… This time it comes from veteran warmonger Fred Kagan and (imho, sadly) Brookings’s Michael O’Hanlon, writing in today’s NYT.
In a sense, the title of their op-ed says it all:
- Pakistan’s collapse, Our Problem
I beg your pardon? Wouldn’t a collapse of government power in Pakistan be in the first instance a massive problem for its own 160 million people?
No hint of that in the K&O’H text.
But also, no hint that a collapse of government power in Pakistan– a country that has a nuclear arsenal estimated to contain 24-48 HEU warheads and perhaps 3-5 plutonium warheads– would pose a massive challenge to everyone in the world. And most especially those sizeable and well-armed nations that are its neighbors. Like India. Like Russia. Like China. Not to mention Afghanistan and a host of other very vulnerable countries in that region…
The US homeland is, by contrast, located almost exactly on the other side of the world.
What on earth is it with the hubris of so many US “strategic analysts”? That they think that US is in some way “uniquely” threatened by developments in distant Pakistan? That those developments are therefore somehow “uniquely” a problem for the US. And therefore, that it is the US, alone, that needs to figure out how to “respond”?
K&O’H lead their piece thus:
- AS the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss. Nor would it be strategically prudent to withdraw our forces from an improving situation in Iraq to cope with a deteriorating one in Pakistan. We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that…
Then, as the piece unfolds, there is, I swear, not even a word of recognition that the possible loosening of the controls the Pakistani government may have (even if, who knows, imperfectly) on the country’s nuclear arsenal and production and research facilities could be a threat to anyone else except the US!
Similarly, there is no recognition that any other power, apart from the US, might be part of a pro-stability political-diplomatic process/solution in Pakistan. This, though the two authors go to great lengths to game-plan out various scenarios for– you guessed it– unilateral US military action aimed at securing, at the very least, Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.
Reading the piece, I was amazed and saddened to see the degree to which such authors– okay, well specifically, Michael O’Hanlon, whose expertise and judgment in military-strategic matters I had until recently held in quite a degree of respect– can just simply assume that the prospect of internal collapse is a problem only for the US.
And why would the op-ed page editors of the NYT publish a piece expressing such an amazingly Americo-myopic worldview? Wouldn’t a smart and informed editor insist on asking the question, “Hey guys, maybe you should put in something about a few other actors and not just the US?”
But no. Apparently, all of them now live inside this incredibly self-bounded, self-referential, and provincial little Americo-bubble whose inhabitants don’t even really grasp, let alone give any public acknowledgment of, the idea that there are many other countries and people in the world who all also have their own interests and capabilities… And that, indeed, on a world scale, the US makes up less than 5% of the world’s people, and has no valid claim whatsoever to act “on behalf of” the whole world community in a matter of truly global concern such as this one.
I guess 15-plus years of drumbeating rhetoric about US “leadership” in the world has left as an effect a lot of US people who think that the unexamined “fact” of US leadership gives the US an equally unexamined “right” to act on behalf of the world community whenever and wherever it pleases around the world.
Sad. And very, very shortsighted.
I guess I find O’Hanlon’s descent into this very childish kind of Americo-myopia particularly discouraging since, as I noted, until recently I saw him as much more realistic and objective an analyst than the sad old (or young-old) warmonger Fred Kagan.
So yes, we really do need to have a serious, globe-circling discussion of the very destabilizing situation that several decades of bad US policy– along with other factors– have brought both Afghanistan and Pakistan to today. But please, let that not be a discussion based on the childish, “me”-centered assumptions of Americo-myopia.
one would think that Pakistan was harboring Osama bin Laden the way they carry on about an “American problem”…
First: Why would you imagine that Osama Bin Laden is uniquely an American problem? (In my post, I was not denying that Pakistani instability is, in part, a problem for the US. I was contesting the assumption that it is a problem only— or indeed, mainly– for our country.)
Second: Most of the K&O’H article was not about OBL but about the fear of nuclear materials slipping out of their present degree of “control”. (Maybe I didn’t make that clear enough in the way I introduced their article.) The OBL/Qaeda angle is addressed as a subsidiary to that– and there are, of course, a number of other scary scenarios involving the Pakistani nuclear “crown jewels” that barely involve OBL/Q at all.
In general, though, your reaction seems like yet another, perhaps fear-induced, case of American self-referentialism?
Right on, cut away from Perverse Musharaf and his double games. Stop bribing a natural enemy into being a reluctant partner. Let’s align with India and whatever happens in Islamabad, Islamaworse, and Lawhore is their problem.
Helena,
The problem facing Musharf and Pakistan is the election and the return to democracy that for the last 8 years.
Here we have a leader holding the election/democracy on fails claims Helena, please don’t be like Musharf that these extremist are their ready to take hold of Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
While you fear about Pakistani nuclear issue, is a bit of scares and over reactionary here.
I can not believe that Pakistan and Pakistani military who control the nuclear arsenal simply welling to handed to terrorists as your fears.
Moreover there were many reports published before and after Afghanistan invasion talking that US were in control of Pakistani nuclear arsenal how much truth in those report I can not say.
In other side of the argument in regards to US and spreading democracy around the world and with your responses in one of your post that you put Hezbollah as ligaments partner in peace with Israel!
