If They'd Only Give a BIT of Thought to PR...

There is news today that the Pentagon will rescind the assignment of Maj. General Jay W. Hood, who had been slated to be posted as America's top commander based in Pakistan. The turnaround comes after vociferous protests in Pakistan, given one of General Hood's previous posts as commander of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay.

I'm going to ask the reader to pause for a moment to let that sink in.

The Pentagon took a previous commander of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, the symbol of American perfidity and hypocricy worldwide, the place where prisoners have been tortured, Islam defamed, and America's global standing reduced to a pile of radioactive sludge, and they sent him to Pakistan.

Deep breath.

Please understand that this is not necessarily an indictment of General Hood himself. I don't know what role he did or didn't play in everything that went on (and still goes on) at Guantanamo. I have absolutely no idea how much influence he had over the mission he was given, so I won't criticize him for it. I won't excuse him, but I won't criticize him because I simply don't know the facts.

One doesn't have to be clairvoyant, however, to recognize that sending a man rightly or wrongly tainted by his association with one of the great geopolitical scandals of the early twenty-first century - a man under whose tenure, by the way, Korans were allegedly flushed down toilets, sparking protests and riots across the Muslim world - to a country like Pakistan is a terrible, terrible idea. At least the Pentagon has been sensitive enough to the protests to cancel the assignment, but the fact that nobody picked up on the problems it would cause worries me. It worries me, because it sends the signal that at least some high up in our military and civilian establishment still have not gotten it through their heads the catastrophic extent of the damage that Guantanamo Bay has done to Ameircan credibility around the world, and until they figure it out they cannot hope to remedy the problem.

The Moral Complexity of Nationalism

Barnett Rubin at Informed Comment has a piece entitled Against Holocaust Denial, Against Naqba Denial that ought to be required reading for anyone who pays attention to 21st Century geopolitics. Though the principal focus of Rubin's post is the (extraordinarily well articulated) history of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, he manages to highlight the painful tension that underlies the very notion of nationalism everywhere, and provides powerful insight into who we all are as members of political communities.

To be sure, I don't accept everything implied by Rubin's analysis. In particular, I am more forgiving, even supportive, of the Zionist project than he. I do, though, take to heart the tragic contradiction at the bedrock of modern nationalism that his account illuminates; namely, that nationalism, taken to its logical conclusion, is both abhorrent to liberal morality and necessary to its exercise.

Allow me to explain. The story Rubin tells, of genocide, migration and ethnic cleansing, of a catastrophic chain reaction of misery from Spain to Russia to Jerusalem to Tehran, lies at the heart of the modern world. The creation - still in progress - of the political communities in which we all reside has necessarily involved the disruption of that same community for others. The nations of Western Europe were midwifed by the oppression and expulsion of national minorities and the forcible suppression of local culture. Through a complex interplay of private enterprise and state policy, Provence, Bretagne and Languedoc became France, Piemonte, Sicilia and Napoli became Italy, and dozens of tiny duchies, principalities and bishoprics east of the Rhine became Germany. As old continental and colonial empires - which had been ethno-linguistic melting pots, composed with no thought to nationalist logic - faded, even more dramatic events preceded the formation - again, still in progress in many places - of modern nation-states. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire set off nationalist powder kegs across the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Within a few decades, the hellish tides of the Second World War swept across the continent, leading to history's greatest genocide, as well as to unprecedented population movements as Soviet troops cleared conqured territories of ethnic Germans. Meanwhile, the great European colonial Empires gave way to the resistance of nascent national movements worldwide, and in the wake of their retreat left a state system grafted onto polygot mosaics of ethno-linguistic and religious communities. As in Europe, this often led to conflict to resolve the tension of states and political communities that were alien to each other. Millions of refugees flowed back and forth across the borders of India and Pakistan, fleeing the violence and chaos that accompanied partition. Jewish and Arab inhabitents of British Palestine violently tore their land asunder, bringing one of the modern world's most intractable conflicts into full flower. Sectarian divisions flared up in new states across Asia, Africa and the Middle East as people sought harmony between the bounds of geography and those of identity.

