-intensive and time-consuming; however, it would have created enormous trust on the part of Pakistan.  Instead, Obama, Biden, and South Asia experts who were in charge of implementing the AfPak approach wanted to win the Afghan war on the cheap.  Holbrook never saw Obama on a one-to-one basis to explain the intricacies of South Asia, especially those involving Pakistan’s security-related apprehensions and anxieties.

The third aspect of the comprehensive strategy to win the Afghan war had to have at least a perspective describing what exactly the United States wanted to achieve in Afghanistan.  Though it was clear, even during the presidency of George W. Bush, that some sort of power-sharing agreement had to be negotiated between the Taliban of Afghanistan and the Karzai government, that approach was rejected by the Obama administration.  One major reason might have been because the military was more interested in significantly diminishing the fighting capabilities of the Taliban than negotiating with them.  In the absence of negotiating with the Taliban, the only other option the United States was left with was to create the enormously expensive option of creating a credible security force in Afghanistan, especially since that very approach bore palpable results in stabilizing Iraq.  However, Iraq had a powerful tradition of having a professional military force under Saddam Hussein.  Compared to that, Afghanistan was a place where rag-tag militia groups and warlords prevailed, and where the militias may, at best, be described as thuggish groups that were primarily used to create road blocks for extracting bribes, to wage vendettas against other warlords, or to do the legwork for the sustenance of the highly lucrative opium trade.  The foremost challenge facing the US military in creating a professional security force stems from the fact that Afghanistan has a high illiteracy rate, high instances of drug abuse among young recruits, high desertion rates, vengeance-killing, and, of course, periodic manifestation of incidents involving the Afghan soldiers and recruits killing their American trainers.

In the absence of a comprehensive strategy, the United States is conducting its CT-focused drone war in Pakistan to kill al-Qaida and Pakistani Taliban leaders.  Pakistan is continuing its policy of using the Haqqani group to target Indian diplomatic personnel in Afghanistan, while rebuffing the American demand to defeat the Taliban of Pakistan.  This particular group’s hostility toward the state of Pakistan is getting intense.  It is also mixed with their anger about what they perceive as the duplicity of the Pakistani Army about its quiet support of the American drone war against the Taliban.  The Obama administration is angry with Pakistan over the refusal of its Army to put the Taliban genie back into the proverbial bottle.  The growing hostility of the Pakistani Taliban toward the Army of that country is especially worrisome for the United States, because of numerous instances of their ability to penetrate and attack the Army in its most secure places.  Consequently, Washington remains nervous about the security of more than one hundred nuclear weapons in the Pakistan arsenal.

As much as President Barack Obama underscored the significance of winning the war in Afghanistan during his election campaign in 2008, his understanding of how to go about achieving that outcome was seriously lacking.  Consequently, when he was elected, he showed a palpable deference for a military surge as a tactic to win the war, while showing no serious commitment to using nation-building as part of his strategy.  Unlike George W. Bush, he never felt the need for treating President Hamid Karzai with respect.  As Rashid notes, “Not a single US official on the Obama team had a trusting relationship with Karzai.”  Only Holbrook, according to the author, understood the need for developing the Afghan economy so that it could withstand the shock of US troop withdrawals. “Holbrook opposed the troop buildup and pushed for resolving the Pakistan conundrum, negotiating with the Taliban [of Afghanistan], and helping Afghanistan and Pakistan with their economies.”  However, he did not have the support of his boss, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who became an ardent supporter of troop buildup in Afghanistan and “agreed with the Pentagon on every major decision on Afghanistan, rather than listen to her adviser and mentor…”

Karzai encountered more than his fair share of his own frustrations.  He was perturbed with the dysfunctional nature of his ties with Obama and U.S. top officials.  He “considered the Americans hopelessly fickle, with multiple civilian and military envoys carrying contradictory messages, working at cross-purposes, and waging Washington turf battles in his drawing room.”  At the same time, Karzai was also “his own worst enemy.”  “He failed to accept that corruption was a core problem for the country and his people.  He showed little interest in improving governance and capacity in his ministries.  He rarely visited the army or the bureaucracy in training.  He could never say no to his brothers who fleeced the banks and who were involved in multiple property acquisitions.”

The most disheartening aspect of Rashid’s book is that he quite astutely identifies a number of features of foreign policy of United States and Pakistan that are nearly impossible to be abandoned by either side.  As such, they are steadily pushing both countries to the brink of disaster.  On the Pakistani side, he writes, “Blinded by ideology,” Pakistanis “…resist any forward-looking strategic thinking.”  That country’s military does not want to deliver peace except on its terms…”  “The United States, too, lacks a strategic vision for Afghanistan and the region that it could share or discuss with Pakistan.  Nobody knows what the Americans want in the long term.”  The Islamists of Pakistan, on the contrary, have a clear goal in mind.  They want to redefine their country “as an Islamic Jihadist venture.”  That is also an alarmist perspective in the sense that, with the palpable decline of al-Qaida as the self-styled global Jihadist entity, the Taliban of Pakistan has taken up that role.