Its really puzzling that you discounting Lebanon as state and a country by saying that as if Hezbollah is the main player and he have all the rights to do what you think without concerning about the states.
Or the other US mess what’s happened in Iraq with the election that hold in a chaos environment, most of US writers and officials including you credit that election and that outcome.
There’s been an interesting falling out of allies, it looks like.
Neither “Salah” nor Dr. Cobban has any use for O’Hanlon-Kaganism, yet they do not appear to agree at all about what system they’d prefer to have instead. Once out from under the thumb of Brookings and AEI and GOP, shall Mankind boldly move forward to a world in which everybody from China to Peru gets to flavour everybody else’s political soup whenever he likes, or shall we retreat to a narrow and legalistic Old Euro statism that would leave the fate of Pakistans and Lebanons 99.9% up to mere Pakistanis and Lebanese?
Please stay tuned.
That some strong cool aid they are drinking, either that or they are nuts. Maybe it is just another psy-ops piece to keep Americans afraid and further condition us so we know that only military force can keep us safe. Hint: keep them pocket books open for the 2008 Defense Budget and the 200 million supplemental.
Or perhaps we are trying to tempt the Islamic extremists to attack us again by threatening force and/or a foreign occupation in a Sunni Muslim land. Wasn’t that what triggered 9/11?. Either way, you know it will lead up to someone finally calling for the draft so we can do all what the war-mongers wished we had the capability to do.
Maybe we are just at the end of our empire, acting like a wounded bear and striking at or threatening anyone and everyone to stay alive, not knowing the end is a foregone conclusion.
Lets face it, we produce nothing but weapons and consume most of the world resources while drowning ourselves in debt. If we shut down our military, homeland security and weapons industries we would lose 40% of our GDP, so we fight wars and export weapons to keep the economy going, but our appetite for military conflict keeps growing to feed our ravenous military industrial complex and their bankers, so we need more wars, and for more wars we need more enemies. If we don’t have enough enemies, we are good at making them.
We think we won the Cold War, yet it seems it is just taking us a little longer for us to collapse than the Soviet Union. The end may be near though, no doubt. China is looking on with glee as they loan us the money to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the bright side, looks like Iran is off the table for now. Or perhaps Pakistan is just a diversion and Iran is still on the table. Who knows. Maybe we do both. It’s all madness. Maybe it’s a bad virus going around, or all of the above.
PFT,
More fear mongering news from your homeland read this bit:
KOLD News 13 is the only news outlet to obtain this FBI urgent report outlining a possible terrorist threat right here in southern Arizona. It speaks specifically to Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista.
The document gives no timetable or explanation of how the threat will be carried out. But does say, “a group of Iraqis may have entered the United States through tunnels from Mexico into Arizona,” and those same “Iraqis are believed to be the ones who will perpetrate the attack on Fort Huachuca.”
Lt. Colonel Matthew Garner of the United States Army says, “The military is always a target, I believe.”
For security purposes, Lt. Col. Garner wouldn’t tell us what’s been done or what’s being done to stop the threat. But he did say the U.S. Government takes this very seriously.
And that Fort Huachuca is fully aware and prepared for anything that comes its way.
Southern Arizona Security Alert
Posted: Nov 16, 2007 05:35 PM
While the very predictable events in Pakistan grab our attention, here is a very well-articulated and poignant plea from Paul Salem of the Carnegie Endowment (which I have used to lobby several officials)…
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=19714&prog=zgp&proj=zme
And these guys are prestige scholars. They do not come close to understanding some of the more important causes of behind a threat of Al Qaeda or the Taliban seizing Pakistan’s nukes.
They are “automatic Americans” that assume if we bolster the Pakistani military, then the job is done—–issue closed. If we send in the Special Forces, the job is as good as done. It’s the same kind of shallow thinking that comes from many other scholars and places like the International Crisis Group. They think that if only Afghanistan and Pakistan could build institutions and maintain the rule of law, then they would solve their security/stability issues. They should be like us. All of them are living in a fairy-tale land.
In reality, many parts of the Pakistan military have had a long business relationship and political relationship with the Taliban. According to some reliable scholars, the Pakistan military officers currently operate more than 20 billion dollars worth of a network of businesses throughout Pakistan. What’s more, I have talked to Afghan refugees that described in great detail how the Pakistan military collaborated with the Taliban to operate a wide network of businesses in territories that the Taliban controlled. Now, Barnett Rubin and UN reports describe in great detail how southern Afghanistan’s economy is largely dependent upon poppy production and upon the economy that is intertwined with poppy production.
Is there any doubt that the Pakistan military collaborates in this massive enterprise, and that their investment capacity depends at least partly upon the poppy economy?
Which forces have the greater control over the Pakistan military——the poppy economy or the government institutions?
In this complex world, does the U.S. have the capacity to encourage or cause a major shift in the economy and a shift in the vast networks of Taliban and Pakistani military business operations?
China evidently has considerable influence with the Pakistan government. Probably, since their military operates in a similar fashion, they know how to reach agreements and make deals in Pakistan. The U.S. is so culturally isolated that we only express contempt for a different style (culture) of politics and business collaboration. We don’t make the effort to learn how to manage our interests.
Bob Spencer