I won't belabor the point further. Suffice to say that the conflict in Israel and Palestine is but one example (albiet a very instructive one) of the fundamental conflict of liberal nationalism. With its notions of individual freedom, liberalism does not sit well with a conception of political identity that, to quote Benedict Anderson, is "both limited and sovereign" in the sense that nations can by definition never be universalized (we cannot imagine a scenario in which the whole world is French) and must find political expression in a sovereign community. Nationalism necessarily includes some, excludes others, and thus limits the freedom of all.

On the other hand, from a practical perspective, a liberal society requires that its members have a basic level of affinity with one another, a kind of loose bond of political kinship that can serve as glue for the social contract. Since the industrial revolution, nationalism has proven to be by far the strongest adhesive. Jerry Muller's recent Foreign Affairs piece Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism should be required reading for anyone interested in a brief exposition of nationalism's enduring vitality. Even one of the founding lights of the modern study of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson, the British socialist who famously labeled nations "imagined communities" was spurred to write not out of a belief that progressive ideologies like socialism would trump nationalist feeling, but out of puzzlement at nationalism's enduring power even within (what was at the time) the communist world. The fact is that nationalism is a uniquely effective social glue, perhaps a necessary one if the freedoms promised by liberal champions are ever to be exercised.

Coming back to Rubin's piece, the question becomes what is to be done going forward. Europe presents both a compelling and unsettling model to follow. On the one hand, European populations seem to be slowly-but-surely recasting their political community based on shared value affinity and history that goes well beyond their own national groups. On the other hand, as Muller argues, that transformation may only be possible in an environment where the separatist nationalist project - the desire to give every nation a state and every state a nation - has largely succeeded. It should rightly bother us that this success rests on some of the greatest atrocities - murder, ethnic cleansing and conquest - in the history of mankind. Need the route to the transcendence of our more parochial national attachments be paved in misery and soaked in blood?


I answer with a qualified "no." Even if the kinds of actions that were once employed to bring about ethno-nationalist unity weren't as ethically problematic as they are in this day and age, the major movements of global population that emigration has brought about in recent years make the creation of nationally homogeneous societies impossible today. One needs only to look at the problem Japan is having with an aging populace to see that state policies of ethnic stasis create as many problems as they prevent. Still, this only further illuminates the need for ethnic polities to be honest about the contradictions of their own pasts, and to recognize the necessity of carving out space - within and without state borders - for nationalist aspirations to operate. Sometimes this will happen through the devolution of power and the recognition of group rights, problematic as this can be for true liberals. Other times this will mean a re-fashioning of a dominant national identity to include the history and ideals of those formerly confined to "otherness." This is something that, on balance, the United States does exceptionally well, and with enlightened leadership is something that we can help other societies to achieve.

Nationalism in the 21st century needn't be the immiserating, bloody mess that it was during the 20th. That will only be avoided, though, if we are honest about our collective history, honest about the tensions that exist within our own ideals, and honest about the fact that neither is going away any time soon.

Pakistan

Check out Arif Rafiq's recent piece on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. A very insightful and practical set of prescriptions in my view. He refers to Senator Biden's proposal as a model for building a relationship with the Pakistan people, not just the upper echelons of Pakistan's government, and advises Washington to stop interfering in Pakistan's internal politics.

I have a couple of quibbles. I'm not sure how realistic it would be to replace NATO troops in Afghanistan with those from non-bordering Muslim nations like Turkey and Indonesia, but I guess it might be worth a shot some day. Also, I'm not always sure what authors mean when they say that the U.S. shouldn't "interfere" in others' internal politics. If what Mr. Rafiq means is that Washington ought to be dispassionate and uninterested in Pakistan's political winds, that strikes me as pretty unrealistic. If, on the other hand, he means that America should step back, and try to influence Pakistan's long term political development by putting itself on the right side of events rather than trying to tinker in the country's political minutae, then in my view he's being quite insightful.

In any case, definitely worth a read for anyone interested.

