The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

by Vali Nasr

  Kayani thought the two-day exercise would get the White House engaged in a meaningful strategic discussion that could clear the air, repair the relationship, and chart a course forward. It was an effort on both sides to dial back the relationship to its more productive phase in 2009–2011. Kerry was carrying on where Holbrooke had left off.

  The nineteen-hour meeting and the white paper did not elicit an immediate response from Washington. But three months later, in October, Tom Donilon, Marc Grossman, and the White House’s AfPak point man, General Lute, went back to Abu Dhabi to meet Kayani. Relations had not improved, and Donilon wanted to smooth things over with Pakistan. Kayani in turn was hoping to hear a response to his paper and more on America’s vision for the region—what was the strategy?

  The follow-up meeting was much shorter, and soon it became clear Donilon had one agenda: reading Pakistan the riot act for its support of the Haqqani network. Donilon made no reference to Kayani’s paper or the road map he and Kerry had explored. Instead he presented Kayani with a laundry list of Pakistani misdeeds, backed with intelligence evidence. Pakistan was advised to close up shop in Afghanistan, abandon its strategic goals, and liquidate the Taliban or else. All we cared about was mop-up operations in Afghanistan, and we expected Pakistan to cooperate.

  In his colorful blow-by-blow account of the meeting between Donilon and Kayani (which shocked Kayani when it appeared in print—he declined a follow-up meeting with senior White House officials), David Sanger of the New York Times muses that all Kayani did in the five-and-a-half-hour meeting was to blow the “refined smoke of his Dunhills” into the faces of his American interlocutors.28 But that was perhaps because the general was flummoxed by the fact that the Kerry mission had come to naught. And he could have been thinking as well, “If you are leaving Afghanistan, then I may need the Haqqani network even more. And you are forgetting that you need my roads to get out.”

  In the months that followed, Washington’s pressure-only policy threw relations into a downward spiral that put us at great risk. America quickly learned that Pakistan could be even less cooperative, and to our surprise, we could not live with that. A policy of worsening relations to improve them—getting more out of Pakistan by giving less—was a nonstarter. Pakistan did not reward coercion with cooperation. On the contrary, Islamabad started shutting down supply routes, cut back intelligence cooperation, and finally in March 2012 demanded a “reset” in relations with Washington, beginning with a shutdown of the U.S. drone program (although that did not happen). The headaches this meant for our effort in landlocked Afghanistan were obvious. If Pakistan cooperated less, then the president’s claims of success to date and his hope to wind up the war by 2014 would both be in jeopardy. When Obama declared that the situation in Afghanistan had improved enough for American troops to start heading home, he was assuming that Pakistan would continue the level of cooperation it had given America during his first two years in office. Otherwise, violence might spike and put U.S. troop-withdrawal plans in doubt.

  The nadir of relations was finally reached with the Salala incident. On November 26, 2011, U.S. forces were serving as backup to the Afghan army in hot pursuit of Taliban fighters near the Pakistani border posts in Salala on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. At some point in the firefight Pakistani soldiers joined in and started shooting at American and Afghan troops. American helicopters and fighter jets responded, pounding the Pakistani posts and killing twenty-four Pakistani soldiers.

  An American investigation revealed that Pakistani soldiers knowingly shot at American troops. Pakistan claimed that American troops had not followed proper procedure and had failed to notify them that Afghan ground troops with U.S. fire support were in the area. Thus when suspected Taliban forces in the area started taking fire from Afghan and NATO forces, Pakistani soldiers responded thinking the Taliban or Afghan soldiers were shooting at them. At that point, American firepower punished them mercilessly for hours—Pakistanis claim that even after American commanders learned they were shooting at Pakistanis, they did not stop.

  The use of firepower sent a powerful signal that U.S.-led NATO forces operating on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier could be a direct military threat to Pakistan. The Pakistanis took the episode to mean, in effect, “This is how it’s going be from now on. We will come at you backing Afghan forces.”

