pkpatriotic
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Our quest for US favour
Zafar Hilaly - Former ambassador
Perennially concerned about its security Pakistan has tried to make up for what it lacks in muscle by forging alliances with the US and despite the lack of success it has persisted. While the world may have changed our foreign policy has not. A legacy of the fifties such a mindset, rather like the dead hand of the past, continues to cast its pall over the efforts of present day policymakers and sadly has smothered fresh thinking, stunted initiative, vitiated debate and worse, prevented a realignment of our posture that is urgently needed.
Our unending quest for American favour is no longer merely an innocuous albeit tiresome pastime. It distracts and blurs reality; like a neurosis it misdirects energies and the irony is that even if we were to succeed, success would be worse than failure because post 9/11 America has set as its primary goal the containment of Chinese, Iranian and Russian influence in our region. Hence, a strategic/military alliance with the US would pit our interests against those of China, Iran and Russia leading to a perpetual state of military tension on both our eastern and western borders, surely an untenable and unsustainable proposition politically, militarily and in every other respect.
The fact that the United States will not underwrite Pakistan's security and certainly not against India, which in plain terms is what we seek, has never been fully accepted here. Or, that regardless of the concessions that we may offer, India will remain the western favourite. It escapes us that the US needs India to supplement its power in Asia and that none of its other Asian allies can provide it the additional strength that India can; and that India's political ambitions, military potential and location ensures a supportive Indian role against China. Instead of engaging China directly, current US strategy envisages an American prop behind its Asian allies to enable them to stand up to China. It is a policy that allows for a reduction in US military spending (by cutting large and expensive naval forces) at a time when defence spending has reached proportions that an increasingly impecunious US economy finds difficult to sustain or justify. (The Iraq war alone over a seven year period has cost more than $800 billion.)
In any case India, which is an established democracy, a rising economic power, a huge market for western manufactures, including weapons and nuclear plants in which America excels, will always have a far greater importance in the western scheme of things for the Asian region than any other country, what to speak of terror-ridden, poorly governed, fractious and bankrupt Pakistan. Even our large military is of limited utility to the US because the west does not view India as a threat to regional peace and security nor a power whose ambitions, for the moment at least, need to be curbed by a hostile force on its borders. In the circumstances Pakistan's claim to US attention lies not in our strengths but rather our weaknesses which, the US believes, unless carefully watched and tended will become a black hole for terrorists.
There is at best only a cameo role for Pakistan in western plans for future Asian security. If we matter at all, it is really only as a spoiler for their plan of a pro-western, friendly and peaceful Asia. It follows, therefore, that whereas a pliant Pakistan is acceptable, a defiant Pakistan will not be, not for long anyhow. Talk of a 'post-Pakistan scenario' and maps circulating of a Pakistan divided into several independent states that have been doing the rounds have hinted at this for some time now. They should concern us less for what they depict as the new map of the region and more for the strain of thinking that they reveal. So too the wagers, that some western analysts are privately willing to make, that in two years time the American military will be undertaking large operations inside Pakistan ostensibly to clear the 'safe havens' of the Taliban.
The Pakistani public senses the danger. They realise that the importance Pakistan possesses for the west is scant and ephemeral; they know that such attention that we attract is really for the wrong reasons. But they wonder why their leaders don't see it even though they have conveyed in poll after poll, and on the streets, that Islamabad is on the wrong track. Nothing, it seems, neither American generosity nor plaudits has made a difference to the public perception that America is no friend of Pakistan. Their anti-American posture has remained remarkably consistent and the message they send is clear enough.
This has understandably worried the Americans. The emphasis on public diplomacy has been ramped up. 200 Pakistani journalists are to go to America to learn about the subject. Unfortunately it will make not the slightest dent in America's unpopularity in the polls. The public sentiment about America, like the establishment's sentiment about India, is doomed to remain unchanged. Obama's recent call to Mr Zardari informing him of his intention to visit Pakistan next year was like calling a jilted lover to reassure him that he remains in one's thoughts as one leaves for the home of the new bride.
