Daniel S Markey

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by No Exit from Pakistan (pdf)


  lived up to its strategic promise. It has cost Pakistan dearly but delivered little.

  The origins of this perspective can be traced to America’s “abandonments” of

  Pakistan in 1965 and again at the close of the Cold War. Pakistani nationalists

  have developed an entire narrative of relations with the United States centered

  upon America as a fair-weather friend.

  Finally, the 1980s – and especially Washington’s support to the Afghan

  mujahedeen – fueled the rise of the most violent anti-Americanism of the

  jihadists. This strand is founded upon a rejection not merely of U.S. poli-

  cies and strategies but of American principles and ideals. Pakistan’s Islamist

  extremists are not unified; fortunately their internal divisions keep them at war

  3 According to a 2012 survey, 80 percent of Pakistanis hold an unfavorable view of the United States, and 74 percent of Pakistanis viewed the United States as an enemy. Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 27, 2012, http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/27/pakistani-public-opinion-ever-more-critical-of-u-s/.

  4 Professor Mohammad Waseem of the Lahore University of Management Sciences provides an outstanding scholarly treatment of similar issues in his symposium paper, “Perceptions about America in Pakistan,” Aziya Kenkyu, 50, no. 2 (April 2004).

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  No Exit from Pakistan

  with one another in ways that undermine their prospects for seizing power over

  the state. They are dangerous nonetheless, and their ideas find sympathy, or

  stoke fears, among a much larger segment of the society.

  Together, the history of these strands of anti-Americanism offers a win-

  dow into the overall history of the relationship between the United States and

  Pakistan. Unfortunately, the post-9/11 decade has added new layers of frustra-

  tion, grievances, and complications.

  the anti-americanism of pakistan’s leftists and liberals

  In January 1955, John Foster Dulles was named Time’s Man of the Year.

  The magazine’s editors lauded President Eisenhower’s secretary of state for

  his energetic diplomacy, noting that Dulles spent 1954 in a “ceaseless round

  of travel, logging 101,521 miles.” True to his reputation as one of America’s

  foremost cold warriors, Dulles’s primary mission in foreign capitals was “to

  develop the cohesion and strength that would make Communist aggression less

  likely.”5

  Eisenhower came into office committed to reducing U.S. military expendi-

  tures without opening vulnerabilities to Moscow.6 To achieve this goal on the

  military front, he adopted the controversial strategy of “massive retaliation,”

  which Dulles unveiled in a famously provocative speech to the Council on

  Foreign Relations on January 12, 1954.7 By threatening a devastating nuclear

  response, the administration believed it could deter Moscow from aggression

  even though the Soviet Union was believed to have a stronger conventional

  military than the United States.

  In the diplomatic arena, Dulles set to work building a web of new formal

  and informal alliances to extend U.S. influence worldwide without having to

  pay for, or deploy, U.S. troops at every point of possible communist expan-

  sion. The Korean War had convinced the administration of the extreme costs

  of the alternative. Because “massive atomic and thermonuclear retaliation is

  not the kind of power which could most usefully be evoked under all circum-

  stances,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs, “security for the free world depends . . .

  upon the development of collective security and community power rather than

  upon purely national potentials.”8 Dulles fit Pakistan – and a good many

  other states – into his sweeping vision of the Cold War conflict, even though

  5 “Man of the Year,” Time, January 3, 1955.

  6 On Eisenhower’s “New Look” strategy, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, (Oxford: Oxford University, 1982), pp. 127–197; also Richard H. Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Wilmington: SR Books, 1999), p. 50.

  7 Samuel F. Wells, “The Origins of Massive Retaliation,” Political Science Quarterly, 96, no. 1

  (Spring 1981), p. 34.

  8 John Foster Dulles, “Policy for Security and Peace,” Foreign Affairs, 32, no. 3 (April 1954).

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  Why Do They Hate Us?

  75

  there were good reasons from the start to fear that the fit was not a good

  one.9

  Dulles believed that Pakistan, along with other states of the “Northern

  tier” – Turkey, Iran, and Iraq – could be pulled together to defend a fraying

  Middle East and its essential oil fields from Soviet invasion. He thought that

  the Northern Tier, if properly trained and equipped, could blunt a Soviet

  move against the Persian Gulf long enough for the United States to muster a

  counterstrike. After its own assessments, the Pentagon endorsed Dulles’s plan

  for Pakistan, based on a similar logic of regional defense.

