Bilal Khan — The right question about Trump’s Afghan policy

In the context of America’s Afghanistan problem, Pakistan joined the international coalition in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, allegedly as a result of a direct threat by US secretary of state Colin Powell to the Pakistani president at the time, Pervez Musharraf. It is a folly to believe that the interests of these two countries converge in the larger scheme of things. They never have.

In terms of soft power, the United States has never enjoyed high approval ratings among the Pakistani populace. In terms of hard power, the US historically has used two tools to coerce Pakistan: one, much-needed military assistance, and two, economic bailouts from time to time. Most of the time, the United States has offered both to the real center of power in Pakistan – the military.

The US has never preferred to deal with civilian institutions or democratically elected rulers in Pakistan despite Americans’ alleged love of democracy. Too many decision-makers and sensitive constituencies wasted too much time for the Americans’ liking and often fell short of offering full servitude. They wanted results, by hook or by crook – that is how Pakistanis see how Americans have used them. What adds to such injury is not just the insult US President Donald Trump hurled at them on August 21, but the sense that the United States discards Pakistan whenever it wishes.…

Enter the dragon.

China may not yet be as great a power as the United States, but it has offered Pakistan what the Americans never did: respect. At the same time, the Chinese share Pakistan’s more immediate and pressing regional interests. Pakistan today is a relatively safer and economically viable place than it was 16 years ago, thanks largely to Chinese investment and the sacrifices Pakistan wants the West to recognize. If these trends continue, Washington will increasingly lose any hard-power leverage it once enjoyed in Islamabad....

The right question to ask.

Many experts around the globe are asking how likely the new US policy is to succeed. That is the wrong question to ask. America’s new policy for Afghanistan is doomed to fail, as former Pakistani finance minister Shahid Javed Burki has correctly concluded. However, the right question to ask is: What happens next when it fails?

If the precedent prevails, a wider war is the right answer.

Asia Times
The right question about Trump’s Afghan policy

Bilal Khan