Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Pakistani Paradox

There was a disconcerting common thread in Moshin Hamid's rather reluctant celebration of Pakistan's 60th birthday on the editorial pages of the August 15th New York Times. It turns out that Pakistan has been “a steadfast American ally” whenever it happened to be under military rule as was true with Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan in the 1960s, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, and Gen. Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s. Ironically, General Musharraf was also quite the American media darling when he was peddling his book last year – even making a coveted appearance on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.” However, given all the recent negative press, it has become rather apparent that the General has long since fallen out of favor.

As the reluctant fundamentalist’s article implies, and those of us who grew up in the Indian subcontinent are keenly aware, military dictators have never ever been as good for Pakistan as they have been for the United States. In keeping with this tradition, General Musharraf has had his illicit turn but now his time is up. The purported power-sharing agreement that he has been trying to finalize with ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would be bad for both Pakistan and the United States – ipso facto, the idea having emanated out of the Bush Administration, it would surely be unpalatable to the larger Pakistani population.

Since 9/11 General Musharraf has been consistently accused of having it both ways in trying to balance his covert support for the Taliban versus his overt allegiance to the Bush Administration in hunting down Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. One could infer that President Bush has also been trying to play it both ways with Pakistan, given his bold pronouncement following 9/11 to be resolute against “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism.” Despite knowing for a long time now that “Taliban and Qaeda fighters continue to find shelter and support on Pakistan’s side of the Afghan border,” President Bush has not acted decisively against them. The New York Times reported recently that the Bush Administration scrubbed “a 2005 American attempt to capture Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil.”

Pakistan is and has always been the “Rodney Dangerfield” of nations – unable to command any respect. In fact, General Musharraf's confession to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft during his book promotion interview last September confirms this viewpoint. Per the General’s own account, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made a very blunt threat to Pakistan’s Director of Intelligence:
“Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.”
Herein lies the Pakistani paradox, which appears to be a dilemma that actually confronts most Muslim nations – how to reconcile the requirements for a functioning liberal democracy against the seemingly conflicting demands of an orthodox Muslim theology? Democracy did not seem to be the perfect solution for India in 1947, but both democracy and a secular India have managed to survive and prosper through some tumultuous times. Pakistan could yet become a shining example of a Muslim democracy, provided its military stops stepping in every time it foresees or fakes a “crisis.” And, more importantly, the next time a military officer dares to overthrow an elected government in Pakistan, the United States should use whatever means necessary to force him back into his barracks.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

A ‘New Clear’ Passage to India

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force in 1970 after China’s first nuclear test in 1964 and before India’s first nuclear explosion ten years later. At that time, the NPT recognized as “nuclear weapon states,” only those nations that had conducted nuclear tests prior to 1967. These nations happened to be the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Although the People’s Republic of China did not take its legitimate place as a UN member until 1971 and then signed the NPT only in 1992.

A recent New York Times editorial lamented that “When it comes to nuclear proliferation, Washington's only real policy is to reward its friends and punish its enemies.” Even if there were something wrong with this typically conservative principle, it should be noted that U.S. foreign policy had made some rather hefty concessions back in the early seventies to accommodate communist China. This was part of President Nixon’s “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” overture to engage one communist giant while trying to contain the other – the Soviet Union.

These progressive considerations of yesteryear have brought us to the current situation, in which China is now viewed by our foreign policy establishment as a long-term strategic threat to the United States. We find ourselves in this predicament, in large part, because our policy of engagement has helped steer China towards a market economy without bringing about commensurate change in its political system and authoritarian form of government.

The afore-mentioned Times editorial also stated that
“President Bush is understandably desperate for some kind of foreign policy success”
and thereby implying that his India strategy could actually chalk one up for him in the win column. It is quite likely that Bush’s forward-thinking nuclear deal with India might do just that. This is one instance where the neocons in the Bush Administration are actually seeing the forest for the trees by laying the foundation for a seminal paradigm shift in 21st century U.S. foreign policy – one that not only addresses our China syndrome, but also considers the larger threat as defined by the ongoing “global war on terror.”

So then why is Wall Street Journal columnist, Bret Stephens, not a happy camper? In a recent column he accused our “new clear” partner of keeping “bad company” with Iran. Mr. Stephens’ probably needs a refresher course on our own recent haphazard dealings with Iran. After 9/11, a “coalition -- made up of Iran, India, Russia and the Northern Alliance, and aided by massive American airpower -- drove the Taliban from power.” Despite this measure of Persian support, barely a couple of months later in his 2002 State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to declare Iran as a charter member of his “axis of evil.” Then, to further confound matters, he placed an unseemly reliance on dubious information from known Iranian-sympathizer, Ahmed Chalabi, and invaded Iraq in March 2003.

If that weren’t bewildering enough, since 2005 President Bush has relied heavily on the Iranian-backed government of Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki to “sustain, govern and defend itself.” But now, with the weight of the impending Petraeus Report hanging over its head, the Bush Administration figures that Shiite Iran’s influence in the Middle East is getting out of control. So the Administration wants to hedge its bets on Iraq and re-supply our traditional Sunni allies, Saudi Arabia and its satellite Gulf States, over $20 billion in an arms deal. This is the same Saudi Arabia that – accounted for fifteen of nineteen hijackers on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and – gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and the Bush Administration’s original “war on terror.” Is it any wonder then, why they – the Muslim nations – continue to hate us?

If Mr. Stephens could see the forest for the trees, he might have realized that going forward India could actually help us with our tenuous relationship with Iran. More importantly, these two nations could also help us snare our $50 million man, who has enjoyed a safe haven within the borders of another shaky Sunni ally, Pakistan, since his escape from the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001 . From a long term strategic standpoint, just as we look to India as a counter-weight to China in Asia, it is within our national security interests to have a Shia power counter-balance the traditional Sunni hegemony in the Middle East.

From a more practical standpoint, our “new clear” passage to India could mutually benefit not only our two great democracies, but also it could become the basis for new, long-term alliances throughout the western world. My reasoning is based on an observation that I had first made in my 2005 book, “The Bush Diaries,” and is worth repeating:

“The population of the world can be divided into roughly four equal quadrants — Judeo-Christian, Hindu-Buddhist, Muslim, and Communist. A vast majority of the people that constitute the Judeo-Christian and Hindu-Buddhist quadrants happen to live in secular democracies. It would therefore seem natural for these quadrants to be more closely aligned, since they share similar economic and political value systems? One would hope that an alignment of this nature could become an ideal for peace and prosperity throughout the world.”