  In retrospect, the strategy behind the U.S. military alliance with Pakistan

  looks, as historian Robert J. McMahon puts it, “curiously imprecise and

  inchoate.”10 McMahon and others have raised doubts about whether Pakistan

  could ever have provided a defensive platform for the Middle East anything

  like what Dulles had in mind, at any realistic price. They also observe that

  building up a relatively weak Pakistani ally soured relations with much larger

  India. Indeed, New Delhi’s prickly Jawaharlal Nehru railed against U.S. plans

  to assist Pakistan’s military. He contended, correctly, that whatever Pakistan’s

  anti-communist rhetoric might be, U.S. assistance to Pakistan would more

  likely be directed against India than against a Soviet invasion.

  Dulles, for his part, was confident in his approach and angered by Nehru’s

  argument, being deeply skeptical that neutralist India would help the United

  States in its Cold War struggle under any circumstances. Dulles’s view pre-

  vailed. Eight months after Dulles’s trip to Karachi, President Eisenhower agreed

  to provide Pakistan with military aid. In May 1954, the United States and Pak-

  istan formally signed a mutual assistance agreement.

  The scale of the assistance package would be a source of contentious nego-

  tiations over the next two years. Washington’s initial aid proposals of roughly

  $30 million shocked Pakistan’s leaders; they had expected a more generous

  offer.11 When General Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s top military officer and later its

  first military autocrat, heard Washington’s proposal he complained to the U.S.

  consul general in Lahore, “I’ve stuck my neck out for the Americans. But now I

  can’t go on doing it, because you’ve gone back on your word.”12 Ayub’s frustra-

  tion was not confined to closed-door diplomacy. Through multiple channels,

  9 On the general Cold War strategy of establishing regional groupings to r
esist Soviet aggression and Pakistan’s place in that approach, see James Spain, “Military Assistance for Pakistan,”

  American Political Science Review, 48, no. 3 (September 1954), p. 749. Dulles’s predecessors in the Truman administration had also appreciated that logic, but not to the extent of seeking a formal alliance with Pakistan. George Lerski argues this point in “The Pakistan-American Alliance: A Reevaluation of the Past Decade,” Asian Survey, 8, no. 5 (May 1968), p. 402.

  10 McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery, p. 274.

  11 See the conversation with Pakistan’s prime minister as recounted by U.S. State Department officials in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Vol. 11, pp. 1868–9, http://images

  .library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs2/1952-54v11p2/reference/frus.frus195254v11p2.i0007.pdf.

  12 McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery, pp. 200–205, esp. p. 204.

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  No Exit from Pakistan

  including timely leaks to the media, Pakistan skillfully lobbied Washington.

  Eventually the Eisenhower administration agreed to arm and equip five-and-

  a-half Pakistani army divisions at a huge total cost of over $500 million from

  1956 through December 1959.13 Sustaining the force in subsequent years was

  projected to cost billions more. Pakistan’s own weak economy meant that

  Washington would foot the bill with no end in sight.

  After the fact, Eisenhower harbored grave doubts about the decision to assist

  Pakistan. The president had always been concerned that by arming Pakistan

  Washington was also alienating India. He became increasingly worried about

  the spiraling costs to Washington of building a Pakistani military that was well

  beyond the means of Pakistan’s own developing economy. At a meeting of the

  National Security Council on January 3, 1957, he lamented the “terrible error”

  of committing to military investments in such a weak ally. But at that stage the

  president concluded there was no easy way out of the mess, since Washington

  had made a commitment and breaking it “might have severe repercussions on

  our relations with Pakistan, and might even destroy the Baghdad Pact.”14

  On the Pakistani side, cracks in public support for partnership with the

  United States appeared almost as soon as the two countries signed their

  1954 mutual assistance agreement. The main problem was the instability of

  Pakistan’s own political system. Pakistan’s weak and increasingly undemocratic

  governing institutions could not manage the country’s rolling political and eco-

  nomic crises. The more fragile Pakistan’s ruling clique felt, the more it turned

  to Washington for support. And Washington, fearing the downfall of its Pak-

  istani partners, especially those in the military, grudgingly stuck with them even

  when they lacked popular legitimacy. The United States watched throughout

  the 1950s as its partners in Pakistan’s military and civilian bureaucracy grad-

  ually edged out the vestiges of parliamentary democracy. U.S. officials never

  took firm action to defend electoral democracy in Pakistan, even if they did fear

  the consequences of its failure.15 Pakistan’s first attempt at elected government

  ended in 1958 when General Ayub Khan placed the country under army rule.