More News from Pakistan

So, it looks as though even the flimsy rationale that the Administration has been giving for supporting Pakistan's military government - that they are cooperating with us against Islamist militants, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban - doesn't really hold up. Lovely. Remind me again what we gained by putting ourselves on the wrong side of Pakistan's democracy movement?

Oy! Another One

According to the New York Times, another strongman may emerge in Pakistan over the next few months. Evidently the U.S., grasping at straws, is beginning to put their hopes for stability in Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who has replaced Musharraf as Army chief. Look, I know we don't have any good options in Pakistan, and certainly we'll have to deal with whoever heads up the Pakistani security forces - the Army simply has too much power there not to - but could we please begin to deal with Pakistan as a country, rather than simply looking to cultivate relationships with the boss-of-the-moment?

Krugman on Pakistan

My my, it's been a while hasn't it? First off I'd like to apologize to any of my readers who were wondering if I'd started a new life as a hermit in the mountains of central Asia. I can offer no good explanation for my long absence, save a hectic holiday season and the fact that the Muses, fickle creatures that they are, have paid me few visits of late. I make it my New Year's resolution to resume something resembling a regular blogging schedule from here on out.

I am moved to comment on this blurb written a few days ago by the Times's Paul Krugman. Dr. Krugman is a man whose views I greatly respect. I think he is one of the most clear-headed and relevant voices of liberal thought in America today, and he is a better economist than I could ever hope to be. All that said, his comments on the recent Bhutto assassination in Afghanistan reflect a unidimensionally ideological approach to foreign policy that I find quite troubling. For those of you who couldn't be bothered to follow the link, here's the key quote:

This isn’t about you; in fact, as far as I can tell, it isn’t about America. It’s about the fact that Pakistan is a very messed-up place. This has very bad consequences for us, but it’s hard to see what, if anything, it says about US policy.

If you’re a tough guy (or gal) who believes in exerting US power — never mind, there are just too many heavily armed people in Pakistan for anyone but Norman Podhoretz to believe that we could throw our weight around. If you believe you can bring new understanding to the world through your enlightened outlook — sorry, there are too many people in Pakistan who don’t want to be enlightened. If you believe that we’d have more influence in the world if we hadn’t squandered our resources and good will in Iraq (which I do) — well, sorry, that influence wouldn’t extend to being able to bring peace and light to Pakistan.

This isn’t about us, and it’s out of our control.

Pardon my French Dr. Krugman, but [DELETED: Expletive referring to the excrement of a large farm animal]. Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh, but only a bit. For the sake of fairness, I will acknowledge that Krugman's analysis - to the extent that it merits the term - of the Pakistani political crisis hits on some important realities. For example, it is true that we cannot use the first infantry division to make Pakistani politics less volatile. I know of nobody, Podhoretz included, who advocates such a policy. We live in a definitively post-Imperial age in which global populations are too politicized to use as pawns in Georgetown living room chess games. The political direction of Pakistan will ultimately be set by the Pakistanis, and it is delusional to think that U.S. policy can "fix" the myriad political problems there.

Krugman, though, takes this advisable humility to its illogical extreme, arguing that events in Pakistan "[aren't] about us, and [are] out of our control." Pakistan is officially designated a Major Non-NATO Ally by the U.S. government. We have sold them over $10 billion in military equipment since 2001. Pakistan borders Afghanistan, Iran, and India, is currently serving as al-Qaeda's principal base of operations, and is a nuclear-armed state. Again, out of fairness, Krugman implicitly acknowledges Pakistan's strategic importance, but I am puzzled as to why he thinks American policy is irrelevant to events there. American negotiators were important to the (flawed) agreement that brought Bhutto back to Pakistan in the first place. American aid to the Pakistani military - particularly aid that allows it to maintain strategic parity with India - helps maintain Musharraf's support within his own army. To argue that the U.S. has no leverage in Pakistani politics strikes me as a bit small minded.