  It was the last straw. The Pakistani public was incensed, and the onesided firefight once again left the Pakistan military feeling humiliated by what looked like another American violation of their sovereignty. Pakistan demanded a formal apology. None was forthcoming. The attitude in the Pentagon was that the Pakistanis got what they deserved for supporting Taliban fighters, and they had better be prepared for more of the same. For his part, Obama worried that offering an apology would give his Republican opponents an excuse to accuse him of “apologizing for America” and to a country that the administration itself had painted as hostile to American interests. The White House made a decision: no apology. To make that crystal clear one senior official told Pakistan’s ambassador, “We will never apologize; it will never happen. Get over it.” Still, to cool tempers America had to suspend drone strikes for a good two months. The unfortunate bottom line was that a show of force along the Durand Line had led to less rather than more terrorist fighting, and Washington was worried that the lull in drone strikes was giving al-Qaeda dangerous room to regroup.29 So shortly after New Year’s 2012, a bevy of worried American officials got on the phone with their Pakistani counterparts. The calls were menacing and the message was simple: “The United States reserved the right to attack anyone who it determined posed a direct threat to U.S. national security anywhere in the world.”30 This was the administration’s counterterrorism “red line” and it meant that America was done with the drone cease-fire and wanted Pakistan to permit new attacks. In the past, Pakistanis would have grumbled but acceded to American requests. This time they refused to back down. The drones resumed flying over Pakistan and shooting missiles at targets, but Pakistan now was openly opposed to the program and getting closer to enforcing their objection.

  I remember meeting high-ranking members of the administration right after those calls. Everyone asked, as if it had been a topic of discussion in the Situation Room, “What is our leverage with Pakistan?” I did not need to think hard to answer that one. “None,” I responded. We had worked hard at not having much leverage. We had cut back our aid and all but ended the programs that were meant to build bilateral ties, and we had taken off the table the promise of a long-term strategic relationship. We had assumed that threats and pressure would do what aid and diplomacy had achieved in the past. America’s strategy with Pakistan was not “three cups of tea,” but “three bangs on the table.” The Pakistani view was that you cannot threaten to take away a relationship that is not there—and threats of military action against Pakistan were just not credible, not when we were barely keeping our head above water in Afghanistan and, what’s more, had declared loud and clear that we were on our way out.

  In return, I asked those who wondered about our leverage, “What do you think is Pakistan’s leverage on us?” Several levers came to my mind: We relied on Pakistan to supply our troops in Afghanistan with everything from fuel to drinking water; we needed Pakistan’s cooperation to gather the intelligence necessary to make drone strikes effective; and above all we needed Pakistan to make our Afghanistan strategy work. Given these dependencies, we had done ourselves a disservice by taking an ax to the relationship. Bullying wasn’t going to pay.

  With no apology forthcoming the situation got tenser. Pakistan closed its border to trucks carrying supplies for American troops in Afghanistan, threatened to openly break with America on intelligence cooperation, and shunned international conferences on the future of Afghanistan. The relationship was in tatters.

  With the Pakistan border closed, the U.S. military was paying an additional $100 million a month to supply its troops in Afghanistan (by May 2012 the total cos
t was close to $700 million). Without Pakistani roads, the U.S. military would not be able to get its heavy equipment out of Afghanistan on time or on budget once the time came to leave. If Pakistan remained off-limits, the United States would have to rethink its entire exit strategy from Afghanistan. Another arrow in Pakistan’s quiver was that it could also close its airspace to U.S. planes flying between the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. The next escalation in this conflict would put the United States, not Pakistan, in the pincer.

  Clinton all along thought we should say “Sorry” and move on. Now, as months had passed, Clinton told the White House that enough was enough; she was taking charge. She gave a simple direction to her top deputy at the State Department, Tom Nides: “I want you to fix this.” Nides flew to Islamabad to negotiate with General Kayani a tepid U.S. apology in exchange for Pakistan opening the border—and hence preventing the relationship from going over the cliff.