  This, in turn, reinforced popular resentment toward the United States.16

  The perceptive Pakistani professor of political science, Mohammad Waseem,

  observes that the protest movement that ousted Ayub in 1969 dubbed him

  and his colleagues “American stooges.”17 Pakistani opponents of military rule

  13 The assistance figures are in 1950s dollars. See McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery, p. 206.

  14 U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957: South Asia, p. 27.

  15 Kux recounts that the U.S. embassy in Pakistan was under instruction to counsel Pakistani leaders against the anti-democratic 1958 coup, but that advice went unheeded, perhaps because there was nothing backing it up. See Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 99

  where he cites “State Department telegram to Embassy Karachi,” October 6, 1958, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1968–60, Vol. 15, pp. 666–7.

  16 See McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery, pp. 209–10.

  17 Waseem, “Perceptions about America in Pakistan,” p. 36.

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  Why Do They Hate Us?

  77

  reprised similar themes – that military dictators were in power only by the grace

  of the United States – during the Zia (1977–88) and Musharraf (1999–2008)

  eras. But it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who most effectively combined his anti-

  Americanism with his political agenda. Bhutto’s populist leadership in the early

  1970s “cultivated a mass perception that American intervention had worked

  against democracy in favor of the military establishment.”18

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

  Bhutto was born to an elite landowning family in Pakistan’s Sindh province.

  His hometown was not far from the ruined city of Mohenjo-daro, constructed

  well over 4,000 years ago as part of a majestic Indus valley civilization that

  reached its heights during the time of Egypt’s Old Kingdom.19 For millennia,

  Bhutto’s home region of Larkhana was extremely fertile, unlike much of the

  rest of the province. That fertility translated into vast wealth for the Bhuttos,

  who ruled over huge tracts of farmland in a style that can only be described as

  feudal. Sadly, much of Sindh is ruled in a similar manner to this day.20

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto enjoyed the privileges of that wealth and the unusual

  opportunities it offered. His undergraduate years at the University of California

  at Berkeley exposed him to political science, history, and a heavy dose of the

  American “high life” that was easily afforded by the well-heeled playboy. It also

  proved that greater familiarity with America does not always inspire greater

  affection.21

  Upon his return to Pakistan, Bhutto’s family connections and political acu-

  men earned the young politician a spot in Ayub’s cabinet practically overnight.

  By the 1960s, Bhutto’s anti-Western diatribes and his pro-Beijing attitude irri-

  tated Washington, which at the time considered Mao’s communist China a

  dangerous, revolutionary state.22 Bhutto was perfectly happy to be the Pak-

  istani government’s most outspoken “Yankee hater,” a role he played most

  prominently when he served as Ayub’s foreign minister from 1963 to 1966.23

  18 Waseem, “Perceptions about America in Pakistan,” p. 36.

  19 For more on Mohenjo-daro, see Alice Albinia, Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010).

  20 On the present state of Sindh’s feudals, see William Dalrymple, “A New Deal in Pakistan,” New York Review of Books, April 3, 2008, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/apr/03/

  a-new-deal-in-pakistan; also Lieven, Pakistan: A Hard Country (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), pp. 329–38.

  21 The wellsprings of Bhutto’s own
anti-Americanism are not entirely clear. Later in his career, he identified American imperialism in South Asia and, in particular, Washington’s hypocritical and imbalanced dealings with India and Pakistan, as the source of his disillusionment, and it is possible that this was his perspective even during his days as a student in California. See Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, The Myth of Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).

  22 For a revealing exchange between Bhutto and President Lyndon Johnson, see Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, pp. 147–8.

  23 Bhutto used these words himself when he met with President Nixon in 1971. See Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 204.

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  No Exit from Pakistan

  At various points in his political career, Bhutto moderated his anti-Western

  rhetoric, but he never surrendered his basic suspicions of the United States.

  Ayub broke with Bhutto in 1966. By some accounts, Ayub finally acceded to

  Washington’s demand that Bhutto be ditched in the aftermath of the 1965 war

  with India.24 The Pakistanis started that war in an attempt to seize the contested

  territory of Kashmir. Failing at that mission and facing a costly stalemate

  or worse, Ayub grudgingly accepted a settlement brokered by the Soviets in

  Tashkent that delivered a cease-fire but no Indian concessions on Kashmir.

  Because the Ayub regime had so stoked anti-Indian war hysteria at home and

  raised expectations of imminent territorial conquest, Tashkent was politically

  radioactive. Bhutto, Ayub’s foreign minister at the time, later claimed that he

  opposed Tashkent and offered his resignation over it several times but was

  at first refused by Ayub.25 Whatever the case, Bhutto was out of a job and

  thoroughly alienated from Ayub.

  In the political wilderness, Bhutto founded the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP),

  “an anti-Ayub political movement that espoused populist economic policies

  and a pro-China, anti-U.S., and anti-India foreign policy.”26 Bhutto appealed

  to the masses like none other, promising “roti, kapra, makaan,” or food,

 

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