Part of the problem is that Krugman sets up straw men by grossly oversimplifying American policy options. He seems to think that we can either bomb Pakistan, or we can try to use moral suasion to direct political outcomes there. He's right that neither strategy would be particularly effective, but we have more nuanced options. Were the United States to start engaging Pakistan as a country, rather than just as a political regime, we could very likely have a positive effect both with regard to Pakistan's stability and our own security. The strategy outlined by Senator Biden in recent months, for example, would begin to repair America's image in Pakistan, help state-building there, and provide political actors with incentives to both strengthen democracy and go after violent extremists in a committed manner. Despite Krugman's infantalizing dismissal of Pakistani political culture ("there are too many people... who don't want to be enlightened"), my reading has indicated that the majority of the Pakistani population is either secular or moderately islamist. They don't need to be "enlightened," they need a political system that responds to their desires. The United States can help by investing in Pakistan, rather than whichever strongmen/women happen to be sitting in Islamabad at any given moment.

After fifty years of (largely frustrating) experience managing global politics, it is understandable why Dr. Krugman and many of his generation have given up on the notion that American power can be used effectively half a world away. While such humility is a welcome contrast to the overreaching doctrines of recent years, it is overly pessimistic of the leadership that America is yet able to provide.

Pakistan: What Now? (Part Two)

The big news out of Pakistan today, apart from the Musharraf government's continued beatings of street protesters, is Benazir Bhutto's call for large-scale anti-government demonstrations this coming Friday. The article touches on two important points. First, Ms. Bhutto is key to any acceptable solution to the current crisis, as she is the only one capable of mounting a large-scale political assault on Musharraf's government. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that her popularity, combined with U.S. pressure, will keep her from being detained by Musharraf any time soon, so she now stands as the primary locus of viable opposition. Second, the article mentions that her planned march "runs more than 160 miles from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad, the heart of Punjab, the country’s largest and most powerful province... The vast majority of the country’s army hails from Punjab, and the military has hesitated in the past to fire on civilians in the province. Widespread popular unrest there could cause senior Pakistani army commanders to turn on General Musharraf and ask him to resign..."

In other words, Ms. Bhutto has (it would seem) concluded that the best way to strike at Musharraf is to undermine his legitimacy within the ranks of his own military. This echoes comments made by Senator Biden on Sunday's Face The Nation, where he suggested withdrawing the high tech military aid (F-16 fighters and such) that allows the Pakistani military to keep pace with that of India in order to convince others within the army that Musharraf has become a liability.

My suggestion, then, is this: come Friday, at the height of Bhutto-led protests through Punjab, the Administration ought to announce the indefinite suspension of all military aid to Pakistan, offering to resume it only once Pakistan is put under functional civilian leadership legitimized through free parlimentary elections. The simultaneous internal and external pressure, if timed correctly, might just create the tipping point necessary to break the deadlock.

What was the Court Thinking?

Continuing to peruse coverage of the crisis in Pakistan, I stumbled upon an interesting tidbit in a Times article from a couple of days ago: "A close aide to General Musharraf said the Pakistani leader had decided to declare an emergency when he was told last week by a Supreme Court justice that the court would rule within days that he was ineligible to continue serving as president. The ruling would have been unanimous, according to the aide."

Wow.

If this is true, of course, it only further confirms that Musharraf's "state of emergency" is nothing more than a naked power grab, but we knew that already. What surprises me, to be frank, is that the Court was actually going to annul the General's election. I had, of course, heard the talk about the Court's deliberations hanging like a "sword of Damocles" over Musharraf's head and such, but from the coverage I was reading it seemed fairly obvious that he was never going to let himself be removed from power by judicial fiat. To rule against the General struck me as the Court's "Samson option," allowing them to deal a body blow to Musharraf if he did not play ball, remove his uniform and allow free parlimentary elections, but at the cost of forcing the General to reinstitute military rule, albiet with much-weakened credibility.

Why, then, did members of the Court not try to use their upcoming ruling as a backroom bargaining chip to wrest political concessions from Musharraf without backing him into a corner? If they in fact tried to do that and failed, why did they not issue their ruling immediately before Musharraf could take extraconstitutional steps? I don't live in Pakistan, and I know little about the people and personalities that make up the Pakistani Supreme Court, but as a casual observer it strikes me that the Judges massively overplayed their collective hands.

