The US tells Pakistan to pick a side. Or else…

Summary:  A look at a good research note about the war in Pakistan, and how it shows the West’s difficulty in understanding and adapting to the new world of the 21st century.  Failure in our Middle East wars might result from failure to do better at this.

Intelligence Research Ltd is a sharp group providing some valuable products, one of which is AsiaInt Weekly Alert — a product of their Asia Intelligence division.  Here we see an excerpt that illustrates how our changing world requires even the best of analysts to change their assumptions — their worldview.  Global power is shifting away from the great western powers, and one aspect of this is the rise of 4th generation methods as the dominant mode of warfare — rendering conventional military forces far less effective.  Failure to see this leads even top analysts to write nonsense.

“U.S Tells Pakistan to Pick a Side”, AsiaInt Weekly Alert, 1 May 2009 — Red emphasis added.  Excerpt:

The thrust and counter-thrust of Pakistan-Taleban relations has taken on the air of a performance.  Last week the Taleban moved closer to Islamabad; the United States complained; the Pakistani army was dispatched; and the Taleban made a token withdrawal.  This ritualised display forced the Obama administration to reflect on a question first asked 8 years ago:  is Pakistan with the US, or against it? There are signs that the latter view is taking hold in Washington.

… The United States responded by issuing its most direct threat yet, not against the Taleban but against the Pakistani state itself. Appearing before the US Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee on 22 April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said …

Despite the Taleban’s staged withdrawal, the army claims to have killed some 50 militants over the past week in “search and cordon” operations in Buner and Lower Dir, including some high-value targets.  The army has presented the operation as a swift and decisive victory.

However, it has not dispelled the impression that relations between the Taleban and the Pakistani state are to some extent choreographed.  This impression is dangerous to Pakistan.  The country has received tens of billions of dollars over the past 8 years to fight the militants, most recently at April’s “Friends of Democratic Pakistan” conference in Tokyo.  Over the same period the Taleban has become steadily more powerful; the relationship is beginning to look mutually beneficial.  If this suspicion turns into certainty in Washington, Pakistan will find itself facing a far more powerful military threat than the Taleban.

For details about Secretary of State Clinton’s words to the House (not Senate) Committee on Foreign Affairs see here.

There are several problematic aspects to this brief analysis.  These go to the core of America’s relationship with the world — its grand strategy.

(1)  What is Pakistan?

This is a complex struggle between groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.  It is an internal conflict, in which the Taleban is not fighting “Pakistan”.  The Taliban is a part of Pakistan.  This is the also  a fallacy of ambiguity (aka reification, hypostatisation or concretism), when an abstraction is seen as a real or concrete entity.   It is more accurate to say that the Taliban, a predominately Pashtun Sunni Islamist group, is fighting other groups which collectively control the State machinery of Afghanistan and Pakistan.   The existence of a State depends on its legitimacy in the hearts and minds of its people, and the vitality of its State machinery.  Afghanistan has a weak basis in terms of these criteria; Pakistan is stronger but hardly strong.

(2)  Who are the Taliban?

From “Planning Victory in Afghanistan“, Frederick W. Kagen, 9 February 2009:

There is no such thing as “the Taliban” today. Many different groups with different leaders and aims call themselves “Taliban,” and many more are called “Taliban” by their enemies. In addition to Mullah Omar’s Taliban based in Pakistan and indigenous Taliban forces in Afghanistan, there is an indigenous Pakistani Taliban controlled by Baitullah Mehsud (this group is thought to have been responsible for assassinating Benazir Bhutto). Both are linked with al-Qaeda, and both are dangerous and determined. In other areas, however, “Taliban” groups are primarily disaffected tribesmen who find it more convenient to get help from the Taliban than from other sources. In general terms, any group that calls itself “Taliban” is identifying itself as against the government in Kabul, the U.S., and U.S. allies.

Also, how much the the Taliban’s opposition to us results from our presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan?  It is easy to see ourselves as good guys — and ignore how others see us.   In this case, many see us as infidel foreigners supporting illegitimate puppet governments — invading their culture with ideas antithetical to their deepest values.

