Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Trump Puts Pakistan on Notice

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.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The Real Coup Plot Is Trump’s

MI has not posted other content before. However, the essay linked below explains what MI refers to as 'American Self-Propagandizing'...