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Rules of disengagement
America, for this decade and beyond
Rules of disengagement This week, in the wake of the Bonn Conference and its boycott by Pakistan in protest against the Nato strikes of its border checkposts, we at TNS decided to focus on two countries and their interests in the region. First is the United States which has announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014 and the second is Pakistan whose interests seem at variance with that of the US. We understand that in a power game setting, the powerful wins. So all we want to do is to see things as they stand today. We’ve touched on America’s game plans as articulated so far. But regarding Pakistan, we have dared to propose that it needs to reevaluate its foreign policy goals. — ED
One look at the banners
displayed in all major cities of the country and the retaliatory tone they
use against the Nato airstrikes against Pakistani soldiers on border
checkpoints is enough to know how Pakistan’s interests in the region sit
at cross purposes with the rest of the world, particularly the United
States. Contrast this reaction
inside the country with its image abroad — as an ‘exporter of
terrorism’ and a ‘safe haven for terrorists’ — and, clearly, there
is something seriously wrong with the way we have been conducting our
foreign affairs. There is nothing to indicate that this state of our foreign
affairs will get better in the future, unless we decide to reevaluate and
reformulate our foreign policy goals. A classic case study The joint report recently
published by the Jinnah Institute (JI) and the United States Institute of
Peace (USIP), titled ‘Pakistan, the United States and the End Game in
Afghanistan: Perceptions of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy Elite’, is a
classic case study in this regard. Critics have brushed the report aside on
various counts, beginning with the selection of project participants and how
they have furthered the interests of Pakistan’s security establishment. Critics have also talked
about the “built-in selection and projection biases”, the absence of one
single Baloch making it to the 53-strong illustrious list, the equating of
all Pashtuns with Taliban and much else. These criticisms of what
the report has not done or achieved may be valid but a casual reading of
what the report does achieve is instructive. It’s a classic representation
of what is wrong with Pakistan’s foreign policy and, by implication, the
elite that formulates it. The tone of the themes and objectives is
unbelievably naïve. Just take a look: Pakistan seeks “a degree of
stability in Afghanistan”, “an inclusive government in Kabul” and
wants to limit “Indian presence to development activities”. The wish list goes on.
“The settlement in Afghanistan should not lead to a negative spillover
such that it contributes to further instability in Pakistan or causes
resentment among Pakistani Pushtuns” and the “government in Kabul should
not be antagonistic to Pakistan and should not allow its territory to be
used against Pakistani state interests.” Not only does it want Mullah Omar
and the Haqqani network to be part of the new political arrangement, it
wants Pakistani misgivings about the “likelihood of a growing Indian
footprint” in Kabul addressed because this would give New Delhi a chance
“to manipulate the end game”. The assumptions are
mind-boggling as the ground reality mocks us in our faces. Further into the
report, Pakistani opinion-makers sense “a civil-military disconnect”
between the strategies of the Pentagon and the State Department and are
pessimistic because the US would want “a long-term security presence in
Afghanistan”. Looking at the year in
retrospect, the prognosis by the foreign policy elite looks uniquely
ignorant, coming as it does in the wake of Osama Bin Laden being found from
a garrison town of Pakistan (the proceedings of the report were conducted
before May 2, we are told), the attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan by the
Haqqani network believed to be hiding in North Waziristan, the allegations
of ISI’s involvement in Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination and finally
the fact that this year the US established direct contacts with the Taliban
(something the Pakistani security establishment had promised to do all
along). The Western border or the Eastern, or both In effect, what the Jinnah
Institute report does is bring the disputes at our Western border to the
fore. Today, not only are we the erstwhile partners in the US-led war on
terror, with hundreds of thousands of our troops fighting foreign terrorists
in the tribal areas we are a country at war. But this was not the intention
or a foreign policy objective; the Eastern border was, along with India, the
permanent enemy. Ayaz Amir, in his
excellent analysis ‘The Western Border is the Thing’, writes that the
threat to us is from the west not the east. “But all our strategic
theories, our military plans, our deployments and cantonments are geared to
fight the wars of yesterday…” Because, he writes, “in Pakistani
military thinking the enemy is India. From Kakul to Staff College to NDU
this is the unchanging assumption. Tanks, submarines, F-16s and nuclear
delivery systems are all meant for India.” Obviously, the so-called
strategic depth doctrine, which the strategists refuse to buy in the strict
sense of the term, was sought against the enemy — India. Pakistan
supported the US against its war in Russia because it wanted arms that its
military could potentially use against India. But if strategic depth, as
