23August2017
In a refreshing departure from past US policy toward
frenemy, Pakistan, President Trump stated before the world the key conundrum in
US policy until now: Pakistan has manipulated both terrorist groups and the US
for decades, seeking advantage in the tensions between the two parties that are
central to Pakistan’s perception of its own security. While reaping billions in
US military aid each year which America hoped might make some contribution to
Pakistan’s counter-terrorism (CT) programs, the Pakistani military was
delighted to modernize its conventional forces for a different enemy entirely,
India. The Pakistani military and its intelligence arm, the ISI, have been
running terrorist groups since the 1980s, first against the Soviets and
thereafter against Indian regional interests, and since 9/11, against American
interests in South Asia. Pakistan’s identity and its existence are defined in
Islamabad by both elites and the public in opposition to India. Any enhancement
of Indian influence in Afghanistan is perceived as a direct threat to Pakistan.
With President Trump calling for enhanced Indian engagement in Kabul, Pakistan
will feel encircled. The sense of threat will only be enhanced by Washington’s
threats that “no place is beyond our reach” and that Pakistan has “much to lose
from harboring terrorists”. President Trump may intend to reorder the balance
of power in the region away from Pakistan and towards India in order to push
Pakistan to comply with US aims in Afghanistan. It remains to be seen whether he
has pushed too hard and what second or third order consequences are likely to
arise in the wake of this shift. What is clear is sixteen years of soft
peddling has resulted in providing Pakistan with opportunity to play America
that has perhaps finally backfired.
President Trump did note that Pakistan has fought terrorists
within its own borders; something the Pakistanis have long felt is not
appreciated in Washington. What is unstated by both sides in this CT point
scoring is that Islamabad is paying for the monster it created. They lost
control of the beast quite some time ago, a fact that was really not fully
understood in Pakistan right up until the Swat Valley fell all those years ago.
Until then, all eyes were turned south to India. Today, perhaps some eyes are
turned northwest – indeed, in many directions – to the terrorist threat within.
Another surprise in the speech was acknowledgement of the
importance of Afghanistan as a footprint from which US forces can mount
counter-WMD missions against Pakistan. The possibility that a loose nuke
scenario develops across the border from Afghanistan is a genuine concern
especially in light of the endless instability in the polity, the
civil-military divisions, the rise of radicalism within the Army (and the population
generally), and the direct threat posed by terrorists to the continued
stability of the state. All of these drivers of instability are underpinned by
dire economic indicators. Some Pakistan observers like Tariq Ali acknowledge
these factors but dismiss an ‘Arab spring’ in Egypt scenario, leading to a
Taliban takeover of the state. They argue that the Army and merchant class
elites will muddle through as they have for decades. Yet even Ali’s denunciations
of the unthinkable scenario are much less strident than in the past. The new
strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia (emphasis added) suggests the
new Administration is not willing to take the risk that one day Pakistan won’t
muddle through and will in fact suffer a wild card event leading to a ‘sum of
all fears’ scenario.
The shift to a conditions based approach is militarily
sensible and politically genius. You can just imagine Obama’s advisors smacking
their foreheads when such a simple solution to the Washington DC game of ‘how many,
for how long’ was dispensed with in that simple rhetorical trick. The only way
to encourage a political solution is to deny a military solution. Until now,
the Taliban won by not losing. Using a conditions based paradigm offers the
allies a chance to attrite the enemy all the way to the negation table. The
fact is that Congress will have no choice but to get into numbers of troops and
costs, but the new signal is American sunk costs are such that we will stay the
course to the bitter end. The sooner the other side embraces that commitment
the sooner they may seek to negotiate.
This raises one of the tensions in the new policy. Just how
far is Washington willing to allow “the Afghan people” to determine their
future? Does this mean that America will now negotiate with the Taliban? Will
America accept a shift away from democracy? “We will not tell them how to
govern themselves” certainly seems to open those doors and more. “We will make
common cause with anyone who wants to join us” also suggests the negotiation
table awaits the mullahs. It is unclear this is President Trump’s intent, which
may cause trouble downstream.
When General McChrystal was given carte blanche to create a
new strategy in Afghanistan, his freedom to drop all extant assumptions stopped
at the baseline that the government in Kabul must be protected/maintained.
President Trump’s frequent references to “the people of Afghanistan” seems to
this author’s ears as a group distinguished from the government, and, as such,
hints at the possibility that the structures and institutions that are alien to
Afghan history and culture (at least until American intervention) might be up
for negotiation. Lack of clarity on that point will inevitably be viewed as an
unwelcome ambiguity in this speech.
As a people, Americans are obsessed with metrics and far too
often tend to ignore or downplay context. Thus the hoped-for flexibility or
nuance of a conditions based approach will quickly be assaulted by demands for
definitions of what the conditions are, thereby making metrics out of
conditions. To paraphrase the original Clinton campaign, ‘it’s the context,
stupid!’ Afghanistan will not be fast or cost free. It never was going to be, and
yet, year after year, demands were made ‘to just get out’ regardless of the
facts on the ground/ Once a commitment was made, the battle of wills was
unleashed – it continues to be an arc described by both sides, the outcome of
which remains unknown. That will
frustrate many people, but that is the essential nature of war. As the American
Civil War reminded us just this past month, there is no end state, there is
only the ‘next-state’. The termination of hostilities does not terminate the
reinterpretation of identity, grievance, and justice.
