Last August, in the heat of the Democratic primary season when his adversaries were portraying him as naïve on foreign and security policy issues, Senator Barack Obama, in a speech delivered at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, stated that he would be prepared to use military force against Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan if that country did not act forcefully against them. At the time, his speech, quite predictably, elicited mixed reactions. President Bush caricatured it but Senator Hilary Clinton, then another contender for the Democratic nomination, concurred with his statement.

Now that he is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president and John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, it might be useful to speculate about how a future administration, Democratic or Republican, might act if Pakistan’s ability or willingness to tackle the Al-Qaeda are still found wanting. In early June, the US did carry out an attack into Pakistani territory, one that has placed great strain on the US-Pakistan alliance. The attack, though directed at elements of the neo-Taliban, ended up killing several Pakistani military personnel who were in the area. In the wake of this incident, the two sides have agreed to carry out a joint investigation to ascertain what went wrong. It is intriguing to note that the United States, while agreeing to a joint investigation, has not yet offered a formal apology for the collateral consequences of this attack.

If the neo-Taliban continues to make gains in Afghanistan throughout this summer and rely on sanctuaries within Pakistan, will American patience, especially after the November election, run out?  What then, might the United States do?

In the end, a difference in presidential political affiliations may not prove to be the decisive factor in the decision to use force or not against recalcitrant elements in Pakistan. First, despite some specific reservations about the direction of policy, Democrats in Congress have not spelled out a drastically different approach to dealing with Pakistan since the tragedy of 9/11. The differences, for the most part, have been stylistic or on matters of nuance or emphasis.

Until the last few months, when the patience of both sides of the aisle started to finally wear thin, as far as General Musharraf was concerned, one heard the tired refrain that he was the only viable game in town.  The only policy question where there were substantive differences dealt with the proper composition of the bundles of American assistance to Pakistan: how much to reward the military and how much to devote to the social sector?

Second, if Pakistan’s internal politics continue to remain as adrift, the next administration may or may not have a viable interlocutor in Pakistan.  Under those circumstances, ironically, threats to use force in Pakistan’s borderlands may actually enable the present fractious coalition to close ranks and divert popular attention away from their own myriad shortcomings. Such a threat may also lead the military, some of whom still harbour pro-Taliban sentiments, to throw its weight behind the otherwise querulous coalition.

Third, it is far from clear that even if a Democratic or a Republican president were prone to use force against Pakistan’s outer fringes, that such action would have the requisite effect.  Indeed, it could be argued that both militarily and diplomatically, such air strikes could produce perverse effects. Militarily, apart from killing a small number of individuals, these air strikes will accomplish little given the features of the moonscape-like terrain. Diplomatically, at a time when US standing is already at a low ebb because of the Bush administration’s propensity to use force fecklessly, continued air strikes with attendant civilian (and also Pakistani military) casualties are unlikely to generate much goodwill either in the region or beyond.

What the next president instead needs to do is to fashion an entirely new policy toward Pakistan. He needs to recognise that the Bush administration’s embrace of the Pakistani military in general, and General Musharraf, in particular, was a fundamental strategic error. The result of this flawed policy is that it has garnered much anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Consequently, it behoves the next president to fashion a new strategy that does not privilege the Pakistani military, one that diverts economic assistance to crying social needs and one that reaches out to Pakistani civil society. None of this will prove simple or easy.

The military will still try and muscle its way into all diplomatic negotiations with the United States. They will have their supporters within the Pentagon and Pakistan’s contentious politics may make it difficult for the next president to find a viable working partner. Despite these difficulties, a policy that either relies on the periodic the use of force or returns to giving the military carte blanche in dealing with the menace of a resurgent Taliban would amount to compounding the costly mistakes of the Bush administration.