If there is a second Obama administration, there is a vague hope that the United States would venture to develop a comprehensive strategy that would incorporate all the major actors of South Asia: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.  However, considering the gravity of the stakes for Pakistan, such a strategy has to incorporate a number of drastic measures.  Rashid is not explicit about those; however, his analysis makes it easy for one to develop such a list.

First, Pakistan has to take systematic steps to bring an end to the Jihadist part of its strategic culture.  That means a permanent abandonment of the Islamist card against India and Afghanistan.  Second, it has to methodically purge from the ranks of its Army the unknown number of Islamists, whose numbers are understood to be growing steadily.  Third, it has to conduct a thorough revamping of its ISI to ensure that it remains only an intelligence agency and not the multi-headed hydra that it has become for the past several decades.   Fourth, Pakistan has to conduct massive de-radicalization of its civilian and military bureaucracy to make it thoroughly professional so that it can effectively operate in a modern technocratic state, which should be the future of Pakistan.  Fifth, Pakistan has to either close the Deobandi schools from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region or take drastic measures to revamp and modernize the curricula of those schools.  Like all educational institutions, the raison d’être of those schools should be to prepare citizens of a modern state, not self-styled global Jihadists.  None of these steps is easy to take.  But no other country is facing more serious challenges for its continued existence than Pakistan.

All actors involved in this ongoing conflict are dinosaurs from a bygone era, but some of them have the power to create a lot of death and destruction by attacking Iran. All of them appear to be doing their best to bring back the old era.  That era was characterized by the willingness of the Arab autocrats to sustain an environment of double standards under which the United States could remain a dominant actor in their region while guaranteeing the military preponderance of Israel.  That preponderance, by its very nature, was not interested in resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute by offering significant territorial concessions. In the aftermath of the Arab Awakening, the Arab world is living and breathing in a new world where the autocratic rule and its related maladies seem to be on its last leg.

The current regime in Iran is also one of the dinosaurs of the region.  The aging Ayatollahs have long stopped even creating a semblance of representing the much younger majority of the population of that country, which is clearly fed up with rule of the Vilayat-e-Faqih (rule of the clergy).  They have become a mirror image of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in his resolve to stay in power, especially in the last few years of his putrid regime.  The current bifurcation of Iran’s military power between its conventional military and the Revolutionary Guards is such that it is not only fully focused on stifling all efforts to bring about regime from within, but is also likely to be even more brutal in suppressing its citizenry than what we are witnessing in Syria, the next falling domino of Arab tyrannical rule.

The nature of the Arab Spring is such that it is in the process of bringing about radical and fundamental changes to the very nature of governance in the Arab world.  There are great hopes that democracy would replace the rotting autocratic rule; that it would bring about an end to the disenfranchisement of women from the political process; and that it would illuminate all the erstwhile dark corners of the Arab world with religious tolerance and democratic pluralism. Under such an emerging democratic order, US dominance would become a thing of the past.  Emerging Arab democracies are expected to put new demands on the use of conventional politics on Israel to bring about an end to its occupation. Neither Washington nor Jerusalem knows how to handle such pressure, which cannot be countered through the use of Israel’s superior military power.

The only way to hinder the emergence of this new order is through another war, because, if Iran is attacked, one is expected to get some form of retaliation from that country.  Even if it was unable to respond through military means, it would still use its asymmetric capabilities in Iraq to destabilize it and in Afghanistan to threaten the security of US forces.  Any Iranian countermeasures in Afghanistan would most likely create severe retaliatory responses from Washington.  The cumulative result is an unstable West Asia, which has been experiencing wars since the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1990. In fact, if Afghanistan is included in the geographical boundary of West Asia, then that region has been ravaged by wars since the late 1970s.

The fact that 2012 is the year of an American presidential election becomes a highly suitable opportunity for Israel. One of its options is to raise the rhetoric of ambiguous threats of unilateral action and force President Obama – who is earnest about giving diplomacy a chance but who is also desperate to be reelected – to seriously consider taking military action again Iran.  In fact, that would be the best option for Israel.

Either as a result of an American attack or the Israeli bombing of Iran, war seems to be coming to West Asia.  As horrible as it sounds, the resulting death and destruction might be the only way to push the Arab world toward the dark days of the post-World War II era, when autocrats reigned, when American hegemony prevailed, and when a militarily dominant Israel remained politically defiant about resolving the Palestinian conflict. In taking military action against Iran, Washington, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Amman, and other Arab rulers are hoping that they would also be able to bring about regime change in Iran.  They may not succeed in achieving their objectives in Iran, but they are most likely to stem the rising tide of a glorious Arab Spring.

