This article appeared in The Mark on May 4, 2011
Strategic alliances between states are successful only for as long as there is symmetry of interests. Alliances of convenience – those without any real approximation of interests – tend to decay rapidly. The fraying relationship between Pakistan and the United States – no doubt fractured further by the recent death in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. operatives – is attributed to a number of surface phenomena, such as the increasing numbers of civilians killed in American drone attacks on Pakistani territory, or the operation of clandestine CIA contractors. However, at its root the deterioration in ties is symptomatic of a broader strategic divergence.
Strategic alliances between states are successful only for as long as there is symmetry of interests. Alliances of convenience – those without any real approximation of interests – tend to decay rapidly. The fraying relationship between Pakistan and the United States – no doubt fractured further by the recent death in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden at the hands of U.S. operatives – is attributed to a number of surface phenomena, such as the increasing numbers of civilians killed in American drone attacks on Pakistani territory, or the operation of clandestine CIA contractors. However, at its root the deterioration in ties is symptomatic of a broader strategic divergence.
The Alliance in Historical Light
The U.S.-Pakistan alliance can be viewed in three separate phases. The first ran from roughly 1954 to the mid-1970s. In this period, Pakistan entered into mutual defence pacts with the U.S. and was inducted into anti-communist alliance systems, including the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Baghdad Pact, later renamed the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). It also allowed the operation of a secret airbase and listening station on its territory to allow the Americans to spy on the Soviet Union.
The second phase lasted from 1979 to 1989, during which both countries co-operated heavily against the Red Army occupying Afghanistan. The current phase began with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the U.S. demanded full co-operation against Pakistan’s allies, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, at the pain of U.S. action being taken against Pakistan if it did not back the war on terror. During these periods, Pakistan received significant amounts of economic and military aid.
Each phase of the U.S.-Pak alliance has been marked by the competing demands of respective establishment security interests, and the Pakistani tendency to maximize geopolitical rent-seeking to offset its weak bargaining position against American imperial power.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. viewed a militarily capable Pakistan as an attractive successor to British India – a western enforcer in South Asia and the Middle East, and an important regional bulwark against communism. By contrast, Pakistan’s foreign policy was singularly driven by shoring up military security against neighbouring India, a country perceived to present an existential threat. India and Pakistan had fought their first war in 1947, scant months after appearing on the world map.
The early militarization of the Indo-Pak conflict meant that the military establishment of the smaller, resource-poor Pakistan gained considerable political clout, and became obsessed with searching for a powerful patron to provide military, economic, and diplomatic aid. The U.S. became such a partner, further bolstering the political power held by Pakistan’s Praetorian generals.
In the 1980s, the U.S. worked closely with Pakistan to embroil the Soviet Union in a protracted conflict in Afghanistan comparable to the American experience in Vietnam. Pakistan was once again motivated by securing arms and alliances to offset Indian dominance in the region, and hoped – rightly, as it turned out – that it would be able to induce the U.S. to turn a blind eye toward its covert nuclear weapons program. Pakistan also wished to install a client regime in Afghanistan, providing it with “strategic depth” against India, while closing the book on India’s historically close relationship with Kabul.
The Present Dilemma
In the latest post-9-11 phase, American priorities are dictated by the need to “defeat” the Taliban, a term that has evolved to mean an American withdrawal that its military planners hope will be negotiated from a position of relative strength and will largely preserve Afghanistan’s current state structure. Thus, the U.S. requires Pakistani co-operation in weakening the Taliban by interdicting their movements across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and in attacking Taliban sanctuaries on the Pakistani side.
It also requires intelligence co-operation from Pakistan in targeting the Taliban and in forcing their leadership to the negotiating table. Dealing with the brutal Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistani Taliban Movement, or TTP) – Pakistan’s own Taliban-inspired Islamist insurgency – destabilizing Pakistan is a distant secondary objective for the U.S.
For Pakistan, the priorities are naturally not only reversed, but its military establishment persists in viewing many strands of the Afghan Taliban – such as the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network – as strategic assets that will allow it to bid on hegemony in Afghanistan, and to excise Indian influence once American troops depart.
Moreover, Pakistan’s own fearsome insurgency has cost more than 30,000 lives over the past four years, has required the mobilization of nearly 150,000 troops, and has cost its tottering economy more than $50 billion. Thus, Pakistan does not wish to kick the proverbial hornets’ nest by acting too aggressively with the Taliban, knowing that they will inevitably end up holding some key reins of power in Afghanistan.