Pakistan: What now?

I hosted a poker game at my house last Friday. It was nothing too intense, just a low-stakes game between friends, but I managed to lose - very quickly. I am not much of a poker player, you see, and tend to play out fast because I have a hard time leaving chips in the pot. Right in front of me, I can see all that I have invested in a particular hand, and I just can't help chasing it with more, until the final card turns and my losses, now greatly amplified, are laid bare.

I bring up my deficiencies at cards because they strike me as a perfect metaphor (which I promise I won't torture for very long) for the current U.S. conundrum in Pakistan. Over the weekend, General Musharraf abandoned all pretense of constitutional restraint and declared a state of emergency - his detractors are calling it martial law - supposedly in response to a "visible ascendancy in the activities of extremists and incidents of terrorist attacks" and the fact that "some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive and
legislature in the fight against terrorism and extremism." The full text of the proclamation contains a long justificatory preamble, but its crux is expressed in a beautifully terse final sentence: "I hereby order and proclaim that the constitution of the Islamic republic of Pakistan shall remain in abeyance."

As the editorial board of the Washington Post has pointed out, the bet that Washington has placed on Musharraf - that he could prove both a reliable ally in the battle against the Taliban and an agent of democratic reform - a bet that Washington has continued to chase with each dissappointing turn of the cards, has finally turned sour, and America has left a lot of cash, credibility and political capital on the table.

Much of the intial comment on the state of emercency and the U.S. reaction has focused on tut-tutting the fact that, once again, support of a third-world strongman has blown up in America's face. That's all fine, I suppose, though the foreign policy community and commentariat (myself included) was far too late in calling attention to the problems with U.S. policy toward Pakistan, and even now I haven't seen very much suggested by way of a credible alternative path, so all the righteousness rings a tad hollow. That is to say, much as I enjoy bashing Administration foreign policy, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is too complex, and our problems therein too intractable, to waste time pointing fingers. We've lost the bet. The question is, what now?

The U.S. response (echoing much of the Western world, or is it the other way around?) has been fairly tepid thus far. The Administration made a point of letting the U.S. press know in the days before the crisis erupted that it had specifically warned Musharraf against instituting emergency rule, so one would imagine that such direct flouting of Washington's will would have serious consequences. And yet, knowledgable sources seem to feel that the U.S. will not significantly interrupt aid to Pakistan (at least not military aid, which is the only kind that might matter to a military government), and aside from international hand-wringing, Musharraf seems unlikely to face much in the way of serious external pressure to reverse course. He seems to be making the most of the situation, arresting political opponents, sending troops to crush dissent in the streets, and taking whatever steps he deems necessary to eliminate immediate threats to his rule.

The problem for the United States, of course (apart from the ethical dilemma of supporting an un-democratic leader which, if you'll pardon my cynicism, I think we've gotten over by now) is that this can't last. Musharraf, by most counts, has lost most of his support outside of the military, and as the Shah demonstrated long ago in Iran, that is not a viable way to rule a state. Even if America's only concern in Pakistan were stability (and, much as it pains me to say it, it is our principal concern at the moment) we would be well-advised to attempt to engineer a course correction and force Musharraf to relent.

We must, first off, be honest about what we can achieve.

The power of the Pakistani military is such that Musharraf, or whoever heads the army in the future, must have some place in civilian politics, else it will simply take control. First off, the United States ought to make it clear that we are not going to engineer the general's ouster, but neither will we tolerate a lenghthy continuation of the current state of affairs. We should encourage Musharraf to doff his uniform, allow non-rigged elections to proceed as currently scheduled, and re-instate the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. The quid pro quo ought to be that a re-constituted Supreme Court ratify Musharraf's election (of course, at this point such a step might be a bit too obvious to everyone involved to be taken seriously, but it's a way forward). Musharraf has made his point - he can crush his opponents if he so chooses - so perhaps he can be persuaded to back off.

