Still, totalitarian regimes are out there, in various forms, abusing their own People and also others (like North Korea kidnapping Japanese citizens). They abound. We can deal with them or ignore them.
This short extract from the Night Watch report for the night of 9 May 2011 points out why working with such regimes is of value.
The US relationship with Pakistan has shallow roots for another reason. An entire generation of Pakistani military officers have received no training in US military schools and courses because International Military Education and Training (IMET) was cut off in 1990. Chinese military authorities know more about the next generation of Pakistani military leaders than the US.So, we give the cold shoulder to Pakistan and they turn elsewhere and we miss the opportunity to learn about our nuclear armed "neighbors" in an increasingly shrinking world.
The Night Watch report goes on to make the case for engagement with Pakistan.
Long after the US withdraws soldiers from Afghanistan, Pakistan will be important to the US because it has nuclear weapons that can be used against India and proliferated to Arab states. Secondly, it has close security relations with China that are not congruent with US interests in South Asia and the Middle East.I think this makes some sense. As for the nuclear war possibility, the really scary thing is not millions of people dying. The really scary thing is that at the end of the day the Earth's human population would change about 1% and the world might conclude that nuclear weapons really were OK to use. Remember, in World War Two some 60 million people died, and we didn't give up war after than conflict. At that time the world population was about 2.3 billion and today it is closer to 6.5 billion.
The long term interests seem to outweigh the short term interests in doing more to control terrorists. Terrorists do damage, but nothing remotely comparable, yet, to the inescapable consequences of a potential nuclear war between Pakistan and India. Without exaggeration, millions of people would die in such a nuclear exchange, the first between two less developed nations.
In the unavoidable tradeoffs between US tactical and strategic interests, one way out would be to tolerate Pakistani shortcomings on terrorism while focusing on maintaining the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons; on supporting a secular, elected government in Islamabad; on preventing nuclear war in South Asia, and on limiting the expansion of Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean region …with the proviso that whenever the US finds anti-US terrorists in Pakistan, it will kill them without permission, warning or apology. There is no need to turn up the heat on Pakistan; just continue doing what best serves the interests of a great power, going forward.
But, to our foreign policy, President George Washington set the tone described above:
Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it?Let's not get all worked up about Pakistan and Osama bin Laden. It is possible they didn't know. It is possible that some small faction inside their Intelligence Apparatus knew and wasn't telling anyone. We have our justice. We should now let it go. There are bigger fish to fry and this will soon recede into memory, but the future stretches before us.
. . .
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.
Regards — Cliff
GW is my favorite founding father. Can't help but read his second offered paragraph and think of our repeated indulgences of Israel contrasted against our animosity towards countries like Pakistan and Iran.
ReplyDeleteSo I am gathering that the posit here is that we need to send money to and invite totalitarian regimes to attend our professional military programs so that we can know them better? I wonder why we never thought of that with the USSR? We should have invited the Russian high command to send their up and coming officers to our War Colleges so we could get to know them better.
ReplyDeleteOf course, given the billions we have already poured into Pakistan's pockets since the mid-70's, even to including having some of their military come to the US on various programs, I would have thought we would know them pretty well by now.
We are like the kid going to school through a tough neighborhood and paying the local thugs "protection" money in exchange for "safe" passage. That we are 6 feet tall and 250 lbs wearing pistols, and they are 5 feet tall, 100 lbs never occurred to us. Oh...but they have nuclear weapons and we need to be nice to them so they won't use them on India or combine them with those of the Chinese. Right. And what guarantee do we have that they won't anyway. They will go with whoever meets their instant needs. Its called extortion.
What we should have done.......way back when we had teeth.....is to tell them that if they ever even think of using their capability offensively against us or an ally, out of nowhere will arrive more nuclear firepower than they ever dreamed existed. You can't counter a bully with platitudes and candy.
Of course they were providing protection for OBL. To think otherwise is to suggest that their government is in much more dysfunction than even the most astute of the American intelligentsia ever imagined...and that is scarier than them having "the bomb."
We need to quit running the Middle East....withdraw to our own puddle...and try valiantly to solve our own plentiful problems.
The great surprise for America isn't that Obama's world friendship tour has gained us so much love and friendship, but that it has gained us total disregard. We don't matter, even if our money does.