Pakistan co-operates with the U.S. when it comes to the TTP and is much less forthcoming in relation to the Afghan Taliban. As a result, the U.S. rightly views Pakistan as being inadequately aggressive and too ready to cut deals with the Taliban. Conversely, Pakistan, also correctly believes that the U.S. is too eager to shore up its military position in the short run, including through Pakistani efforts and drone strikes, but is paying inadequate attention to a political settlement that will stabilize Afghanistan in the long-term.
The U.S. has not indicated whether Pakistan will have a say in any final settlement in Afghanistan, or, for that matter, whether it will involve other key regional players such as Iran. As far as Pakistan is concerned, the U.S. can withdraw and forget about Afghanistan, as it did in the 1980s; Pakistan cannot.
The Clash of Interests
The dispute over drone strikes and covert CIA and military contractors in Pakistan is the public-relations battle that encodes the furious jostling over maximizing respective strategic interests. Despite the fiery rhetoric, Pakistan does not have an ethical objection to drone strikes. After all, American drones take to the skies from bases within Pakistan. Nor does Pakistan want an absolute cessation of the drone attacks. It has asked the U.S. to cease carrying out drone strikes, while asking for it to provide Pakistan with drone technology so that it can fly the sorties itself.
Similarly, Pakistan has claimed that it is reacting to popular pressure in limiting the number of American intelligence contractors operating in Pakistan, particularly after one such agent killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January. This is partly true, but both positions are primarily tactics in a broader strategy to circumscribe American room to manoeuvre within Pakistan. This would force the U.S. to rely more on the Pakistani military establishment to achieve its aims and, by extension, will make it more amenable to the Pakistani strategic vision for Afghanistan. Thus, both sides see a relatively high rate of civilian casualties as an acceptable price for playing the latest run of the “Great Game.”
That American Special Forces found and killed bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan, without even notifying Pakistan’s government until they had exited its sovereign airspace, clearly demonstrates the lack of trust between the two nations. Bin Laden had been living in a mansion in the town of Abbottabad, only 50 kilometres from the capital city of Islamabad, but nearly a three-hour drive over narrow and twisting hill roads.
A British-era garrison town, Abbottabad is home to the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, which trains the entire officer corps of the Pakistani army. Bin Laden’s compound was roughly only one kilometre from the academy. This will lead the U.S. to further reassess its trust in Pakistan’s government, military and intelligence services – or at least its trust in their power and proficiency.
Once the initial euphoria blows over, the sensitivity of this issue will inevitably focus the spotlight on an uncomfortable Pakistan, and its actions and omissions. The pressure on Pakistan will broaden American operational and strategic space within the country.
There is also a more discrete clash developing over the balance of power in South Asia. Even though American attempts to press India into an alliance stretch back six decades, the U.S. has traditionally opted to maintain a balance between India and Pakistan.
Over the past decade, the balance has subtly shifted. India has become more open to American overtures, while the latter is looking to prime the Indian Tiger as a potential counterweight to the Chinese Dragon. Increasing military co-operation and an unprecedented nuclear deal with India signals that a new American “tilt” will come in favour of India. This further clouds the future of a U.S.-Pak alliance.
A Future for the “Alliance”?
In addition to a clash of interests, the U.S.-Pak relationship also bears the scars of the historical resentment against the U.S. built up over the decades. The first phase of co-operation unravelled when the U.S. declined to come to Pakistan’s military aid in the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars, contrary to a previous aide-mémoire pledging to do so; a cessation of aid soon followed.
The second ended in a quick American withdrawal of interest from Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan to pick up the pieces of a chaotic civil war in Afghanistan, where it had been a junior partner. That the U.S. promptly applied sanctions against Pakistan for a nuclear program it had conveniently ignored over the previous decade added insult to injury.
Presently, having absorbed tens of thousands dead and daily violence wracking the entire country, many Pakistanis pine for the relative human and economic security that prevailed prior to the American invasion of Afghanistan. Nor is it lost on many Pakistanis that the U.S. maintains, even to the present day, a closer relationship with its military dictators and defence establishment than with its democratically elected governments.
Thus, Pakistani resentment of the U.S. is a complex mix of militaristically defined security interests, a keen sense of betrayal, and a humiliating dependency that nevertheless keeps forcing Pakistan to curry American favour. In the long run, perhaps this trend can begin to reverse through effective assistance that can arrest Pakistan’s economic tailspin and the erosion of state institutions. But above all, it will require patient and unstinting support for Pakistan’s nascent democratic institutions and civil society, enabling them to prise away – and demilitarize – national and foreign policy from the hawkish military establishment.
