Engaging or Containing Pakistan:Options Before the United States

The roller coaster relationship between the United States and Pakistan is on eloquent display yet again. Frustration is building and piling up on the US side. The options that the country appears to be weighing are containment, its obverse engagement or even what may qualify as limited war. While this frustration has been piling up since a while, the immediate sticking point is the sheltering of the Haqqani network by the Pakistani state. This network uses Pakistani soil to stage attacks inside Afghanistan, American and NATO troops.

 Essentially, the issue is larger than the Haqqani network. It is about the nature of the Pakistani state: an entity which has become warped and disjointed over time. This condition is inherent to/in the Pakistani state.  The Haqqani network-allegedly patronized by the Pakistani state-then is a mere irritant and not an issue whose resolution will lead to a normal Pakistan. It is the rejigging and review of the Pakistani state and its operating assumptions that will lead to peace within and without.

The question then is what can be done to bring this review and revision about? This is a million dollar question, so to speak. The country’s ideological premise, its attendant evolution and trajectory and path dependence of institutions locks it into an insalubrious path. Reversing this is difficult but as I have repeatedly argued not impossible. Given the morass and decrepitude that Pakistan has sunk into, it stretches reason to believe that impetus for reform will come from within Pakistan. Or that engaging those who claim a patina of democratic legitimacy will yield the desired outcome. The same could be held true for a limited war strategy or a more vigorous military approach/ strategy toward Pakistan. This option is all the more undesirable because of Pakistan’s nukes and the fallout of an attack on another Muslim country. So what can be done or what approach should be adopted to render Pakistan into a normal and a salubrious entity?

Indubitably, laying out an answer to this question is fraught with difficulty. However, given the urgency, it is essential to tease it out. Pakistan can potentially be sorted out by an eclectic approach that incorporates many dimensions. First and foremost, engagement with the country should not be given up. In some ways, Pakistan’s churlishness is an attention seeking strategy. If it is deemed untouchable, it may escalate its approach and morph into a comprehensive spoiler state. It can become an avid nuclear proliferator, a sponsor of terrorism, and play spoilsport and difficult in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This scenario can only by a strategy of engagement by the sole super power. However, this strategy of engagement has to be more substantive and vigorous. Hitherto, United State’s engagement with Pakistan has more or less been akin to a pacifying approach. This needs to change. US engagement with Pakistan must be premised on a long term view to change the nature of the Pakistani state and make it review its foreign policy postures. The question is who to engage with?

As Professor Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute puts it, it is only the Pakistani praetorian elite, that is, the Army, that the United States has leverage over. As is well known, the Pakistani military is the country’s real power and the only institution that has real clout. It is thus this praetorian elite that needs to be engaged. It is here that the diplomatic skills of the American elite will be tested. The Pakistani elite needs to be convinced that its approach and strategy has led to a malfunctioning and a dysfunctional Pakistan and that this state of affairs redounds negatively to both the Pakistani state and society. It is insalubrious for Pakistan. Period. If the United States succeeds in this and manages to convince the Pakistani military that its disengagement from the state and society an withdrawal from politics constitutes Pakistan’s national interest, then half the battle is won.

This diplomatic approach needs to be buttressed by a hard power strategy or the implied threat of a hard power strategy. It should be made clear to Pakistan that its misadventures either in Kashmir or Afghanistan or its shielding of terror networks will not be countenanced. And that if it continues with being a spoiler state, it will pay a price. Given that Pakistan is a nuclear state and it hedges its bets on this, deterrence enters the equation here. In the final analysis, the Pakistani elite is not irrational. The country follows a certain path because it feels that this constitutes its national interest. This national interest is survival and what Pakistan believes constitutes its security. As such, deterrence will work. The implication is that an admixture of compellence and deterrence-or an approach that approximates or just falls short of containment- may be the most prudent hard power approach towards Pakistan.

Last, Pakistan’s political economy needs to be rejigged and reviewed. The country should be integrated with the global economy and the clichéd trade not aid should be the mantra of this new economic paradigm.

A focused approach that incorporates these dimensions may gradually lead to a new Pakistan. This new entity is in the interests of both the international community and Pakistan itself. Muddling along and charting the current path will lead to comprehensive political decay and a failed Pakistani state. This scenario, needless to say,will be bad for the subcontinent, the world and Pakistan itself. Pakistan does not have to be ‘dealt’ with; it has to be encouraged to review,, revise and change. Only the United States can do this. It is about time then the United States think deep and hard and come up with new paradigms.