Nevertheless, the case for a fundamental review of our policy towards the US does not arise from a revolt against western values, the public dislike for America or western plans for future Asian security, indeed if all of them were absent it would still be necessary. And the reason is the shift that is underway in global power.
America's dominance of the global financial system, the lynch pin of its global power, is ending. The figures speak for themselves. China with over $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, growing at a rate of $40 billion a month, now holds the key to the financing of the astronomical budget that the US will need to bail out its financial institutions. Like any creditor China will increasingly call the tune to which the debtor traditionally has to dance.
But again, it is not merely the China factor or that China is growing fast and its reserves exploding that could prove the undoing of the US. The US is now finding it difficult to generate resources to finance its expenditure, whether for the military or its ballooning medicare and social security costs, as its society ages and is weighed down by a large class of the unemployed.
Reports of the death of American capitalism are exaggerated but there is little doubt that the financial meltdown means a likely end to America's superpower status in what was described as a unipolar world. As The Economist noted: ' An America that is bleeding economically at home with unemployment stuck at nearly 10 per cent and debts as tall as the eye can see is losing confidence in its ability and perhaps in its need to shape events in far-flung regions such as Central Asia and the Middle East'.
Actually, not quite so; US ability has certainly been hobbled by its economic woes but the desire to continue to shape events has not cooled. America wants to do all that it did, the difference today is that it realises it cannot any longer do so alone. Hence Obama's current perambulation, which includes visits to Indonesia and Japan, apart from India, reflects the US desire to shore up its role by forging meaningful strategic partnerships, if no longer as the sole, then as the near paramount power.
However a fast emerging world marked by multipolarity as well as a complex mix of interconnected issues makes even this a difficult task because it has restricted the value of traditional military power, in which the US continues to excel. Besides, who can forget that the Soviet Union's wonderful battlements did not prevent its eventual collapse or, prior to that, its defeat in Afghanistan.
The writer is a former ambassador.
Zafar Hilaly - Former ambassador
Perennially concerned about its security Pakistan has tried to make up for what it lacks in muscle by forging alliances with the US and despite the lack of success it has persisted. While the world may have changed our foreign policy has not. A legacy of the fifties such a mindset, rather like the dead hand of the past, continues to cast its pall over the efforts of present day policymakers and sadly has smothered fresh thinking, stunted initiative, vitiated debate and worse, prevented a realignment of our posture that is urgently needed.
Our unending quest for American favour is no longer merely an innocuous albeit tiresome pastime. It distracts and blurs reality; like a neurosis it misdirects energies and the irony is that even if we were to succeed, success would be worse than failure because post 9/11 America has set as its primary goal the containment of Chinese, Iranian and Russian influence in our region. Hence, a strategic/military alliance with the US would pit our interests against those of China, Iran and Russia leading to a perpetual state of military tension on both our eastern and western borders, surely an untenable and unsustainable proposition politically, militarily and in every other respect.
The fact that the United States will not underwrite Pakistan's security and certainly not against India, which in plain terms is what we seek, has never been fully accepted here. Or, that regardless of the concessions that we may offer, India will remain the western favourite. It escapes us that the US needs India to supplement its power in Asia and that none of its other Asian allies can provide it the additional strength that India can; and that India's political ambitions, military potential and location ensures a supportive Indian role against China. Instead of engaging China directly, current US strategy envisages an American prop behind its Asian allies to enable them to stand up to China. It is a policy that allows for a reduction in US military spending (by cutting large and expensive naval forces) at a time when defence spending has reached proportions that an increasingly impecunious US economy finds difficult to sustain or justify. (The Iraq war alone over a seven year period has cost more than $800 billion.)