I cannot help but think, though, that all this is a pipe dream. Arif Rafiq has a somewhat more sobering and, I am sorry to say, realistic assessment of what will likely happen: America will wring its hands and hope against hope that the General changes his mind, and Musharraf, realizing that he has passed the point of no return, won't. Rafiq mentions the option of allowing Musharraf a safe exit from Pakistani politics (a nice farm house on a vinyard in the Willamette Valley perhaps?); but, to be frank, my read is that if Musharraf wanted that he would have arranged for it now, rather than sending soldiers into the streets. If the General will not budge from his current stance, the question of withdrawing aid and dealing with a hostile, autocratic, nuclear Pakistan that plays tacit host to al Qaeda must be considered. I am not yet ready to actively counsel such steps, but the United States is fast running out of options.

Pakistan (reprise)

First off, I apologize for the long hiatus since my last post. I can claim no great justification, other than the fact that I must divide my free time between reading and writing, and I've been reading some good books of late. For obvious reasons, I'd like to return briefly to the subject of Pakistan. The standoff at the Red Mosque seems to have ended in about the bloodiest possible way (though I was heartened by reports indicating that a number of the children being held as de-facto hostages inside the complex managed to escape as the government assault began). The political fallout from this event is just beginning, and I am not so intimately knowledgable about Pakistani politics as to be able to give specific predictions about what form it will ultimately take; however, this incident does serve to highlight the increasingly fragile state of the Pakistani regime.

Currently, the Musharraf government is engaging in counter-insurgency operations in Baluchistan (the expense of which could perhaps be avoided if Islamabad would provide the people of the province with some reasonable compensation for the natural gas reserves it seeks to extract there), low-level warfare against Taliban elements in the border region near Afghanistan, and now conflict with Islamists in its urban centers. All this is not to say that the regime is in danger of collapse, merely that it is facing increasingly disruptive and violent pressure from multiple domestic actors in multiple locations, in addition to a crisis of legitimacy among the populace as a whole. John Robb at Global Guerrillas calls attention to recent rioting in Karachi over a simple power-outage, presciently pointing out that if any of the now numerous violent anti-government organizations were to adjust their tactics to assault basic public infrastructure, they could very well throw Pakistan into chaos.

Some might argue that all of this only reinforces the necessity of funnelling resources to Musharraf's government in order to allow him to keep a lid on all this unrest. This certainly seems to be the working logic of the current administration. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Daniel Markey makes a well-reasoned case for sticking with Musharraf, at least for now, because if the U.S. pushes too hard for any political solution that alienates the military, the military will simply engage in an overt seizure of power. I am sympathetic to this notion, and agree that the U.S. needs to tread carefully, but simply defending the status quo is sure to lead to blowback of the worst kind in years to come. The fact that the militants inside the Red Mosque don't seem to have garnered a whole lot of mass support in recent days indicates that the population has not become dangerously radicalized, but Pakistanis are clearly growing impatient with the political stagnation that plagues their country, and if that frustration is not given a constructive outlet, it will find a destructive one.

I don't suggest abandoning Musharraf outright - Markey is correct in his estimation that this would only lead to more desparate repressive measures - but we have to tailor our support to Pakistan such that we serve as an agent of positive change, not of repression. This means that in addition to selling Musharraf F-16 fighters, we build and fund schools, community groups, health organizations, even mosques (indirectly of course). U.S. objectives in Pakistan, and indeed in many places in the Muslim world, will be furthered by the development of civil society organizations with socio-political space to operate outside of radical Islamic institutions. The presence of such networks has often made the difference between constructive political reform (as in post-colonial India) and chaotic and destructive revolution (as in Iran). News from Pakistan provides us with no shortage of warning signs. We should heed them.

