Book Review - Wall Street Journal

[johnkarls]

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Wall Street Journal – 11/13/2013

Book Review: “Magnificent Delusions” by Husain Haqqani and “No Exit From Pakistan” by Daniel Markey [In 2011, Washington Threatened To Disclose Pakistan’s Role In Hiding Bin Laden Unless Islamabad Stanched Its Anti-U.S. Rhetoric]
Book Review By Mark Moyar – Prolific Author; Director of Research – Orbis Operations since July 2010; formerly Marine Corps University Professor of Insurgency and Terrorism; BA in History (Summa Cum Laude), Harvard U.; PhD in History, Cambridge U.

Soon after Navy SEALs dispatched Osama bin Laden —in a compound near Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011—Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, was summoned to the White House to discuss the anti-American rhetoric pouring out of his country. Douglas Lute, the administration's point man on Pakistan, informed Mr. Haqqani that Pakistan and the U.S. had come to the latest of the "forks in their relationship." Pakistan, Mr. Lute said, would have to choose between the path that led to partnership and the path that led to isolation.

Mr. Lute mentioned that the SEALs had retrieved a "treasure trove of material" at the Abbottabad compound, some of which concerned Pakistan's role in hiding bin Laden. If the anti-American vitriol didn't subside, Mr. Lute warned, the administration could publish the incriminating information. Then the U.S. public and Congress would demand "measures that may go well beyond the past pattern of only cutting off aid."

This account, from Mr. Haqqani's "Magnificent Delusions," adds credence to the popular theory that Pakistan's leaders knew bin Laden was at Abbottabad and the less common theory that the White House has withheld the proof. One might well ask whether the U.S. government should have shared the information with the American public immediately and why it still hasn't shared it, given that Pakistan didn't take the partnership path.

Mr. Haqqani, now a professor of international relations at Boston University, doesn't delve into such questions. His purpose isn't to narrate his service as ambassador or score political points but to outline the contours of American relations with Pakistan over time, with a final chapter depicting the 2011 collapse as a new instance of historical trends. While one might desire a fuller accounting of his ambassadorship, the book covers its chosen ground superbly.

By happenstance, Daniel Markey, a former State Department policy planner, has also produced a book on the same subject, "No Exit From Pakistan," making for an interesting comparison of American and Pakistani perspectives. Mr. Haqqani, in contrast to Pakistani leaders who view their country as a blameless victim of Indian and American conniving, sees Pakistan with an objective detachment comparable with Mr. Markey's. Indeed, Mr. Haqqani excoriates Pakistani elites for their "self-defeating" belief in an "Islamo-nationalist ideology" that ignores domestic faults and international realities.

Messrs. Haqqani and Markey both chronicle U.S.-Pakistani relations from Pakistan's birth in 1947 onward, and both identify recurring patterns. Pakistani strategists have consistently focused on extracting resources from the U.S. to compete militarily with India. Washington has made plain that its aid shouldn't be used to fund such competition, inducing the Pakistanis to couch aid requests as fulfillments of America's strategic needs.

During the early Cold War, when America sought anticommunist allies, the Pakistanis espoused anticommunism in their entreaties. Hoodwinked, the Eisenhower administration gave Pakistan aid in return for its participation in anticommunist alliances. Not until a decade later did it become clear that the Pakistanis wouldn't live up to their commitments and were using the aid solely to prepare for war with India.

After the 9/11 attacks, Pakistani leaders declared themselves full supporters of U.S. counterterrorism policy and vowed to help Washington counter al Qaeda and other extremist groups in exchange for aid. The Pakistanis did help the CIA apprehend hundreds of al Qaeda members. But they also protected terrorists deemed crucial to their interests in India and Afghanistan.

Had the Americans been more familiar with the history of Pakistan, Mr. Haqqani asserts, they would have expected Pakistan to put its interests before its promises. The U.S. could then have crafted more realistic strategies and avoided the tensions arising from breaches of trust.

The most recent example of misinformed overreach, Messrs. Haqqani and Markey explain, was the Obama administration's effort to build a "strategic partnership" with Pakistan. In 2009, President Obama's special envoy to the region, the late Richard Holbrooke, persuaded Congress to triple nonmilitary aid and condition military aid on civilian control of Pakistan's armed forces. But the Pakistanis resented the conditions and kept supporting extremists who served their interests.

Messrs. Haqqani and Markey note that the Obama administration could have persuaded Pakistan to abandon those extremists by changing the strategic landscape. Had the U.S. used the Afghanistan surge to demonstrate a long-term commitment to the region, it could have assured the Pakistanis that they needn't fear Indian domination of Afghanistan, making Afghan insurgents less than vital to Pakistan's interests. America's eagerness to announce "the timeline for military departure from the outset," Mr. Markey observes, was "a crucial blunder."

The two authors agree that a close U.S.-Pakistan partnership is unattainable at the moment. But both authors advise Washington against turning its back on Pakistan and treating it like an enemy. A complete break would deprive the U.S. of the remaining Pakistani cooperation on counterterrorism and counterproliferation, and Pakistan's anti-Americanism could diminish over the long term. Neither author, however, is optimistic. The U.S. squandered its opportunity to alter Pakistan's calculus when it made the Afghan surge a short-term tactic. Given America's recent global retrenchment, such an opportunity won't come again any time soon.