  The White House acquiesced to Clinton salvaging the relationship. Not only had their Pakistan policy failed, but Obama also realized that Putin was the main beneficiary of Pakistan’s spat with Washington. The alternatives to Pakistan’s supply routes were Central Asian and Russian land and air routes, which gave Putin leverage. Obama decided he preferred apologizing to Pakistan to depending on Putin. It was a critical realization for the White House that the real menace to America comes not from states like Pakistan but powers like Russia. But the relationship is not out of the woods yet. Pakistan is still intent on protecting its ties to the Haqqani network and the Taliban—looking past America to protecting its position in the future Afghanistan. The relationship may still give way to more confrontation.

  Seldom has the loss of one statesman proved as consequential as the death of Richard Holbrooke. Without his wisdom and experience, America’s Pakistan policy went off the rails and there will be long-run costs. What happens to Pakistan will always matter to America for several reasons, not least among them the presence of nuclear weapons. We should want more and not less influence in Pakistan, and Pakistan’s stability is not the only factor. There is also the matter of China.

  When the Obama administration came to power, there was a genuine sense that Pakistan was on the edge of national collapse. That is much less the case today. But as our relations with the country soured, the business community and affluent middle classes started to write off America. The anger at American hubris became much easier to afford as burgeoning trade with China started to make up for reduced business with America. Fewer American businesses deal with Pakistan, but hotels in Islamabad or Lahore are filled with Chinese businessmen carrying on a brisk trade in commodities, manufacturing, and even software services.

  The Chinese option buffers Pakistan from U.S. pressure, but in the long run it will also chart a different future for Pakistan. Beijing is unhappy over America’s strategic partnership with India, and especially dislikes the jewel in that partnership’s crown: the civilian nuclear deal struck by George W. Bush that will upgrade India’s nuclear capabilities. There is even more consternation in Beijing at the idea of a U.S.-Indian effort to contain and countervail China’s growing influence in Asia and the Indian Ocean region.

  In this great-power rivalry, Pakistan is a strategic asset to China—a thorn in India’s side, a useful balancer that occupies many of India’s military and diplomatic resources and distracts India from focusing on China. By effectively conceding Pakistan to China, we have set ourselves back in the far more important rivalry with Beijing.

  And Pakistan is not out of the woods. American pressure of late has in particular targeted the Pakistani military. We have always drawn a distinction between the civilian government and the military in Pakistan. There have been times when civilian politicians irked us and we saw our salvation in the military. It used to be that we relied on the military to get things done and keep the place going. We faulted the generals’ authoritarian tendencies, but it had become the custom in Washington to pinch our nostrils with one hand and bless the soldiers’ political meddling with the other. Otherwise Pakistan would surely sink under rising tides of corruption, misrule, and violent conflict. We did not like the military’s rattling of sabers at India, but thought that the men in khaki alone could safeguard the country’s nuclear arsenal, keep jihadis at bay, and help the West against the threat of extremism. The Pakistani military created problems and seemed to be the only solution to them at the same time. It was nice work if you could get it.

  Humiliating and weakening a military that is choking democracy is not a bad thing. That is the only way to change the balance of power in favor of civilians and give democracy a chance. But Pakistan is not Spain or Argentina. The combination of ethnic tensions, extremist revolt, a sagging economy, and political gridlock with a war next door and no real institutional alternatives means that weakening Pakistan’s military could mean opening the door to the unknown. It is possible to envisage the gradual growth of democracy as the military’s control over politics fades—Turkey has seen a process of this sort unfold over the past two decades. But that delicate transition needs stability, time, and positive U.S. involvement. None of these are at hand in Pakistan. Whatever its shortcomings, the military remains the one functioning institution in Pakistan—the skeleton that keeps its state upright. One may well ask whether in the haste to get “deliverables” on short-run “asks” Washington was now jumping from the frying pan into the fire, jeopardizing Pakistan to America’s own detriment. America’s pressure strategy is just as likely to produce the Pakistan of our worst nightmares as it is to bend the country’s will to our counterterrorism demands. A Pakistan that bends is likely to be a weaker and more vulnerable state, a larger, more dangerous South Asian Yemen.