it is understood in the common parlance as Pakistan’s desire to control
Afghanistan, is accepted, the ground reality is so well expressed in common
parlance, too — with their capacity and inclination to attack targets in
Pakistan, it’s the Taliban that have attained a strategic depth in
Pakistan. So, are we prepared to fight two wars at the same time, something that even the superpowers did not attempt or did so at their own peril? This is a foreign policy question that Pakistan needs to address at this point. Some historical perspective It was quite early on that
the newly established Pakistan started confusing its defence needs with
foreign policy needs. The communal basis for the creation of the country,
articulated in the dispute between All India National Congress and All India
Muslim League before the partition, came to be reflected in the enmity
between the ‘Hindu India’ and ‘Muslim Pakistan’. This Pan-Islamism
was used to turn the country into an ideological state as well as became a
cornerstone of our foreign policy. From the beginning, the
threat of India was built up and Muslim League-supported newspapers wrote
editorials calling for “guns rather than butter” and a “bigger and
better-equipped army” to defend the “sacred soil” of Pakistan. Not only were the
tribesmen sent into the disputed territory of Kashmir in 1948, religious
scholars were made to issue fatwas that the tribesmen and the militarymen
assisting them were waging jihad and were called mujahideen. It was in this backdrop
that Pakistan allowed itself to become a client state of the United States
— a bulwark against Communism — to ascertain Pakistan’s integrity
which meant it was militarily well-equipped against India. Apparently Jinnah, too,
was conscious of Pakistan’s strategic advantage and preempted the
strategic depth doctrine when he said in an interview soon after partition
with Margaret Bourke White: “America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan
needs America…Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed… [on]
the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves.” Despite its alliance with
the US, the military continued to build itself along ideological foundations
of Islam. But these developments
affected the polity of the new state in other ways. In Ayesha Jalal’s
words, “If defence against India provided added impetus for the
consolidation of state authority in Pakistan, paradoxically enough, it also
served to distort the balance of relations between the newly formed center
and the provinces… So in Pakistan’s case defence against India was in
part a defence against internal threats to central authority. This is why a
preoccupation with affording the defence establishment — not unusual for a
newly created state — assumed obsessive dimensions in the first few years
of Pakistan’s existence.” The primacy of military
continued beyond the early years as Islam and hostility to India became the
cornerstones of the country’s ideology as well as its foreign policy. The
national discourse was conspicuously silent about democracy and secularism;
strange things started happening. The commander in chief Ayub Khan was made
the defence minister who remained the only constant factor in the rickety
politics between 1951 and 1958. Martial law was imposed on the country and,
in October 1958, Ayub Khan became the president of the country for the next
ten years. Our own civil-military disconnect The ‘foreign policy
elite’ in the Jinnah Institute report appears especially sensitive to the
civil-military disconnect in the US administration. It ought to be. Once the
ideological foundations of the state were spelled out and the security
establishment had assumed charge of things, it was considered a given that
the defence needs alone would shape the foreign policy of the country. This
was too sensitive an area to be left to the civilians. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as
Ayub Khan’s foreign minister and later as prime minister of the country,
tried to exert control over the foreign policy and showed some autonomy.
Many believe he was duly punished for this sin alone. Gen Ziaul Haq’s
hand-picked Prime Minister Mohammad Khan Junejo was ousted for meddling
unnecessarily in the Afghan solution, by sidelining the military. In 1988,
after another eleven-year bout of military rule, ZAB’s daughter Benazir
Bhutto won an election but agreed to cede powers of defence and foreign
affairs to the military establishment before she assumed office as prime
minister. The case of Shah Mahmood Qureshi is recent history and he does not
even lie about his allegiance. There is much talk about
men from the security establishment controlling the Afghan Desk at the
Foreign Office but the influence goes way beyond this. The way forward This is the history of
Pakistan’s foreign policy in a nutshell. Everyone knows the way forward is
anything but this. It lies in trade and economic interests and not in the
way we articulate our foreign policy objectives on the streets and banners.
The political forces have always known this. Suhrawardy knew it as well as
Mian Nawaz Sharif. But they run the risk of being declared security risks.
Every Vajpayee visit is followed by a Kargil. Every no-first strike offered
is met with a Mumbai. Every MFN status is followed up with protests by
religious extremists on the streets. It is time for Pakistan to
reformulate its foreign policy but as a first step the leadership must rest
with the political forces. An independent foreign office that caters to the
defence needs but is not held hostage by them is what shows the way forward.