A continuing long-term alliance between the U.S. and Pakistan is unlikely given the divergent view of their interests. Based on historical trends, this may bode well for democratic development in Pakistan. It may also ease the high levels of resentment that exists among the American and Pakistani public, who mutually view the relationship between their countries as duplicitous.
But South Asia remains a crucially important part of the globe regardless of American security interests. It is the largest reservoir of human potential in the world. Yet equally, the festering enmity between India and Pakistan may become the tripwire for an unimaginable conflagration. International attention on normalizing relations between the two nuclear-powered neighbours and bringing peace to the subcontinent is not simply a South Asian issue, but one of global concern.
The U.S.-Pakistan alliance can be viewed in three separate phases. The first ran from roughly 1954 to the mid-1970s. In this period, Pakistan entered into mutual defence pacts with the U.S. and was inducted into anti-communist alliance systems, including the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Baghdad Pact, later renamed the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). It also allowed the operation of a secret airbase and listening station on its territory to allow the Americans to spy on the Soviet Union.
The second phase lasted from 1979 to 1989, during which both countries co-operated heavily against the Red Army occupying Afghanistan. The current phase began with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the U.S. demanded full co-operation against Pakistan’s allies, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, at the pain of U.S. action being taken against Pakistan if it did not back the war on terror. During these periods, Pakistan received significant amounts of economic and military aid.
Each phase of the U.S.-Pak alliance has been marked by the competing demands of respective establishment security interests, and the Pakistani tendency to maximize geopolitical rent-seeking to offset its weak bargaining position against American imperial power.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. viewed a militarily capable Pakistan as an attractive successor to British India – a western enforcer in South Asia and the Middle East, and an important regional bulwark against communism. By contrast, Pakistan’s foreign policy was singularly driven by shoring up military security against neighbouring India, a country perceived to present an existential threat. India and Pakistan had fought their first war in 1947, scant months after appearing on the world map.
The early militarization of the Indo-Pak conflict meant that the military establishment of the smaller, resource-poor Pakistan gained considerable political clout, and became obsessed with searching for a powerful patron to provide military, economic, and diplomatic aid. The U.S. became such a partner, further bolstering the political power held by Pakistan’s Praetorian generals.
In the 1980s, the U.S. worked closely with Pakistan to embroil the Soviet Union in a protracted conflict in Afghanistan comparable to the American experience in Vietnam. Pakistan was once again motivated by securing arms and alliances to offset Indian dominance in the region, and hoped – rightly, as it turned out – that it would be able to induce the U.S. to turn a blind eye toward its covert nuclear weapons program. Pakistan also wished to install a client regime in Afghanistan, providing it with “strategic depth” against India, while closing the book on India’s historically close relationship with Kabul.
The Present Dilemma
In the latest post-9-11 phase, American priorities are dictated by the need to “defeat” the Taliban, a term that has evolved to mean an American withdrawal that its military planners hope will be negotiated from a position of relative strength and will largely preserve Afghanistan’s current state structure. Thus, the U.S. requires Pakistani co-operation in weakening the Taliban by interdicting their movements across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and in attacking Taliban sanctuaries on the Pakistani side.
It also requires intelligence co-operation from Pakistan in targeting the Taliban and in forcing their leadership to the negotiating table. Dealing with the brutal Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistani Taliban Movement, or TTP) – Pakistan’s own Taliban-inspired Islamist insurgency – destabilizing Pakistan is a distant secondary objective for the U.S.
For Pakistan, the priorities are naturally not only reversed, but its military establishment persists in viewing many strands of the Afghan Taliban – such as the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani Network – as strategic assets that will allow it to bid on hegemony in Afghanistan, and to excise Indian influence once American troops depart.
Moreover, Pakistan’s own fearsome insurgency has cost more than 30,000 lives over the past four years, has required the mobilization of nearly 150,000 troops, and has cost its tottering economy more than $50 billion. Thus, Pakistan does not wish to kick the proverbial hornets’ nest by acting too aggressively with the Taliban, knowing that they will inevitably end up holding some key reins of power in Afghanistan.
Pakistan co-operates with the U.S. when it comes to the TTP and is much less forthcoming in relation to the Afghan Taliban. As a result, the U.S. rightly views Pakistan as being inadequately aggressive and too ready to cut deals with the Taliban. Conversely, Pakistan, also correctly believes that the U.S. is too eager to shore up its military position in the short run, including through Pakistani efforts and drone strikes, but is paying inadequate attention to a political settlement that will stabilize Afghanistan in the long-term.
The U.S. has not indicated whether Pakistan will have a say in any final settlement in Afghanistan, or, for that matter, whether it will involve other key regional players such as Iran. As far as Pakistan is concerned, the U.S. can withdraw and forget about Afghanistan, as it did in the 1980s; Pakistan cannot.