What is more important to note is that this particular issue has to be read within the larger context of the occupation of a Muslim nation by a non-Muslim nation.  In that capacity, the United States faces two very significant problems.  First, as an occupier nation, it is there to resolve what it perceives as security threats.  Everything the US military does is aimed at minimizing that threat.  Military personnel – especially US military personnel – are usually quite good at resolving security-related problems.  However, the way they resolve them – through the use of counter-violence, night raids, kicking down doors, frisking suspicious persons (of both sexes), and entering people’s homes anytime with little or no advance notice – cause nothing but enormous amounts of resentment among the populace.  That was one reason why the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine was revived in Iraq and, as it turned out, the fortuitous application of it with highly timely cooperation from the “Sons of Iraq,” it worked in stabilizing Iraq, at least temporarily.  The COIN doctrine was quickly abandoned by the Obama administration in Afghanistan, in favor of using counterterrorism (CT) as a strategy to eradicate the Taliban and al-Qaida fighting groups.  The very nature of the CT approach is that it breeds alienation among the Afghans toward its perpetrators.

Second, the United States is a Christian nation occupying (under any euphemism) a Muslim country.  In that capacity, everything the US occupation authorities do is judged, from the Afghan side, as a potential offense to Islam.  There is little doubt that US military officials are sensitive to that reality.  However, to expect them to be free from charges of committing potential offensive acts against Islam is akin to expecting someone to keep his shirt dry while remaining in waist-high water.

The US military has been very sensitive about educating its personnel about showing respect toward the occupied Iraqi nation and now toward the Afghan nation, their religion, and their culture.  If one “Googles” job advertisements for “cultural specialists,” they will be amazed to know that hundreds of such jobs are being advertised on a daily basis. What it means is that the US needs to hire “cultural specialists” of such magnitude that it is mostly recruiting the “junk food” version of them.  Of course, some of them have some language training and a whole slew of them are anthropologists.  But most anthropologists are pedestrians when it comes to understanding the strategic culture of a Muslim country.  In most instances, as Westerners, they carry huge cultural baggage of their own, which becomes a constraint in their way of understanding the culture of Islam.  Here is one example of a “cultural specialist,” who was interviewed by the LA Times regarding General Allen’s response to the Quran burning incident.

Question: Did [U.S. Marine Corps Gen.] John Allen say the right things in his apology?  How well do you think they handled it?

Answer:  I was surprised in a good way.  He was obviously taken totally by surprise. There’s no reason a person in charge of a base should even know about the disposal of a bunch of stuff.  I thought the U.S. response has actually been quite genuine and concerned.  They really are trying to win hearts and minds.

But I think the larger thing to keep in mind is that it is about the U.S. occupation of these countries.  It’s not about Muslims.  It’s not about the Koran.  These are the triggers.  But the reason these things happen [the massive protests] is because the U.S. is the most powerful force in Afghanistan.

While the “specialist’s” general response is a reasonable one, I was surprised to read the second paragraph.  My own response to that specialist is that it is about all the factors she mentioned in the second paragraph.  Even as a cultural anthropologist, she misses the significance of the Quran to Muslims.

The ideal solution for Afghanistan for the United States is to end the occupation.  But that solution is least ideal from the perspective of the internal security and stability of that country, especially considering the fact that domestic support for the continued US presence in Afghanistan has dwindled.

My own sense is that, if President Barack Obama is reelected, we are in for a long haul in Afghanistan.  His vision of the US war in Afghanistan as a “just” one will continue to drive this nation’s presence.  If he is not reelected, then the Republican president will still continue the US presence, at least for the first couple of years of his term.  No matter who occupies the White House in 2013, the history of America’s own contribution to the continuing role of Afghanistan as a “graveyard of empires” promises to be at least as bloody as the narrative of the Soviet occupation of that country.

]]> http://www.ehsanahrari.com/2012/02/29/the-culprit-in-afghanistan-is-occupation/feed/ 0 http://www.ehsanahrari.com/2012/02/24/the-brewing-iran-conflict-explained/ http://www.ehsanahrari.com/2012/02/24/the-brewing-iran-conflict-explained/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:50:40 +0000 admin http://www.ehsanahrari.com/?p=2098 The issues involving Iran’s nuclear research program, in my estimation, boil down to the following:

1.  Iran wishes to establish some sort of existential deterrence by acquiring nuclear weapons against a future US regime, which can become as ambitious as Bush Junior’s regime became in dismantling Saddam’s rule from Iraq.  Iran is truly afraid of America’s long-time resolve to bring about regime change.  Just look at what the Reagan administration tried to do during the Iran-Iraq war, or what the US congress has been attempting to do through a slew of Iran-Libya Sanctions Acts during the 1990s and this decade.  That legislation is known as the Iran Sanction Act in its current form.

2.  The United States is simply driven by a long-time hatred of Iran, stemming from the humiliation it experienced during the hostage crisis.  To the best of my recollection, that was the only time an outside event or actor could influence the outcome of a presidential election.