The expansion of ‘Afghanistan’ the problem-set to include
India and Pakistan was an innovation from the ‘Af-Pak’ prism which was fatally
flawed due to its cultural ignorance, born of DoD Combatant Command (India was
in Pacific Command’s Area of Responsibility, Pakistan in CENTCOM’s). However
the new Administration would do well to acknowledge that ‘Afghanistan’ the
problem-set reaches much further in geography and significance. Iran, China,
Russia, and Saudi Arabia, all hot-topic countries in US foreign policy of late,
all have key interests in Afghanistan that in some cases rival India and
Pakistan. There was no evidence in the speech that the Administration is fully
cognizant of the many inter-related connections that only serve to complicate
defining the most effective solution. For example, given the new priority
placed on the ‘sum of all fears’ Pakistan scenario, why is it that the US has
not engaged regional actors in discussions of how such an eventuality might be
collectively managed. At a minimum some consideration of deconfliction is
essential in order to ensure that national response options do not
inadvertently lead to avoidable escalation and conflict. Reports of unfilled
positions across the national security system will only serve to exacerbate the
policy coordination process that is so vital in complex problems like
Afghanistan.
The safe haven issue is one this author has written about at
length elsewhere. Still, it is worth reminding readers that many safe havens
exist for radical Islamist terrorists. America has been conducting a long
covert war all around the world, from Yemen to the Philippines to Syria.
Afghanistan remains a safe haven to a certain degree but it is nowhere near as
attractive a base as Pakistan, for example. Until this statement, Pakistan was
the ultimate safe haven for jihad i’s. If the gloves have truly come off, and
the Administration will no longer be inhibited by sovereign boundaries, as was
suggested by the comment that “no place is beyond our reach” – then can this speech
be read as a soft declaration of war against Pakistan? America, for all its
power, cannot invade and occupy Pakistan – it’s simply too big geographically
and demographically.
From the jihad i’s perspective, Pakistan is the jewel in the
crown – an unstable majority Muslim state with an increasingly radicalized
military and, of course, nuclear weapons. Lots of nuclear weapons, including a
growing number of ‘small’ weapons that are highly mobile and thus hard to
control. The Pakistanis always respond with a hand-wave when questions are
raised about the security protocols surrounding their nuclear weapons. The
situation today is far improved from just a few short years ago, with
permissive action links, personnel screening, and other confidence-building measures.
These improvements have to be balanced against the fact that key military
installations have been subject to severe terrorist attacks, in some cases with
total loss of control of key bases for days. Consider how concerned US
policymakers are that Iran might gain nuclear weapons. Consider also the
lengths to which world powers are willing to go to prevent Iran from crossing
the Nthreshold. Pakistan is already there, has all sorts of political, social,
economic, and security problems, and yet it almost seems like no one really
cares, at least by comparison to the effort put into Iran. There is one group
that cares, the Pakistani Taliban and their fellow travelers. America is on the
right track towards a South Asia policy, but it still has a long way to go.
China and Pakistan are old friends. Islamabad is an observer
to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a fledgling alliance system
constructed along the lines of the PRC’s vast infrastructure projects that
cross central Asia into Europe. The Asian Development Bank and ring road
projects, are all mechanisms Beijing has quietly instituted to foster stability
in its supply lines and on its strategic flanks. Indeed, its activity in its
interior is possibly more important than its gradual creation of a string of
artificial armed islands in the SC Sea - a development that seemed to catch
America almost totally by surprise and which has matured to the point that any
effort to check its progress carries too high a risk of a shooting war between
China and America. China’s rise is not risk free for Pakistan. The Chinese
Communist Party is very sensitive to any insurrection or insurgent activity and
its western provinces bordering on Pakistan are a key source of the Uyghur
problem. To the extent that Pakistan is not doing enough on its side of the
border to police radical safe havens from which attacks or full-blown
insurgency might be launched against the PRC, Pakistan can expect no mercy in
Beijing’s response.
Afghanistan is home to considerable rare-earth mineral
deposits and pipeline opportunities, both of which are highly prized by the
Chinese. If President Trump really wanted to make a deal, he could do worse
than trading Afghanistan for concessions in the SC Sea or perhaps the Korean
peninsula. As things stand, President Xi of China seems to be saying all the
right things to President Trump, and delivering next to nothing. American
diplomacy will have to seriously up its game if it is going to get ahead of
Beijing. The key is a focus on what China holds most dear. As the above
suggests, there are opportunities aplenty to play the PRC around its periphery,
instead of being played by China. Some imagination and risk will be needed in
coming years to turn events to America’s advantage. Seeing Pakistan clearly and
setting clear boundaries for future relations is a very important first step.
Will President Trump turn out to be a modern Bismarck balancing Pakistan and
through it, China, or will his efforts to balance merely become a trigger
provoking an escalation that an overstretched America can ill afford to service
with military force alone.