  Much eludes America in its singular focus on drones and the Taliban. Pakistan is a democracy with a vibrant civil society, a rambunctious free press, an independent judiciary, and a sizable middle class and private sector that are eroding the military’s grip on power, deepening democracy, and pushing for economic ties with India. But to get to a better place Pakistan needs stability and support—which, again, are not on the American agenda right now.

  There is also much to worry about in Pakistan. The country suffers from severe electricity shortages. It is now common for large urban centers like Lahore to go without electricity for as long as sixteen hours. Factories shut down, workers are sent home, and in sweltering summer heat tempers flare in the form of protests, riots, and street clashes. What is happening with electricity today will happen with water tomorrow. The hopelessly outdated irrigation system leaks water to no end, and rapid population growth is straining the water supply—which is bound to dwindle as the glaciers melt away.

  Urban violence involving criminal gangs and ethnic mafias is on the rise—Karachi’s constant gun battles, assassinations, and street violence bring to mind drug turf battles in Colombia and Mexico, but mixed with ethnic clashes of the sort seen once in Bosnia or Northern Ireland.

  Entire populations want out. The Baluch are engaged in a war of liberation, and a bevy of other ethnic groups want recognition, special treatment, and, when possible, their own provinces. The military has kept separatism in check, but for how long and at what price?

  The gap between the rich and poor is widening, not just in terms of wealth but also education, health, and access to social services. Pakistan’s massive middle class is as large as 30 million people—a midsized country in its own right—surrounded by five times as many poor slum dwellers and peasants. There is not enough economic growth to improve the lives of those at the bottom rung of the ladder, and even many in the middle class may lose their footing and slide down into economic trouble.

  Some think economic pressure of this sort could produce a “Pakistan Spring.” But Pakistan had its spring in 2008 when its lawyers, media, students, and civil society joined hands to send General Musharraf packing. If there is another big nationwide protest movement, it is likely to be anti-drone and anti-American—the Pakistani equiva
lent of the Arab demand for dignity seems to be directed at Washington.

  From the 1950s, when Pakistan had been counted as an important part of the so-called Northern Tier—allies upon whom America could rely to contain Soviet influence in West Asia—the U.S. and Pakistani militaries enjoyed close ties. The Pentagon thought of Pakistan’s military as an important asset in a troubled region. The Afghan war against the invading Russians brought the two militaries even closer together. After that war, the State Department thought of putting Pakistan on its list of state terror sponsors and of sanctioning it for A. Q. Khan’s nuclear program. But the Pentagon intervened, arranging for Pakistani troops to lend a hand with UN peacekeeping in Somalia, where Pakistan’s Frontier Force Regiment lost twenty-four men in a battle against local clan militias in June 1993 and helped rescue U.S. troops in the Black Hawk Down incident in Mogadishu that October. State Department plans to spank Islamabad were shelved. During Musharraf’s presidency, it was again the Pentagon that lobbied the president hard to view Pakistan in the best light, as a staunch ally in the war on terror.

  In the past two years, that pillar of U.S.-Pakistan relations has come crashing down. The Pakistani military has started to view America not as an ally but as a threat. In March 2012, America put a bounty on the head of the Punjabi terrorist Hafiz Saeed, who masterminded the Mumbai attacks that killed 164 people over four days in late November 2008. It was high time that America pressured Pakistan to stop supporting anti-Indian terrorists, but America chose to do this long after the attack on Mumbai and as another signal of getting tough with Pakistan. In Islamabad, this was seen as a significant expansion of America’s war on terror into Pakistan proper. The United States and Pakistan had their disagreements, but Pakistan’s military had never before seen America as a country to be on guard against. Did the U.S. military now think a war with Pakistan might be in the offing? Pakistan was not ruling it out.