Secondly, the US-Iran rivalry in the Middle East has been favoring the latter since the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.  Today Iran exercises the maximum amount of influence in Iraq, while the US was forced to pull out because of the inability of the Obama administration to negotiate a favorable SOFA [status of forces agreement].  The most unstated variable that forced Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq was what I call the Muqtada al-Sadr-Iran nexus.  That nexus was brutal in putting pressure on al-Maliki to send the Americans packing as a price for letting him stay in power.

Thirdly, the United States envisions putting pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear aspirations, as one way of enabling Saudi Arabia to strengthen the anti-Iran nexus that the Saudis are, quite haplessly, attempting to resuscitate.  The Saudi rulers know that, in an era when the social movement for change continues to brew in Yemen and Bahrain, it is only a matter of time that they and their friends in the UAE will also feel the pressure.  The Qatari rulers are being smart, in the sense that they seem to be doing their best to stay a bit ahead of the demands for change.  The Omani ruler has wisely accommodated the forces of change, but I am not sure how long he will stay in power.

Fourthly, the Obama administration is hoping that the mounting burden of economic sanctions would dismantle the Iranian regime, while it is already facing the threat of a rising rift between Khameini and Ahmadinejad.  Washington is also hoping that the Green movement will be revived once again and succeed in ousting the Islamic rulers of Iran.

3. Israel wants to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, simply because it does not wish to have its nuclear monopoly jeopardized.  In reality, the Israeli concern is not that Iran would attack it, but that a nuclear armed Iran would be least prone to any future threats of “wars of choice” or aspirations for regime change.

Given the intricate interaction among all of these variables, Iran is most threatened, not by the United States or Israel (even though an Israeli attack would be most destabilizing for the region), but by the fact that the legitimacy of the Iranian regime is dwindling steadily.  The brutal put down of the Green movement has only postponed the next round of challenges to the Islamic regime in a region where autocrats’ leases on life are getting shorter by the hour, and they know it.  The Iranian regime has reached a stage where true reforms are impossible because the rulers are so set in their ways that they will not budge until it is too late.

The only remedy for Iran is a regime change brought from within.  There is wishful thinking in Washington that the next corps of Iranian rulers will be similar to the Pahlavi regime in its subservience to the US.  They might be in for a shock.  Just look at what kind of leaders are surfacing in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.

“China’s President Pushes Back Against Western Culture” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/chinas-president-pushes-back-against-western-culture.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

In that essay, Hu writes: “We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration.”  In order to understand China’s fear of democracy, one has to understand the highly regimented nature of China’s rise since 1978.  That type of regimentation cannot be produced in democratic countries, which are notorious about debating an issue to death, about coalition formation on issues of “high politics,” and then passing bills on that issue.  Even then, debates never end  about the pros and cons regarding those policies.  No one has even heard that type of ad infinitum debating on any issue in totalitarian polities.  Debates on policies do take place, but only within their inner sanctums and only among the elites.  That type of regimentation immensely helped China’s emergence as a superpower of the future.

When Professor Joseph Nye wrote his seminal work on “soft power,” I wonder whether he was thinking how soft power is capable of playing a crucial in neutralizing culture conflict, which remains as a major source of tension between the West and the “rest.”  (Incidentally, one can write volumes about cultural conflict between the West and the world of Islam).  Mao Zedong knew that well when he discussed “antagonistic” and “non-antagonistic” contradictions.  Antagonistic contradictions may become the basis of prolonged conflict between cultures that either perceive them as superior to others or cultures that envision that other cultures attempting to dominate and transform the very essence of them.  That thought seems to be driving the thinking of President Hu in the afore-cited essay.  At a time when the U.S. and the Chinese are thinking about the modalities of future competition between the two countries, we need to pay a lot of attention to Hu’s point of winning the “culture war,” which he thinks the West (aka the United States) is waging against China.

However, one does not have to read too long the Obama administration’s new document entitled, “Sustained U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21^st Century,” issued today (January 5, 2012) before realizing that there is not much therein.  Its hallmark is the absence of really new ideas.  South Asia and the Middle East continue to be envisaged as “primary loci” of threats to America’s interests (Page 2).  The long-standing promise of the Obama administration that America is a Pacific power was already formalized when President Barack Obama visited the Asia-Pacific last November.  He also formally opened a new military base in Australia during that trip.  In the context of escalating U.S.-China rivalry, that was indeed a major wrinkle.  A number of East Asian nations applauded that move, while China appropriately expressed its annoyance.

