The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
I support the administration's efforts to begin slashing aid at a time when we are in hock for trillions and our magnanimity is greeted by an ungrateful Pakistan as an insufficient entitlement. I say that knowing there is no good solution—being had by Pakistan, whose intelligence agencies are rife with radical Islamists, is as humiliating as it is dangerous being estranged from a nuclear Pakistan that can thwart our efforts in a thousand ways in Afghanistan. But in this bleak bad/worse scenario, it seems time to try something differently from the last ten years and tens of billions in aid that have not led to a stable Afghanistan and made Pakistan almost more anti-American, the more aid and attention we have lavished upon it. At least, as we cut back, we can finally begin to prepare for the unspoken reality of the last few years—Pakistan has not been an ally, but teeters between at best a neutral and at worse an abject enemy of the United States, whether defined as helping the Taliban kill Americans or harboring and shielding Osama bin Laden and his associates for a decade inside Pakistan's major cities.
Fortunately, other powers in Europe, India, and at times Russia share our unease with the Pakistani government and the propensity for the country to protect, and even subsidize, terrorists that export their violence and killing well beyond the borders of Pakistan. If our friendship and support earned Pakistan antipathy, then who knows what our indifference and occasional antagonism might win? We should hope for the best, and prepare for the worse, confident that at least now we are beginning to see that an honest adversary is no worse than a duplicitous beneficiary.
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May '10
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
As I understand it, we did not cut even half of our aid to Pakistan. If the billions we give them buy us no good will, perhaps the millions we withhold will buy us a more overt (and politically easier) conflict. I prefer obvious enemies to backstabbing friends.
Sep '10
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
During the Osama raid we lost a "stleath helicopter" and had to destroy it but some pieces of it were not destroyed on site. To be perfectly honest I would have preferred that we hit that compound with cruise missiles after extraction to make sure the pieces of it didn't fall into enemy hands taking priority over the lives of Osama's relatives. Unfortunately it did fall into the hands of the enemy, the Pakistanis sold the remains on the open market and it took months for us to finally stop paying the Pakis military aid.
Jul '11
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Certainly the policy of free money in exchange for good behavior has not exactly lifted the rational voices high above that of the religious zealots, nor has the foreign aid been enough to secure any kind of a reasonable military ally. I had a friend in SOG during the Vietnam conflict who still winces at the policy of letting ARVN leaders know about the missions ahead of time, many of which were compromised. I fail to see the rationale for financial reward of such duplicitous machinations and therefore the only motivation left is to pay a nation not to give nuclear weapons to terrorists. The latter reasoning amounts to US sanctioned blackmail in a world where more and more potential blackmailers are coming in to nuclear weapons in spite of our efforts.
The last few decades of our "alliance" have produced a nation that blamed their flooding on a US conspiracy(to be fair India got demonized as well...especially when they offered aid to Paranoidistans, a clear trick) This hatred coupled with failure to control and even aid in home grown terrorist groups is enough to change our course of action.
Jan '11
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
It seems like we are slowly drifting towards Rob Long's much vaunted clarity. That's probably not a bad thing either; it's analogous to company restructuring. That's to say, company X has always had weird and arcane policies and relationships - because that's the way they always did business. However, the world always changes, and so should relationships and practises, whether they are corporate or international. It will be interesting to see the specific ramifications when certain threads are cut
Jul '10
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Leave them to the Indians. It will improve our relations with both countries in the long run.
Jan '11
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Superbly put (as usual)! Certainly the billions we have lavished upon Pakistan have bought us somewhat less than nothing; it's high time to try something else.
Jul '11
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Interestingly enough the regime is now eying China as a monetary sugar daddy. I am curious how that will sit with India.
Apr '11
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Dr. Hanson, would you care to analyze or speculate how China plays into all this?
Aug '10
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Uzbeks , Tajiks , and Turkmen looking like the best deal about now . Can't imagine India wanting to touch this . They've been at war with the guys since partition with ritual engagement protocols that confound and amuse us. Do we get billed by the countries or just wire Putin ?
Dec '10
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Possession of the thermonuclear threat trusts a regime, no matter how impoverished, illiberal, corrupt, retrograde, fanatical, or inherently unstable into the rarified circle of immunity from diplomatic pressure.Pakistan’s improbable prominence had Soviet Communism as its catapult, and now Islamic shari’ah is its payload. A transitory client state of the US during the Cold War—a thorn to thwart the expansion of Soviet influence in Indian and thence—whose traditional interests have collided with rather than cohered to core Western principles of equanimity, preferring turmoil, and of modernity, by reasserting tribal imperatives and religious conformity, she dismounts from the shoulders of civilization and takes ownership of the western technologies of mass destruction while her relationship with the US cools as the one with a nuked-up Iran warms.Her relations with the neighboring mullahs too will soon end in rivalry, most likely a much deadlier one, much worse than the one she had with us. The niceties extended to this region from the West’s “soft bigotry of low expectations” will fade into a memory soon forgotten during this period of societal evolution while she decides if her future adapts better to barbarism or to civilization, provided she survives the regional showdown of whose missiles are the biggest.
Apr '11
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
One suspects a cut-and-paste when there is no space between the period at the end of the sentence, and the next sentence. Just sayin'.
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
How about recognizing India's claim to the Kashmir region? Too passive-aggressive?
May '11
Re: The Obama Administration Cuts Some Aid to Pakistan
Why is it that everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons except ours?