AWAKENING FROM U.S. STUPOR
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
By Shireen Mazari
To find Pakistanis still surprised over negative US behaviour towards Pakistan is by now a trifle irritating since there has been a clear pattern to this behaviour over the decades. Very briefly, the US relationship with Pakistan is a cyclical one on which the US engages with Pakistan whenever it has regional compulsions to do so -- rather than an innate interest in Pakistan itself. It was the communist bogey in the fifties and sixties; the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in the late seventies and eighties; and, of course, the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT) post-9/11. In between these interludes, Pakistan has either seen a total absence of US interest or at best a negative interest in terms of its nuclear programme in the form of sanctions. As for the interludes of cooperation, they have always followed a four-year cyclical pattern, beginning with an intensely positive interaction to a more critical and intrusive one on the part of the US and finally the cycle comes full circle with a growing estrangement and divergence of interests especially on the part of the US. This pattern is dependent not only on the ground situation in the region, but also on US domestic politics, including both Congressional and Presidential elections. At present, we are nearing the completion of the prevailing cycle and should expect a growing adversarial relationship with the US -- regardless of the outcome of the next US presidential elections.
Why have we not been able to break out of this cyclical pattern? Partly because US interest in us has been linked to its strategic interests in the region; but also because we do not have strategic interests in common. In fact, what Pakistan has to accept is that its strategic interests are directly opposed to some of the primary US strategic interests relating to this region -- apart from the post-9/11 US design to restructure the Muslim World or Greater Middle East, details of which were discussed in this column last week.
In terms of Pakistan's strategic interests, its relationship with China is critical and we would wish to see an increasing Chinese presence, involvement and influence in this region, including the development of an economic and energy corridor from the Gulf to China. This would require development and stabilisation of the country from Balochistan to the NWFP. The US, on the other hand, would prefer to see a contained Chinese influence.
Again, we would like to see a greater level of interaction and cooperation with Iran, including opening up of the economic potential of Balochistan which would inevitably provide Iran greater economic access eastwards -- at a time when the US is seeking to isolate Iran. As for India, while we are seeking a better relationship with our eastern neighbour, we would always seek to balance India regionally rather than bandwagon with it -- in terms of accepting its hegemony. The US, on the other hand, sees India as a regional power manager and has sought to push for Indian hegemony including through the de-linking of the Indian nuclear programme from the Pakistani one. The US has broken its international non-proliferation commitments, including under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (Articles I and III:2), to give recognition to India's nuclear weapon status and accommodate its nuclear material demands through the Indo-US "civilian" nuclear agreement.
Even on the GWOT, while Pakistan has a commitment to fight terrorism because of its own internal terrorist and extremist threats, the military-centric approach of the US has only succeeded in creating more operational space for the terrorists across the globe. Additionally, US statements berating and threatening Pakistan and actual violations of Pakistani sovereignty by US and NATO forces, have all aggravated Pakistan's terrorist threat and the state's efforts to deal with it.
So, all in all, Pakistan and the US have divergent strategic visions and goals. This means that while there can be issue-specific cooperation with clear and transparent quid pro quos, Pakistan has to learn to resist the temptation to open itself up completely to US intrusions. If we are clear on these divergences, we will not be taken by surprise every time the US moves into a negative mode against us. At the end of the day, the US would like to see a weak Pakistani client state unable to assert its rightful place in the region and within the Muslim World -- and a state with a rolled back if not totally renounced nuclear status. Certainly, a robust and credible nuclear Pakistan does not sit comfortable with the US.
That is why the debilitating section on Pakistan in the Bill on the Implementation of the 9/11 Commission Recommendations should not have come as a surprise especially since it was in the Congress since early this year. Yet we are only now hearing of the Foreign Office taking up the contents relating to Pakistan with the US Administration. In January 2007, in these columns, I had pointed out the excessively intrusive conditionalities that were contained in the Pakistan section of the Bill, but officialdom seemed unconcerned at that time. Pressler was nothing compared to the conditionalities requiring Presidential certification under this Bill which Bush is expected to sign into law very soon. It is not just nuclear proliferation or democracy or the war on terror that are issues to be used as pressure points for Pakistan. Included in the conditionalities is also a requirement to certify that the Pakistani state is setting up secular public schools -- which in US definitional terms means no religious instruction at all. Is it not time for some reciprocal negative moves on our part in terms of access denial and so on to the US within Pakistan? Are we aware of the long term consequences of even innocuous moves like the US offering "exchange" visits for impressionable Pakistani high school students to the US where they spend a year with an American family? Have we seen the impact on perceptions of these children after they return? Of course exchange programmes are good for furthering understanding, but an exchange implies two-way traffic and we have not heard of US students coming to Pakistan to spend a year with a Pakistani family -- so where is the element of exchange? Has anyone raised this issue officially with the US? Also, are we so fearful of the Marines marching in or is there a psychological confidence deficit that is paralysing us from responding to the political blackmail from the US?
We have too many of our own issues now and we need to focus on them and seek indigenous remedies for dealing with the threat from extremists and terrorists -- keeping in mind also the historic Mullah-US alliance. Just as we must be clear as to whom amongst our nation threaten the very ideals of Jinnah on which Pakistan was created, we must also be ready to accept an uncomfortable reality that in the long term our strategic goals differ innately from US strategic goals in this region. To have them impact our external strategic imperatives is to undermine regional stability and our international potential in the region; to have them broker the domestic political architecture is akin to national suicide.
(The writer is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. Email: smnews80@hotmail.com)
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