Wagging Our Own Tail: Changing U.S. Policy toward Pakistan

There is an interesting piece out of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on America's relationship with Pakistan and the administration of President Pervez Musharaff. It gets to the heart of a fundamental tension that has bedeviled American foreign policy since the United States first took the stage as a great power in the late nineteenth century; namely, the extent to which America supports foreign governments that are ideologically and ethically problematic but that serve (by whatever estimation) American interests abroad.
This tension is largely inevitable. On the one hand, the United States has always conceived of itself as a champion of liberty whose foreign dealings should transcend crass Machiavellian politics in favor of promoting a liberal economic and political world order. On the other hand, to be a great power (and thus have the ability to influence world events) is to roll in the muck of international relations. In order to preserve its place, promote its interests, and indeed advance the moral and ideological causes that befit its lofty ideals, America cannot always keep her hands clean. She must, at times, prioritize threats, make compromises with unsavory actors, and engage in, for lack of a better phrase, imperial undertakings. In practice, this can mean allying with (or, if we are to abandon euphemism, buying) regimes with less-than-exemplary human rights records, loose relationships with the rule of law and limited democratic or popular legitimacy. F.D.R. best summed up the strategy when referring to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García: "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

So ends theory.

In practice, some imperfect synthesis of idealism and practicality must govern American policy. The long-term interests of the United States would not be served by comprehensive disengagement from world affairs, or even from the internal affairs of other nations. On the other hand, it has been all too easy for successive U.S. governments to exaggerate the importance of client state networks. America won the Cold War because people across the Soviet Empire became fed up with a decrepit, broken system and abandoned it in favor of what they saw as a better model. America's selling weapons to the Shah, supporting the Contras in Central America, propping up corrupt dictators in Vietnam and funneling cash and arms to the Afghani Mujihadeen put some pressure on the USSR, and in the early days of the conflict may have checked the Soviets’ more expansionist impulses, but I have a difficult time believing that such activities played a decisive role in the contest's outcome.

On the other hand, many of America’s more ill-considered client relationships have come back to haunt her both during the Cold War and especially during its highly fluid aftermath. An exhaustive list would be impractical here, but consider the anti-American vitriol that gripped the Iranian populace after years under the Shah’s repressive rule; anger that enabled Khomenei and his followers to grab the levers of the Iranian state. Consider too the virus of Islamic terror that was allowed to take root in the desolation of post-war Afghanistan once America lost interest in her erstwhile clients there. The U.S.’s pseudo-colonial legacy in its own hemisphere must bear much of the blame for the popularity of anti-American grandstanding in Latin America, from the aging example of Fidel Castro to its newer, somewhat more clownish incarnation in Hugo Chavez. I bring up these points to illustrate the care, vision and foresight that must, but too often does not, inform America’s decisions regarding which governments to support and how. Patron-client relationships may be useful; however, particularly in the modern context, they are fraught with dangers.

I therefore tentatively propose some general questions which American policy-makers ought to ask themselves before commencing or renewing support for regimes worldwide.

· To what extent does this regime govern according to liberal ideals? I am not a neo-conservative. I do not believe that each and every government around the world can or should instantaneously transform into a democracy along Western lines. That said, I am conscious of the fact that the people around the world who most loudly denounce liberal ideas as ‘incompatible’ with their own people’s cultural and historical experience tend to be those with some stake in theocratic or authoritarian rule. If a regime manifestly and clearly ignores the most basic tenets of human freedom and dignity, U.S. planners ought to be wary of committing American resources and political capital to propping it up.

· To what extent does the regime have the will or institutional capacity to reform? U.S. support for less-than-savory governments is often justified in terms of “constructive engagement” (a phrase used during the Reagan era to explain American dealings with apartheid South Africa). The notion is that American support buys leverage over the regime’s behavior, leverage which over time can pressure the regime into evolving more robust liberal institutions without all the violence, chaos and uncertainty that would accompany a more rapid shift. Though this is often dismissed as a cynical justification for political expedience, history has at times vindicated the strategy. The end of the Second World War saw Taiwan and South Korea ruled by repressive, authoritarian dictatorships that received unflagging military and economic aid from the United States. Over the years, however, the regimes in both those countries have transformed into reasonably well-consolidated democracies. The question for American planners, though, is in what direction the tide is moving. Is there evidence of a growing middle class that is frustrated by authoritarian political strictures, or is the populace made up of a tiny kleptocracy ruling over a sea of impoverished, embittered farmers and laborers? The former situation may have the potential to evolve into something more in line with American principles, the latter is a time-bomb waiting to explode. Little good has come from supporting governments that consistently repress and infuriate their own people, and the long-term result is likely to cause the U.S. far more headaches than the short-term strategic gains are worth.