America, for this decade and beyond Is it a coincidence that there is a link between having a strong strategic foothold in a region that is in geographical contiguity with some of your biggest political, military and ideological rivals and having an opportunity to unfold a strategy to both influence the outcome of the next 25 years, if not more, in the region and to also be in a better position to neutralise the threats to you? If this seems unlikely or,
maybe, academic, consider: we’re talking about the world’s most powerful
military and political machine in human history, the United States. We’re
talking about it being entrenched in the unlikeliest of places for the past
10 years: Afghanistan. And, surrounding which are China, Russia and Iran.
The first is an economic rival (and difficult to outcompete because of the
critical mass is too big and the margin of dominance ever shrinking), the
second a military and political competitor (and looking to re-assert itself
on world stage through a creeping military build-up) and the third an
ideological foe (one that probably has nightmare and unpredictability
quotient only second to North Korea). Strategic foothold The strategic foothold refers to a formal and formidable American military presence in the region since 2001 when it came chasing al-Qaeda post-9/11 where the latter had become entrenched by bankrolling the Taliban regime. While the US has had a central role in the 1980s’ victorious battle against the Soviet Union (and, therefore, a mortal blow to Communism after a seven-decade crusade) in Afghanistan, it never had a military presence in the region back then as it was considered strategically too risky. The rentier state of Pakistan and its for-hire military was a bargain price for the human history’s biggest martial operation. Not that the US would not have given a trillion dollars to be in that position. And yet that’s exactly
what happened — the quake that was 9/11 provided an opening for the US
that not only put it smack in the middle of where it could fight its latest
enemy but also do a soft battle against its old ones. And, what seemed an
impossibility right up to 9/11, has now already put the distance of a decade
behind it, which is an interesting time to review how it has been all this
while and how it looks in the decade ahead and beyond. Safe again First, what the US had set out to do and what it has been able to achieve. The stated objective was to make the American homeland safe from al-Qaeda by wiping it out and to develop Afghanistan in a way that brings political stability to the region in a way that could help Washington set itself up for the long strategic haul. As far as this goes, it has all but achieved this. Mainland America is as safe now as it has been since the unforgettable fire that ate away America’s sense of invincibility in September of 2011. Al-Qaeda may not be gone and may still have some surprises up its unraveling sleeve but with its iconic leader eliminated in a breathtakingly clinical operation and many of his organisation’s top leaders killed or captured it seems unlikely there could be a repeat of 9/11 in the foreseeable future. As for stability in Afghanistan, the results are mixed. Al-Qaeda may have been mortally bruised in the country and are unlikely to ever find the room they had to take on America overtly, the Taliban have made a nuisance of a comeback as a player that cannot be ignored and has to be factored in if Afghanistan is to be stabilised. This is not entirely unacceptable for the US — they can live with an irritable but manageable Taliban even sharing some power in the political dispensation in Kabul. They had an issue with al-Qaeda, which had designs against the US, not with the Taliban, who have never given it grief outside Afghanistan – not then, not now. The real problem is the
failure to build the capacity of Kabul fast enough and strong enough to
enable it to reasonably govern the harsh experience that is a
multi-national, multi-ethnic and multi-linguist Afghanistan on a sustainable
basis. Afghanistan is nowhere near offering a guarantee it will not unravel
once the internationals pull out. Planned, not incidental However, Afghanistan is neither on the verge of collapse nor fragile enough after all this while to give up on it and let it implode under the pain of its cursed existence. There is a multi-ethnic government where former bloody foes coexist, even if a tad uneasily and there is a growing middle class that’s developing a stake in a relatively functioning state. The enhancement of law enforcement capacity has been a work in progress and local soldiers and policemen are gearing to start taking over from their trainers and mentors in the coming months in the run-up to the exit of foreign forces, including American. This is a planned not incidental development and is designed to be a translation into action of a policy that serves as a landmark in the transition to what America plans next for itself in the region. Which brings us to what really is next for the US and for the region at large? In the short to medium term it is bringing into effect the proverbial paradigm shift of the American idea and need of Afghanistan for this decade and beyond. Whereas the last decade for America in Afghanistan was all about setting up military bases and entrenching its hard power that could be projected in the strategic region, this decade it will be about fashioning a political powerhouse of itself from this position of strength. The pullout in military terms may be largely complete by 2014 for America from Afghanistan, as is well enough articulated and reminded on a regular basis, but by then simultaneously there will be a rapid building up of a political profile and assertion of a powerhouse diplomatic role. This transition from a
hard power to soft power may not be as well articulated but the contours of
an active diplomatic profile will start becoming more pronounced now that