The current document further embellishes that development by stating, “U.S. economic and security interests are “inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities.”  Consequently, the United States’ investment for its prestige, attention, and the focus of its military expenditures emphasizes the role of its old allies, as well as its U.S.-India strategic partnership.  On the latter issue, the Obama administration reiterates its resolve “to support its [India’s] ability to serve as a regional economic anchor and providers of security in the broader Indian region” (Page 8).  Needless to say, this statement would delight India’s leaders.  At the same time, it would also reinvigorate the Sino-Indian naval competition in and around the Indian Ocean.

The new strategic document also restates America’s long-standing gripe that China’s growing military power is not “accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region” (Page 8).  One can rest assured that China will continue to ignore that grumble.

The newly intensified U.S.-Iran rivalry is given its proper space in the new document.  The only added variable is the document’s mention of the increased interactions between the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to contain Iran.  Giving the GCC states a new significance is a deft move in the sense that the Gulf sheikhs and emirs are looking for a pat on the back from Washington, at a time when the long-term prospects of their regime survival appear rather bleak, because of the sustained dynamism of the Arab Awakening (aka the Arab Spring).

Another important aspect of this document is the reiteration of “power projection despite anti-access/area denial challenges.”  The focus of this warfare is the PRC, which has been investing mega-capital in the development of its own asymmetric warfare capabilities against the United States.  In this context, cyber warfare, anti-ship missiles, ballistic and cruise missiles, and even drone warfare have captured major attention of military planners and thinkers in both Washington and Beijing.

What is also important to note is that the U.S. military is fully aware that Iran’s military is also busy emulating China’s asymmetric warfare-related countermeasures either on its own or through secret contacts with the Chinese military.  As was recently highlighted, Iran’s naval doctrine is heavily focused in denying access to the U.S. navy by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

The necessity of issuing this document has a lot to do with the need of the Obama administration to signal to his Republican presidential rivals that he is not about to create a “hollow” military, a phrase that almost invariably comes into vogue during the presidential election campaign.  One can readily recall the spurious “missile gap” between the United States and the USSR, which became a hot issue of debate during the 1960 presidential contest between Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

The bottom line of this document is to assure America’s friends and adversaries that the military is gearing up to doing at least as much in the realm of providing security to the United States as before.  Given its very impressive record of creating new and highly effective warfighting strategies and operational concepts, its adversaries need no further convincing.  China knows that fact only too well and its planners are busy studying the modalities of the AirSea battle concept.

The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq has no clear-cut signs of “victory.”  The administration of President Barack Obama tried to negotiate a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.  When that did not work out to the satisfaction of Washington, the United States – contrary to its strong proclivity for having a long-term stay in Iraq – withdrew its forces.

The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq was an ideal development, from the vantage point of Iran’s strategic interests.  Iran’s adversary, the United States, spent billions of dollars and shed the blood of thousands of its own troops and that of the Iraqis to transform Iraq from a staunch adversary of Iran to its strong friend.  In fact, in Prime Minister al-Maliki, Iran has a powerful ally.  One of Iraq’s chief adversaries in the area, Saudi Arabia, has been a strong supporter of al-Maliki’s nemesis, Iyad Allawi, the head of the al-Iraqiya party, a secularist, and a person preferred by the Sunni Iraqis.  Thus, Iran, by ensuring the prolonged existence of the government of al-Maliki, is definitely enjoying the upper-hand in keeping the Saudis at bay.  The unstated aspect of that development is that Iraq has emerged as an arena for the power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and by proxy, the United States, which is very much in the corner of Saudi Arabia in undermining Iran’s growing power and influence, not only inside Iraq, but also in the Middle East.

This gathering storm is unique, in the sense that when the Persian Gulf states sided with the United States in 1991 to end Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait, they were not interested in destroying his regime.  In the case of Iran, there do not seem to be any red lines in the sand drawn by the Arab states that the United States should not cross in taking military action against Iran.

But the preceding is a minor subtext of the growing animosity between the United States and Iran.  The chief subtext is Iran’s continued nuclear research program, which the U.S. categorically depicts as aimed at developing nuclear weapons.  Iran’s denial to the contrary has few takers in the West.  Thus, while the United States is assiduously weaving complex webs of economic sanctions against Iran, Israel prefers military action against it – either of its own or that of the United States – to put an end to Iran’s nuclear research.

Viewing the issue from Israel’s point of view, if Iran indeed develops nuclear weapons, the Jewish state would lose its nuclear veto against any ambitious states in the Middle East – a veto that was strategically developed by the founding fathers of that country.  Even though a nuclear armed Iran would be no match against Israel’s military power, the mere fact that such a development is about to happen is alarming to the leaders in Jerusalem, and they have kept their pressure on the Obama administration for action against Iran.

