In Washington, DC, government analysts, especially in the realms of security and international affairs, are frequently urged to “think out of the box”. The term, which has acquired the status of a virtual cliché, refers to the ability to think of about issues in unconventional ways.
In recent weeks, especially in the wake of General Musharraf’s declaration of a state of emergency in Pakistan, there has been much chatter about “thinking out of the box” in formulating a new set of policy options toward Pakistan. Yet, despite the stakes that the United States has in Pakistan’s future, much of what is passing as serious and unconventional thought and analysis on the subject, really has not risen much beyond the level of tired and banal palaver.
Some key strands of these shallow and trite discussions are worth highlighting. The first strand argues for forging a strategy to keep the Musharraf regime standing with a democratic window dressing. Admittedly, the Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, who recently visited Pakistan, have both admonished General Musharraf to lift the state of emergency before the planned January elections. However, no member of the current administration has suggested that much military assistance, that is currently in the pipeline, may be seriously in jeopardy unless General Musharraf acts with dispatch to end the state of emergency, end arbitrary arrests, free political prisoners, restore the independence of the judiciary and lift restrictions on the print and electronic media.
Yet the best method for getting the attention of Musharraf and his generals would be to publicly and broadly hint that their most sought after goods, offensive weaponry, may be at risk of an American cutoff. Of course, this position assumes that the United States needs to keep appeasing the military establishment in Pakistan, now and in the foreseeable future, to pursue its security interests in the region.
In effect, the second strand of these discussions holds that the only meaningful leverage that the United States has over the Pakistani generals is the provision of virtually unrestricted access to conventional weaponry. The argument, runs along the following lines: such assistance would assuage the insecurities of the military and thereby ensure steady cooperation.
Yet the historical record suggests otherwise. For example, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, what such assistance bought the United States was access to some of the most ideologically charged and religiously-motivated elements of the Afghan resistance. In turn, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate carefully funneled the bulk of American assistance to their chosen minions within the resistance. However, few individuals in positions of power seem to recall that providing substantial amounts of high-grade military assistance did little or nothing to further another critical American goal: the prevention of the Pakistani military’s headlong pursuit of nuclear weapons. Instead key elements of the United States government participated in a charade that involved turning a Nelson’s eye toward Pakistan’s clandestine pursuit of a nuclear weapons program.
A related corollary to this line of argument has been that the United States must provide Pakistan with the specific conventional weapons systems that its military demands. In the 1980s, it was F-16 aircraft, even though they had little or no relevance in assisting the Afghan resistance. Instead the Pakistani military sought to acquire them to develop a viable means to erode India’s military superiority. Not surprisingly, the Indian military establishment successfully lobbied its political masters to obtain sufficient high-performance aircraft from the Soviet Union and France to maintain its edge against Pakistan in conventional weaponry. As a consequence, an arms race of sorts developed between the two subcontinental adversaries for much of the decade.
A fourth, unspoken strand, suggests that the military establishment in Pakistan, for all practical purposes, is the only game in town. This proposition, of course, is little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the United States consistently bolsters one institution over all others within the Pakistani polity, invariably, that institution, the military, will come to the fore. Throughout the long history of U.S.-Pakistan relations, the United States, for a range of reasons, harking from anti-Communism to in the 1950s and 1960s, to the China opening in the 1970s and then the ouster of the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s, has proven willing and eager to support the military dictator of the day.
The defence of American moral and ethical principles has mattered, but only when other, more immediate, material interests were not implicated. For example, the Carter administration had actually isolated General Zia’s Pakistan for its execrable human rights record, its relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons and for its dismantling of Pakistan’s fragile democracy. However, once the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, few alternatives, such as a regional response to challenging the Soviet intrusion into the region was left unexplored and instead a covert military assistance program was adopted in concert with General Zia’s squalid regime.
Today, while the Bush administration ostensibly supports the promotion of democracy in Pakistan as well in other parts of the Islamic world, it still cannot wean itself off its fondness of supporting a corrupt military dictatorship that has only fitfully supported American interests and policies over the past six years. More to the point, the regime’s willingness to assist the United States, of course, has come with a sizeable price tag. The American taxpayer has shelled out close to $10 billion in assistance to the Musharraf regime.
The failure to exercise moral, intellectual and political imagination in forging a new relationship with Pakistan will not be cost free. But continued efforts to prop up an increasingly unpopular dictator through a dubious election will only foster a growing climate of anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Worse still, it is far from clear, that a pseudo-civilian regime based upon flawed elections will enable Musharraf to pursue an American anti-terrorism agenda directed against the Al Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban, with any greater vigour than he has displayed over the past six years.
Apart from the uncertainty of meeting these immediate, parochial but entirely understandable goals, through a mostly uncritical reliance on Musharraf in mufti, perpetuating the military junta in civilian garb will continue to undermine Pakistan’s fragile institutions. The consequence of the further erosion of these already denuded institutions will only worsen the plight of a hapless country riddled with corruption, inequity, sectarian violence and ethnic conflict. To avoid worsening these myriad social ills and thereby sending the country reeling down the path of further political upheaval, the time to think outside the box is now.