This goes to one of the chief sources of irrational American foreign policy:  simultaneous belief in the diametrically opposing ideas of human rights and multiculturalism.  From Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (part II, chapter 5 — Culture):

Here we live with 2 contradictory understandings of what counts for man. One tells us that what is important is what all men have in common; the other that what men have in common is low, while what they have from separate cultures gives them their depth and their interest. … {T}he Ayatollah was initially supported by some here because he represented true Iranian culture. Now he is attacked for violating human rights. What he does is in the name of Islam.  His critics insist that there are universal principles that limit the rights of Islam.

… Why can’t there be a respect for both human rights and culture? Simply because a culture itself generates its own way of life and principles, particularly its highest ones, with no authority above it. If there were such an authority, the unique way of life born of its principle would be undermined.

(3)  America the all-powerful, whom Pakistan should fear

The Asia Intelligence excerpt raises many questions.

• Should Pakistan fear the military threat of America?
• Should this fear affect how they settle this civil war?
• How might America use its military force against Pakistan, if we decide that Pakistan has “picked” the wrong side?
• What side should Pakistan pick?  Should Pakistan putting their own interests first — be on its own side?
• Would using force against Pakistan risk atomic war?
• How many villages might we destroy before risking retaliation?  A legal retaliation in reply to US attacks
• Could the US get UN authorization to wage war on Pakistan?
• If not, would this definitively wreck the international system build with such effort by generations of US leaders?

Last but not least, what are the limits of America’s military resources?  Mainstream geopolitical analysts often write as if US resources were without limit.  That seems an odd assumption for a nation with an over-extended military, chronic and growing government deficits, a chronic (if cyclical) balance of payments deficit (i.e., persistent foreign borrowing), and an almost $60 trillion government liability.  Esp with our ever-broadening wars:

• Iraq:  population 31 million, area 170 thousand sq miles.
• Afghanistan:  population 33 million, 252 thousand sq miles.
• Pakistan:  population 166 million, area 340 thousand sq miles.

Is there a coherent and thought-out grand strategy at work here?  Or just hubris and paranoia?  Some may consider this a heretical thought, but might there be another way to deal with the world other than force?

Afterword

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To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar.  Of esp interest these days:

• About America – how can we reform it?
• About America’s national defence strategy and machinery
• About Military and strategic theory
• About Iraq & Sub-continent Wars – my articles
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Posts about America’s grand strategy:

1. The Myth of Grand Strategy , 31 January 2006
2. America’s Most Dangerous Enemy , 1 March 2006
3. Why We Lose at 4GW , 4 January 2007
4. America takes another step towards the “Long War” , 24 July 2007
5. One step beyond Lind: What is America’s geopolitical strategy? , 28 October 2007
6. ABCDs for today: About Blitzkrieg, COIN, and Diplomacy , 21 February 2008
7. America’s grand strategy: lessons from our past , 30 June 2008  – chapter 1 in a series of notes
8. President Grant warns us about the dangers of national hubris , 1 July 2008 – chapter 2
9. America’s grand strategy, now in shambles , 2 July 2008 — chapter 3
10. America’s grand strategy, insanity at work , 7 July 2008 — chapter 4
11. Justifying the use of force, a key to success in 4GW , 8 July 2008 – chapter 5
12. A lesson in war-mongering: “Maritime Strategy in an Age of Blood and Belief” , 8 July 2008 — chapter 6
13. Geopolitical analysis need not be war-mongering , 9 July 2008 — chapter 7
14. The world seen through the lens of 4GW (this gives a clearer picture) , (10 July 2008 — chapter 8
15. The King of Brobdingnag comments on America’s grand strategy, 18 November 2008
16. “A shattering moment in America’s fall from power”, 19 November 2008
17. Is America a destabilizing force in the world?, 23 January 2009
18. The US Army brings us back to the future, returning to WWI’s “cult of the offense”, 13 February 2009