Considering the fact that the Islamic regime of Iran has been under threat by the United States for the sake of regime survival, the Ayatollahs may be considering having nuclear weapons in the future.  Even though it has been serious about creating the circumstances for regime change in Iran, the United States – even though it denies it – does not think that Iran’s predilections for acquiring nuclear weapons has a legitimate or a rational basis.  Therein lies the rub: what Iran considers as a necessary requirement for regime survival, the United States regards as a threat to regional stability “justifying” waging another war.  Listening to the Republican presidential candidates casually talking about taking military action against Iran, and even the Obama officials’ frequent references to the phrase that George W. Bush and his officials used to iterate – that all options regarding Iran are on the table – it appears that the American political leadership is suffering from a collective sense of amnesia regarding the instability and destruction that resulted from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In the rising cacophony of claims related to ‘threats’ regarding Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons, the Arab regimes’ siding with the United States, in reality, has an entirely different real reason.  Those states have long considered Iran as a threat to their own aspirations involving the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) capacity to manage regional stability.  For instance, GCC propaganda is trying to persuade the international community that political protests in Shia-dominated Bahrain are sponsored by Iran instead of being a manifestation of the Bahrainis to transform the shape of the tyranny of the Sunni regime.  Saudi Arabia – the dominant state of the GCC – has long regarded Iran as a threat to its own aspirations to dominate the larger Middle East.

Iran has deftly outmaneuvered the Sunni Arab states, but, most importantly, has outsmarted the United States in Iraq and in the Levant by creating a nexus with Syria.  That nexus, in turn, has dominated the distribution of power inside Lebanon in favor Hezbollah.  Iran’s growing influence in the Middle East in the aftermath of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq created a sense of long-term defeat among the Sunni rulers in Riyadh, Cairo, and Amman.  They did not know what countermeasures to take in order to undermine Iran’s enhanced power and influence.  America’s near obsession of “containing” Iran through the pretext of depriving it of nuclear weapons was perceived as a fantastic opportunity to outsmart Iran.

The upside of this American-Arab maneuvering is that Iran is likely to be forced to continue its nuclear research but would stop just short of developing nuclear weapons.  The downside is that political explosion in the Persian Gulf in particular – and in the Middle East in general – happens suddenly and with calamitous consequence.  And the next war, if it comes, promises to be highly explosive and equally catastrophic.

A number of students of global affairs are steadily predicting a power shift from the West to the East and the consequent emergence of a post-American era.[2]  In reality, however, the global power shift might not be from the West to the East, but a multi-directional one, as we also witness the emergence of Turkey, Brazil, and South Africa as new global centers of economic dynamism, along with the PRC and India – two spectacularly rising powers.

Perhaps recognizing that it has long been stuck in the dizzying whirlpool of the Middle East and the need to catch its breath by refocusing on its dominance in the Asia-Pacific, President Barack Obama has already withdrawn America’s forces from Iraq; and has redeployed 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan.  This is part of his promise to bring about complete withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.  However, the United States is opening a new military base in Australia.  By withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, the lone superpower might also be tacitly conceding its defeat.  The politics of Iraq remains as volatile and divisive as ever.  Except this time, along with the explosive Shia-Sunni division, it is also characterized by the growing presence of al-Qaida.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, continues to prove itself to be the graveyard of empires.  As such, the war in that country continues to underscore the mounting power of the Taliban.

The Asia-Pacific, on the contrary, is welcoming the United States’ decision to escalate its presence, with open arms.  China — whose escalating hegemony appears ominous from the perspectives of small nation-states of East Asia – is creating ample apprehension among them.  Thus, these nation-states initiated a policy of “circling the wagons,” and appear determined to balance the power of China by asking for a resurged presence of the old hegemon, the USA, which has an established record of creating a benign hegemony.[3]  Washington could not have been happier.  The East Asian nations’ welcoming of America to their region only complemented the insistence of the Obama administration that America is a “Pacific power.”  President Barack Obama reiterated that resolve during his trip to Australia by stating that “…we are here to stay.”

India and China, the poorest countries of the not-too-distant past, have long passed the label of “rising powers.”  Now, they appear to be the economic power houses, indeed superpowers, of the future.  China is way ahead of India in this race, and thus remains a focal point of America’s attention.  As the foremost rising power of our time, China has the American example of the post-World War II era to follow.  Its rise not only has to be peaceful, but it also should be eminently constructive in revamping the rules underlying the functioning of the premier global political and financial institutions, like the U.N., the World Bank, and the IMF, etc.  Thus far, however, its leaders have not impressed the world by their proactivism or imagination for playing a constructive role.  They are standing on the sidelines, while being critical of the U.S. and Europe for not being “responsible” in their respective economic policies.  In the meantime, China continues to act as a rising power most comfortable in implementing parochial and inward looking policies of currency manipulation, as well as a heavy reliance on pushing its merchandise to the West.  It behaves as if it is only interested in reaping the benefits of appearing to be a superpower of the future without paying the political or economic price for being one.