the Bonn conference has outlined a long-term roadmap for Afghanistan. Iran, China & Russia This planned transition of the role for itself that America has chosen has its compulsion as much in its strategic goals in the region as the domestic dynamics in the US. In the region itself the priority for the US is replacing its overt military muscle in the shape of 90,000 troops with out-of-sight but understated potent military bases (manned by 10,000 troops) that will have a life of at least 15 years and preferably 25. This is, coupled with the enhancement of a development effort with partners from Bonn to stabilise Afghanistan politically and economically — now that al-Qaeda has been tackled — to contain Iran’s nuclear and regional political ambitions and restricting China’s strategic influence and eastward outreach to Central Asia in search of lucrative energy and trade opportunities. And, of course, staking a firm claim (backed by the requisite critical mass of military and political power out of its seat in Afghanistan) in the exploitation of the region’s oil and gas resources to the detriment of China and Russia. The not-so-small trouble in the American plans in the region is a prickly Pakistan. Because the best bets for America to succeed in its plans are strategic partnerships with Northern Alliance (Tajiks and Uzbeks) and India, Islamabad is at fierce odds with Washington. American trickery lies in attempting to simultaneously bribe and browbeat Pakistan into accepting enhanced and medium to long term roles for Northern Alliance and India that are at odds with Pakistani security establishment’s sense of entitlement for a larger than life role of its own in Afghanistan. Pakistan feels slighted
that after it actively and at a great cost in lives and finances of its own
helped the US get rid of al-Qaeda in expectation of a big say in the future
of Afghanistan, which includes at least greatly minimising, if not
eliminating altogether, any sizable and medium to long term roles for
Northern Alliance and India, it finds that the US has designs that are in
direct contrast to its own. Prickly Pakistan This is no small hitch for the US. The Pakistan military establishment has been America’s military partner for far too long to not know how to play hard to get. While it knows when to fall in line (General Zia agreeing to jump into America’s fight with the Soviets and General Musharraf agreeing to do the same for America in its attack of Afghanistan), the establishment in Pakistan can be alarmingly opportunistic when it smells a margin to flaunt it’s nuisance value. Its favourite maneuver is to whip out its gun and put the gun not to your head but its own and threaten to kill itself if not heeded. The corollary: if I die, you won’t be able to afford my nuclear weapons falling into the hands of people less savoury than me… To counter Pakistan’s insanely dangerous behaviour, the US has spent a good deal of the last five years working on cementing its strategic partnership with India and silently giving it a greater role behind the scenes in Afghanistan. This, of course, is not Pakistan-specific. A stronger, eventually higher-profile India in Afghanistan helps America counter both China’s ambitions in the region and Pakistan’s obsessively inflated sense of destiny in Afghanistan. The other American compulsion in the region stems from its domestic pressures. The first is the electoral timeline that demands a significant military pullout from Afghanistan to pacify increasing economic hardship caused by the record long duration and super expensive wars in Iraq (from where final military withdrawal completes only this month) and Afghanistan. This will be a decisive factor in next fall’s presidential election. The second is the rise of the Republic Party that has put pressure on the Democratic government for results, which has forced President Barack Obama to dramatically escalate drone attacks and surgical strikes that eventually has delivered results. This has blurred the lines in the last few years between the two mainstream American parties when it comes to the thirst for economic renewal and reclamation of glory reflected in military victory overseas. This has resulted in the
outcomes in Afghanistan becoming central to America’s domestic battles of
political ideologies. The ‘E’ word And last but not the least, the ‘E’ word: energy. The reserves in Central Asia can fuel America’s monstrous appetite for energy for over 60 years at even current consumption rates if it were, theoretically speaking, the only country to benefit from them. This is too big an incentive to risk indifference. Being in the region and influencing geopolitics makes not only good economic sense for an America hungry to recoup its $3 trillion war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan, it also helps prevent China devouring energy from the region and growing more powerful both economically and militarily at its cost. This “hydrocarbon politics” also helps blunt Russian attempts at putting life back into its dreams for political and military resurgence as represented by Putin’s plans. Propping a powerful democracy with an equally aligned military power in the shape of India — which shares America’s suspicions about China and Russia — and Washington has all the right moves and means to not just stay in the region but to dominate it. Small fries like Pakistan with its misplaced sense of nuisance in the region and wasting time punching above its weight as well as its sad penchant of transforming opportunities into disasters, can be ignored in the long run. In the short to medium term, America can comfortably cut Pakistan to size with India’s pincer partnership. Because its nuclear weapons cannot really be used against either America or India — for it would invite a more than matching response (or else why does Islamabad use militant groups in India and Afghanistan) — the US is here to stay put in the region.
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