The Clash of Interests
The dispute over drone strikes and covert CIA and military contractors in Pakistan is the public-relations battle that encodes the furious jostling over maximizing respective strategic interests. Despite the fiery rhetoric, Pakistan does not have an ethical objection to drone strikes. After all, American drones take to the skies from bases within Pakistan. Nor does Pakistan want an absolute cessation of the drone attacks. It has asked the U.S. to cease carrying out drone strikes, while asking for it to provide Pakistan with drone technology so that it can fly the sorties itself.
Similarly, Pakistan has claimed that it is reacting to popular pressure in limiting the number of American intelligence contractors operating in Pakistan, particularly after one such agent killed two Pakistanis in Lahore in January. This is partly true, but both positions are primarily tactics in a broader strategy to circumscribe American room to manoeuvre within Pakistan. This would force the U.S. to rely more on the Pakistani military establishment to achieve its aims and, by extension, will make it more amenable to the Pakistani strategic vision for Afghanistan. Thus, both sides see a relatively high rate of civilian casualties as an acceptable price for playing the latest run of the “Great Game.”
That American Special Forces found and killed bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan, without even notifying Pakistan’s government until they had exited its sovereign airspace, clearly demonstrates the lack of trust between the two nations. Bin Laden had been living in a mansion in the town of Abbottabad, only 50 kilometres from the capital city of Islamabad, but nearly a three-hour drive over narrow and twisting hill roads.
A British-era garrison town, Abbottabad is home to the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, which trains the entire officer corps of the Pakistani army. Bin Laden’s compound was roughly only one kilometre from the academy. This will lead the U.S. to further reassess its trust in Pakistan’s government, military and intelligence services – or at least its trust in their power and proficiency.
Once the initial euphoria blows over, the sensitivity of this issue will inevitably focus the spotlight on an uncomfortable Pakistan, and its actions and omissions. The pressure on Pakistan will broaden American operational and strategic space within the country.
There is also a more discrete clash developing over the balance of power in South Asia. Even though American attempts to press India into an alliance stretch back six decades, the U.S. has traditionally opted to maintain a balance between India and Pakistan.
Over the past decade, the balance has subtly shifted. India has become more open to American overtures, while the latter is looking to prime the Indian Tiger as a potential counterweight to the Chinese Dragon. Increasing military co-operation and an unprecedented nuclear deal with India signals that a new American “tilt” will come in favour of India. This further clouds the future of a U.S.-Pak alliance.
A Future for the “Alliance”?
In addition to a clash of interests, the U.S.-Pak relationship also bears the scars of the historical resentment against the U.S. built up over the decades. The first phase of co-operation unravelled when the U.S. declined to come to Pakistan’s military aid in the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars, contrary to a previous aide-mémoire pledging to do so; a cessation of aid soon followed.
The second ended in a quick American withdrawal of interest from Afghanistan, leaving Pakistan to pick up the pieces of a chaotic civil war in Afghanistan, where it had been a junior partner. That the U.S. promptly applied sanctions against Pakistan for a nuclear program it had conveniently ignored over the previous decade added insult to injury.
Presently, having absorbed tens of thousands dead and daily violence wracking the entire country, many Pakistanis pine for the relative human and economic security that prevailed prior to the American invasion of Afghanistan. Nor is it lost on many Pakistanis that the U.S. maintains, even to the present day, a closer relationship with its military dictators and defence establishment than with its democratically elected governments.
Thus, Pakistani resentment of the U.S. is a complex mix of militaristically defined security interests, a keen sense of betrayal, and a humiliating dependency that nevertheless keeps forcing Pakistan to curry American favour. In the long run, perhaps this trend can begin to reverse through effective assistance that can arrest Pakistan’s economic tailspin and the erosion of state institutions. But above all, it will require patient and unstinting support for Pakistan’s nascent democratic institutions and civil society, enabling them to prise away – and demilitarize – national and foreign policy from the hawkish military establishment.
A continuing long-term alliance between the U.S. and Pakistan is unlikely given the divergent view of their interests. Based on historical trends, this may bode well for democratic development in Pakistan. It may also ease the high levels of resentment that exists among the American and Pakistani public, who mutually view the relationship between their countries as duplicitous.
But South Asia remains a crucially important part of the globe regardless of American security interests. It is the largest reservoir of human potential in the world. Yet equally, the festering enmity between India and Pakistan may become the tripwire for an unimaginable conflagration. International attention on normalizing relations between the two nuclear-powered neighbours and bringing peace to the subcontinent is not simply a South Asian issue, but one of global concern.