India is gradually learning to act as a rising power in its neighborhood.  It has enhanced its presence in Southeast Asia by deciding to explore for oil in the South China Sea and in its cooperation with Vietnam, which has been one of the most vocal critics of China’s assertiveness in that region.[4]  India also has escalated its military presence along its border with China by announcing “$13 billion plans to raise a new mountain strike corps and four mountain divisions.”[5]  That was a clear response to China’s reported buildup on the Sino-Indian borders.   However, the jury is still out regarding the future performance of the successors of the Sun Tzu and Kautilyan styles of Realpolitik.

Europe is facing a crisis related to the future of the Eurozone, which was recently depicted as “a crisis of apocalyptic proportion” by Radoslaw Sikorski, Foreign Minister of Poland.[6]  As Europe is standing at the edge of a precipice, Turkey is emerging as the new power center of Europe.  In that capacity, it is implementing a “truly multidimensional foreign policy” in which it secretly conducted a joint air force exercise with China last October.[7]  In economic affairs, Russia became Turkey’s number one trade partner, replacing Germany.

Turkey is playing a similarly spectacular role in the Middle East.  Its intermingling of secularism and Islam is emerging as a popular example for the next corps of Arab leaders replacing the autocrats in the aftermath of the Arab Awakening.  In view of these developments, Turkey is transforming itself from a “peripheral state of Europe” into a “central power” of that region.[8]  Its model of secular democracy is already being emulated in Tunisia; and chances are that it would also be emulated in Egypt, as Islamists are winning electoral majority in that country but promising to opt for a coalition with the secularist parties.

The Arab Awakening (aka Arab Spring) continues to capture the world’s attention.  As the aging dictators fall, Islamists are emerging as some of the most prominent leaders of the Arab world.  The question is not an imminent one, but should be asked:  What is the Arab world going to look like in the next 3-5 years?  Are there prospects for the emergence of democracies, Islamic democracies, or would some of those Arab countries slide under the rule of theocracies?  Three current models of theocracy – Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia – have not made those countries places of economic prosperity, political stability, or the focal point of enlightenment.  If anything, obscurantism is on the rise in Pakistan, and theological autocracy is the order of the day in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

If the convergence of Islam and pluralistic democracy occurs in the post-awakening Arab world, then the opportunities for people of that part of the world are enormous.  There is tremendous human potential waiting to be liberated, educated, enlightened, and to make a dash toward the globalized world from which it was more or less excluded because the autocrats feared progress related to the information age.  And they were right for fearing it, because modernity was bound to become their enemy.  The Arab Awakening arrived in the Middle East and North Africa riding on the shoulders of some of the most recent advances in social/electronic media.  It was the power of social media that the autocratic and archaic control machine could not control, fight, or stifle.

One of the secrets of the Arab Awakening is that it has been an inclusive movement.  Another shocking aspect of it is that there were no leaders who could issue commands for the masses to follow, or whose arrests or assassinations by the ruling autocrats could have seriously undermined the movement.  As liberated Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya are struggling to create a constitutional system of governance, the most important question is whether they will adhere to the principle of inclusiveness, or will they become victims of fissiparous tendencies for which their societies have been notorious?

One has every reason to be wary of the Islamists of the Arab world.  They have spent long years in the dungeons of the autocrats and the Pharaohs.  They have no experience with governance.  They have repeated the slogan, “Islam is the solution,” without having the responsibilities for spelling it out into specific policies.  As they become part of the ruling elites, it will be a test for them.  Their ultimate success may not be that they govern well, even though that would be a wonderful outcome.  Their ultimate success as participants in a democracy is their willingness to accept defeat, if or when they are voted out of office.

One “odd man out” in the rising tide of political change in the Middle East is Iran.  It has increased its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, most ironically, because of the dismantlement of the Taliban regime and that of Saddam Hussein by its arch enemy, the United States.  However, the Green Movement’s abortive attempt to bring about regime change in Iran has left that country exposed to the covert shenanigans of the United States to overthrow the rule of the Ayatollahs.  Iran’s recent capture of the CIA’s, RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone is evidence of that reality.  The CIA’s monitoring of Iran is only the exposed aspect of its covert actions against that country.  The covert actions that are unbeknownst to the theocratic rulers of Iran are likely to hurt their regime the most.[9]  To add insult to injury, Iran’s strong ally, Syria, appears to be the next country to undergo a bloody regime change.  The loss of Syria would also seriously damage Iran’s presence and influence in Lebanon.

However, Iran is not the only country increasingly troubled by the prospects of regime change in Syria.  Israel is equally concerned, because the ouster of the Assad regime promises to bring about the rising presence and clout of the Islamists, who are not likely to loathe the Jewish state any less than the current Baathist/Alawite rulers of that country.