In any case India, which is an established democracy, a rising economic power, a huge market for western manufactures, including weapons and nuclear plants in which America excels, will always have a far greater importance in the western scheme of things for the Asian region than any other country, what to speak of terror-ridden, poorly governed, fractious and bankrupt Pakistan. Even our large military is of limited utility to the US because the west does not view India as a threat to regional peace and security nor a power whose ambitions, for the moment at least, need to be curbed by a hostile force on its borders. In the circumstances Pakistan's claim to US attention lies not in our strengths but rather our weaknesses which, the US believes, unless carefully watched and tended will become a black hole for terrorists.
There is at best only a cameo role for Pakistan in western plans for future Asian security. If we matter at all, it is really only as a spoiler for their plan of a pro-western, friendly and peaceful Asia. It follows, therefore, that whereas a pliant Pakistan is acceptable, a defiant Pakistan will not be, not for long anyhow. Talk of a 'post-Pakistan scenario' and maps circulating of a Pakistan divided into several independent states that have been doing the rounds have hinted at this for some time now. They should concern us less for what they depict as the new map of the region and more for the strain of thinking that they reveal. So too the wagers, that some western analysts are privately willing to make, that in two years time the American military will be undertaking large operations inside Pakistan ostensibly to clear the 'safe havens' of the Taliban.
The Pakistani public senses the danger. They realise that the importance Pakistan possesses for the west is scant and ephemeral; they know that such attention that we attract is really for the wrong reasons. But they wonder why their leaders don't see it even though they have conveyed in poll after poll, and on the streets, that Islamabad is on the wrong track. Nothing, it seems, neither American generosity nor plaudits has made a difference to the public perception that America is no friend of Pakistan. Their anti-American posture has remained remarkably consistent and the message they send is clear enough.
This has understandably worried the Americans. The emphasis on public diplomacy has been ramped up. 200 Pakistani journalists are to go to America to learn about the subject. Unfortunately it will make not the slightest dent in America's unpopularity in the polls. The public sentiment about America, like the establishment's sentiment about India, is doomed to remain unchanged. Obama's recent call to Mr Zardari informing him of his intention to visit Pakistan next year was like calling a jilted lover to reassure him that he remains in one's thoughts as one leaves for the home of the new bride.
Nevertheless, the case for a fundamental review of our policy towards the US does not arise from a revolt against western values, the public dislike for America or western plans for future Asian security, indeed if all of them were absent it would still be necessary. And the reason is the shift that is underway in global power.
America's dominance of the global financial system, the lynch pin of its global power, is ending. The figures speak for themselves. China with over $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, growing at a rate of $40 billion a month, now holds the key to the financing of the astronomical budget that the US will need to bail out its financial institutions. Like any creditor China will increasingly call the tune to which the debtor traditionally has to dance.
But again, it is not merely the China factor or that China is growing fast and its reserves exploding that could prove the undoing of the US. The US is now finding it difficult to generate resources to finance its expenditure, whether for the military or its ballooning medicare and social security costs, as its society ages and is weighed down by a large class of the unemployed.
Reports of the death of American capitalism are exaggerated but there is little doubt that the financial meltdown means a likely end to America's superpower status in what was described as a unipolar world. As The Economist noted: ' An America that is bleeding economically at home with unemployment stuck at nearly 10 per cent and debts as tall as the eye can see is losing confidence in its ability and perhaps in its need to shape events in far-flung regions such as Central Asia and the Middle East'.
Actually, not quite so; US ability has certainly been hobbled by its economic woes but the desire to continue to shape events has not cooled. America wants to do all that it did, the difference today is that it realises it cannot any longer do so alone. Hence Obama's current perambulation, which includes visits to Indonesia and Japan, apart from India, reflects the US desire to shore up its role by forging meaningful strategic partnerships, if no longer as the sole, then as the near paramount power.
However a fast emerging world marked by multipolarity as well as a complex mix of interconnected issues makes even this a difficult task because it has restricted the value of traditional military power, in which the US continues to excel. Besides, who can forget that the Soviet Union's wonderful battlements did not prevent its eventual collapse or, prior to that, its defeat in Afghanistan.
The writer is a former ambassador.