· Is the tail wagging the dog? The whole point of a client state network, especially when one considers the compromises with one’s own values that must be made in order to build it, is to create a network of allies that will, when pressed, serve one’s strategic interests. Often, though, great powers have unwittingly gotten themselves into situations where their clients actually exercise the most leverage. Nasser’s Egypt during the 1950s is a classic example. The Egyptian dictator skillfully played the Soviet Union and the United States off one another, engaging in a bidding war for loyalty through which he extracted economic aid and high-tech weapons from both countries without having to significantly compromise the sovereignty of his own. In a more modern context, ‘moderate’ regimes across the Muslim world frequently present themselves as the only bulwark against the amorphous specter of radical Islam, extracting aid and political support by making themselves seem to be the only viable option, while making no substantive moves towards political reform. The veracity of their dire claims is, in my view, disputable at best, and American statesmen should consider reevaluating the extent of U.S. support for such governments.

This brings us, then, back to Pakistan. The news out of Islamabad in recent months raises some troubling questions about the effectiveness of American policy there. Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has significantly stepped up aid to the Musharaff regime, reasoning that Pakistan must play a vital role in any American attempt to stabilize Afghanistan and combat radical Islam more generally. Our grants of weapons and economic assistance have indeed contributed to a more robust Pakistani army that could in theory be of great help to the United States, but the evidence indicates that America is not getting a favorable strategic return on its investment. The authors at CSIS note that the rank and file of the Pakistani army, the organ of state that has received the most significant American support, has significant sympathies for many radical Islamic groups. Indeed, since the early days of the American invasion, reports have surfaced of the Pakistani military undermining U.S. intelligence gathering and anti-terrorist operations, while doing a woefully pitiful job fighting the tribal militias that give quarter and support to al Quaeda and Taliban forces. We should not forget that Osama bin Laden is generally believed to be hiding somewhere in the Pakistani hinterlands.

Meanwhile, on the political front, Gen. Musharaff is clearly wearing out his welcome in the eyes of the Pakistani populace. The army that American has helped build up is being used as an instrument of repression by an increasingly authoritarian military regime. The system of checks and balances that had heretofore given the government some measure of accountability, in particular the Judiciary, are being blatantly assaulted by Musharaff, arousing the ire of a population fed up with the General’s brand of politics. CSIS also notes that American aid for Pakistani education – one of the ways American can help the people of Pakistan rather than just the army – has been barely worth mentioning. This is significant because radical Islamic institutions often provide an alternative for Pakistanis seeking an education. It should be remembered that one of the major reasons that the Iranian Revolution took on an Islamic character was that Muslim institutions provided the only open political space under the rule of the Shah. We must work to make sure that the same situation does not evolve in Pakistan.

I am heartened to see that, unlike so many times in the past, events are causing many American elites to question the nature of U.S. support to Musharaff before things reach critical mass. It is my hope that a reorientation of American policy can convince Musharaff to negotiate a political settlement that will put his nation back on the road to democracy. Though her government was widely derided as corrupt, a return of Benazir Bhutto to some type of power-sharing arrangement could mollify the populace temporarily while a constitutional transfer of power is arranged. None of this will happen; however, if Musharaff believes he has unconditional American support (if his tail can wag our dog, so to speak). The U.S. must be willing to risk some instability for the sake of encouraging change in Pakistan. By all reports, the percentage of the population that subscribes to the tenets of radical Islam there remains miniscule, but such ideologies are fed and grow in an environment of stagnation and repression, and have particular potency in the context of revolutionary chaos. The Pakistani people deserve to be trusted enough to determine the political future of their country before things get to that point, and the United States ought to recognize that standing in the way of positive change is likely as not to come back to haunt it in years to come.