Quote of the week:
“We will insist that Pakistan take decisive action against militant and terrorist groups operating from its soil.”
–Trump Administration’s “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” December 2017
Another rupture, another sense of betrayal. U.S.-Pakistan relations have once again reached a low point with the Trump administration’s decision to withhold most funding for military assistance. This announcement has generated even deeper antagonism toward the United States within Pakistan, where the consensus view is that Pakistan is being scapegoated for Washington’s difficulties in Afghanistan. Within the United States, the consensus view holds that Pakistan has been playing a double game – accepting U.S. counter-terrorism funding while supporting the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network – for long enough.
Is this rift more significant than before, and is it repairable? My short answers to these questions are ‘yes,’ and that repair is unlikely until there is a major shift in either Pakistani or U.S. policies or until another jolt on the subcontinent or elsewhere mandates policy change. Absent changes in policy toward Afghanistan – which means changed conceptions of acceptable outcomes – in one or both countries, the quagmire will continue and losses in blood, treasure, and international standing will mount.
The recurrence of diplomatic ruptures, like dread diseases, takes a cumulative toll. Every rupture makes it harder to generate the political support needed to undertake repair work. The last U.S. initiative for a new start in bilateral relations was the 2009 Kerry-Lugar-Berman initiative. This initiative gained traction because Washington wanted to help in the transition from a military- to a civilian-led government. Before that, Washington agreed to lift sanctions imposed after the 1990 Pressler Amendment and the 1998 nuclear tests because of the 9/11 attacks. Washington suddenly needed Pakistan’s help to take on al Qaeda and was willing to pay for that help. Pakistan needed help to remove the stain for backing the Taliban which gave Osama bin Laden shelter and to avoid the down-side risks of rejecting the Bush administration’s not-so-veiled threats.
According to the apolitical Congressional Research Service, since 2001, the U.S. Congress appropriated $19 billion in non-military assistance to Pakistan, of which $15 billion was disbursed. In addition, the Congress appropriated $14.6 billion in military assistance. These sums are considered generous in the United States, but not in Pakistan, which claims it has spent over $120 billion countering domestic terrorism. Pakistan’s sacrifices and successes in countering groups like the Pakistan Taliban are appreciated in the United States, but credit is discounted because these groups were unwisely nurtured before they became a threat to Pakistani sovereignty.
This latest rupture in U.S.-Pakistan ties was preceded by numerous warnings, including by this author, that Pakistan’s national-security policies placed it on a collision course with changing U.S. attitudes. Initially, Pakistan gained credit by joining the United States in taking down al Qaeda leaders soon after the 9/11 attacks. However, Pakistan began to lose U.S. support after these initial collaborative successes when its decision makers turned their primary focus on securing equities in Afghanistan and blocking Indian inroads there. The presence of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad and his killing by U.S. Special Forces created large trust deficits that grew with subsequent incidents.
At the official level, Pakistani frustrations were muffled by the desire to avoid a complete rift and by the influx of fungible U.S. military assistance, which equaled one-eighth of the Pakistan military’s public budget. American frustrations were muffled by a dependence on Pakistan’s logistical support for its significant troop presence in Afghanistan and other important agenda items, including helping Pakistan’s armed forces when they belatedly turned against the Pakistan Taliban.
Even so, the writing was on the wall when, ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Admiral Mike Mullen, who worked assiduously to alter Pakistan’s Afghan policy during his tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly acknowledged failure at a Congressional hearing. “The Haqqani Network,” he concluded, “acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” This was an oversimplification, but hardly anyone was in the mood to offer qualifications.
For the remaining five years of the Obama administration, U.S. officials struggled to convince Pakistan to take specified, observable steps to demonstrate a changed approach toward the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqanis. These efforts, like those before, came aground because of fundamental differences over who should wield real power in Afghanistan’s future. (Power-sharing not having a great track record in Kabul.) As the Obama administration struggled to make headway, an increasingly frustrated Congress, tired of Pakistan’s tactics and messaging, weighed in. Influenced by pro-India legislators and Pakistan bashers, Capitol Hill proposed that the executive branch impose penalties to withhold funding for military assistance. At this point, there were no compelling reasons for business as usual with respect to Coalition Support Funding.
Great care is now needed to avoid transitioning from rupturing to worst case scenarios. Donald Trump is as averse to diplomatic nuance as Barack Obama was inclined towards it. Those with expertise and influence surrounding Trump on this matter are deeply invested in a favorable Afghan outcome. U.S. policies were not succeeding, so penalties have become greater. This step is likely to make a favorable outcome more remote since Pakistan’s decision makers will lose face by changing course after Trump’s public dictation. As with Pakistan’s response to the demands of the Bush administration after 9/11, smart bettors will place their chips on tactical adjustments rather than strategic recalculation.
Joseph Nye, a Harvard-based academic who coined the term “soft power,” writes, “Power sometimes depends on whose army or economy wins, but it can also depend on whose story wins.” Neither the United States nor Pakistan has a winning formula for Afghanistan. Despite its military and economic might, the United States cannot succeed in Afghanistan unless others have the will and capacity to help. Pakistan’s current formula is alienating Afghans and its story – partially true, partially untrue – doesn’t help advance its cause.
When two unsuccessful strategies lock horns, the deciding factor can be the passage of time. Rawalpindi can play a long game, however unwise, counting on Washington’s likely inability to do so. Steve Coll unearthed a pertinent quote in researching his extraordinary book, Ghost Wars. The speaker was Yuri Andropov, the head of the Soviet KGB and a powerhouse in the Politburo. The occasion was the beginning of the jihad against the Kremlin-backed Afghan government – an uprising in Herat in 1979, followed by the city’s indiscriminate bombing by Russian pilots. “We will be labeled as an aggressor,” Andropov told his comrades, “but in spite of that, under no circumstances can we lose Afghanistan.”
Pakistani and American policy is no doubt motivated by the same sentiment. Why does a land-locked, impoverished country, the place where military campaigns of grand conquest in antiquity got bogged down, a land that continues to teach the same brutal lessons to nuclear-armed states, a stepping-stone to nowhere amidst perpetual factionalism and ingrained corruption, still hold “deciders” in Washington and Pakistan in its grip? The fear of losing, not the anticipation of significant gains, drives policy.
Note to readers: This essay appeared at the website of the Herald, a Pakistani website and monthly, on January 15th.