The emerging realignment of power should be worrisome, especially for the great powers of the West, because it is not only aimed at threatening their erstwhile privileged status in the global hierarchy of nation-states, but it also promises to bring to prominence actors and forces that have not been viewed by them as particularly friendly or cooperative.  There are likely to be many uncertainties, even the outbreak of minor or even major military conflicts, before a new hierarchy of nations is formulated.  The emergence of China and India does not promise the evolution of a Sino-Indian condominium of power.  Instead, the two rising powers might be headed toward an era of increased friction and even military conflict, especially on the issue of border dispute.  One minor example of that friction is underscored by the fact that India’s new Agni-V long-range ballistic missile is being dubbed by its defense analysts as the “China-killer.”

The lessening of the economic status of European states and the rising power of Turkey direly requires the emergence of a new set of “rules of engagement,” whereby Turkey can decide whether it is still interested in joining the EU, and, if so, on what terms?  The “sick man” of Europe toward the conclusion of the first decade of the 21^st Century is Europe, not Turkey.  The rising presence and influence of Islam requires a new rapprochement between the Islamists and the secularists for the emergence of Islamic democracy or a new model of democratic pluralism that resembles the Turkish model.  All of these are tall orders.  But they are also in need of acceptance by the powers of the past and the future.

The domestic politics of Pakistan are so rotten that it needs a social movement a la the Arab Awakening (aka the Arab Spring) to completely overhaul the political system.  However, the sad reality is that social movements cannot be created; they spring from seemingly minor events like the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the desperate Tunisian fruit seller.  All he wanted was a decent way to earn wages so that he could buy himself a car.  His personal humiliation at the hands of the petty bureaucrats of Tunisia resulted in his decision to burn himself alive.  The flames that burned his body eventually brought down the Taghoots  (dictators) of Tunisia and Libya and the Pharaoh of Egypt.

Manifestations of anger in Pakistan, on the contrary, have many faces of militant Islam.  There are protests supporting the phony “blasphemy” laws, which are essentially anti-Christian in their focus.  No politician or religious leader has the guts to oppose them without fear of being assassinated.  There are frequent bombings of Shiite mosques and religious gatherings, which are expressions of Sunni fanaticism.  There are suicide attacks on the military, which are also essentially Islamist in origin, but are also puzzling in the sense that Pakistan’s Army has had good-to-very-good ties with the Islamist groups.  In fact, if the Army were to adopt a militant posture toward the Islamists – which appears increasingly impossible because its rank and file also have a growing number of staunch supporters of Islamism – then it could score a bloody but decisive victory against those forces.  That would also transform Pakistan into a country of political stability and religious moderation.

As one deciphers the aforementioned statement of Rashid – that the Pakistani Army is now treating the United States as an enemy – it appears that these countries are hell-bent on taking divergent paths for reasons of their own.  From the U.S. side, there remains an overwhelming state of confusion and rising antipathy toward Pakistan for not toeing the American line.  The old adage that Pakistan is heavily influenced by Allah, the Army, and America has the last actor (America) in the process palpably fading, for better or for worse.  As long as the Pakistani Army refuses to play the role of the gendarme of American war-related goals in Afghanistan, the yawning gap of differences may turn into the outbreak of periodic hostilities in the form of skirmishes on the Pak-Afghan borders.

From the Pakistani side, the rising spiral of anti-Americanism is also showing its face in the rising popularity of Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf  (PTI or justice movement) party, led by former cricket legend Imran Khan.  Unlike the staunchly pro-American Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), the PTI is palpably anti-American.  At a time when – as reported by the Pew Research Center –  73 percent of Pakistanis hold an unfavorable view of the United States, and at a time when only 14 percent of them think it was good that Usama Bin Laden was killed, there is virtually no chance of any meaningful rapprochement between Islamabad and Washington.  Since the Pakistani Army has adopted an overall anti-American approach, it is also likely to develop a nexus with the PTI, especially if it captures 20-30 percent of the legislative seats in the next election.  However, Imran Khan is not likely to become the next president or prime minister of Pakistan, even though his personal popularity is reported by the Pew survey to be around 68 percent among the Pakistanis.

In order for a U.S.-Pak rapprochement to become a reality, the United States has to adopt significant changes in its policies toward Pakistan.  However, there is no constituency for such a development inside the American political arena, regardless of whether or not Obama wins the next presidential election.  If there are no positive overtures from Washington toward Islamabad, no civilian government in Pakistan would dare make a move for the creation of similar overtures.  The PPP is a moribund entity, in terms of its ability to govern in the aftermath of “memogate.”  The Army is convinced that the former Pakistani ambassador to United States, Hussein Haqqani, was merely carrying out the wishes of his boss (President Zardari), when he allegedly prepared that memo.  And the chances of finding the Zardari regime not guilty of that alleged crime in today’s Pakistan are zero.  As Pakistan and the United States continue to drift apart, one has to wonder whether this drift is a permanent one or whether there are likely to be some pleasant surprises in the making whereby the erstwhile partners would succeed in reviving their former ambivalent ties.  The resurgence of even ambivalent relations appears considerably better than the present day’s drift toward escalating antagonism between Islamabad and Washington.

Reviewed