Seymour Hersh on 'the Madness of King George' · 3 November 2007, 08:27 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Last week Seymour Hersh visited Groningen, the Netherlands, to deliver a lecture at the Van der Leeuw-lezing (Van der Leeuw Lecture). Click here to read his complete lecture on, among other things, ‘the Madness of King George’ and its corrupting effect on U.S. societey.
george bush,
groningen,
iraq,
king george,
seymour hersh,
van der leeuw lezing
New Policy Towards Pakistan Required (2) · 15 July 2007, 21:42 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Shortly after the raid that ended the Red Mosque siege an anonymous source inside the Pakistani secret services leaked to Spanish news agency EFE that the Pakistani government attempts to cover up the scale of the bloodshed which the raid resulted in. (nu.nl, July 11, 2007) Apparently this source felt the need to depict the government of President Pervez Musharraf as an enemy of the extremists. Furthermore the impression arises that at least some within the Pakistani secret services feel sympathy for Pakistan’s extremists. According to military analyst Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha, however, President Musharraf used the raid on the extremist bulwark to appear before the footlights as an indispensable ally in the War on Terror and, as a result of this, to gain foreign support. In reality the relationship between the Musharraf government and Pakistan’s extremists is, on the contrary, very intimate. (NRC Handelsblad, July 5, 2007) This view complies with the findings of Carnegie Endowment scholar Frédéric Grare (‘Rethinking Western Strategies Toward Pakistan. An action agenda for the United States and Europe’, July, 2007) which I will deal with later and with Barnett R. Rubin’s view, as he expounded this in ‘Saving Afghanistan’, an article in the January / February edition of Foreign Affairs (volume 86, number 1, page 57-79) (For Rubin’s view also read ‘A New Policy Towards Pakistan Required’. How should the U.S. and its allies deal with this apparent close relationship? Both Grare and Rubin offer several recommendations in their above mentioned articles. Here, however, I would like to line up some ideas from ‘A False Choice in Pakistan’, an article on the matter written by Daniel Markey in the July / August edition of Foreign Affairs (volume 86, number 4, page 85-102). Markey is ‘Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations’ and ‘served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff from 2003 to 2007.
Markey’s article opens with the current state of the partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan in the War on Terror. Because of the fact that almost six years after 9/11 the Taliban is alive and kicking, destabilizing Afghanistan from its safe haven in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, that al Qaeda’s top also resides safely in Pakistan and that terrorist attacks both inside and outside Pakistan ‘persist with deadly regularity’ many in the U.S. are developing serious doubts about the alliance with Islamabad. ‘They charge (...) that Musharraf and his allies in Islamabad have taken billions of dollars in U.S. aid while doing too little to advance – and, in many ways, much to undermine – the fight against terrorism’. Because of this they argue that the U.S. should take a tougher stance on the Musharraf government, even threaten with sanctions, to force it to deal more aggressively with terrorism. Furthermore, they argue that the U.S. should actively promote a process of democratization, to downplay the role of the military in the government and to get a government of Pakistan’s moderates that will be really committed to counter extremism by addressing ‘the social and developmental deficiencies that cause extremism’.
According Markey such change of attitude will be counter-productive. First of all, tougher talk towards the Pakistani government, by threatening to cut military assistance, end the sale of major defence systems as the promissed sale of 36 F-16 jets, will only fuel deep-seated feelings of distrust about the durability of Washington’s support for the country. That is, the feeling exists that after Afghanistan is pacified and Bin Laden captured the U.S. will lose interest in the country. The continuing support of the Pakistani army and Inter-Services Intelligence for militant groups like the Taliban is only a result of this distrust and based on the notion that it served their security issues before, for example in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and will do so in the future after the U.S. has abandoned them. Other negative consequences for the U.S. might be that the skeptics in the military will be emboldend further at the expense of friends of the U.S. and that, if training programs will be cut, a cadre of officers will be created with ‘no personal connections to their U.S. counterparts and, correspondingly, less trust in or sympathy for the United States’. To conclude, sanctions targeted at the military will especially hit Pakistani officers, whose role in counterterrorism operations is ‘most vital’.
Secondly, efforts to downplay the role of the Pakistani army in society and to develop a ‘civilian democratic rule’ won’t work too, Markey states. Not so much because elections will result in a victory for extremists – for according to Markey it’s more likely that free and fair elections result in the ‘return power to the mainstream civilian powers’ as Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League. But because it will be hard to circumvent the army, ‘Pakistan’s strongest government institution’ and the only force in Pakistan that will be able make a bold stand against the country’s extremists. Pakistan’s civilian institutions, on the other hand, are weak because they suffered from neglect or have become ‘incorperated into the army’s expanding sphere of influence’. This means that, even if national elections will result in a new government, in the end, it’s the army that calls the shots.
Now let’s take a closer look at Markey’s view on the relationship between the military and the secret services on the one hand and Islamists on the other, for it rather differs from the view of the supporters of a less cautious attitude towards Islamabad. As the latter believe that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to sever this relationship, Markey is more positive about it. He discerns several developments which will likely make the Pakistani army more ‘amenable to a strategic shift’. First of all, because it realizes that maintaining ties with the Islamists has become very dangerous. Until 9/11 the U.S. ‘tolerated, applauded, or overlooked Pakistan’s association with Jihadi groups’, but after 9/11, as the Bush administration took on its ‘with us or against us’ strategy, Islamabad would invoke the wrath of Washington if it would continue its overt support for the extremists. Secondly, Musharraf’s siding with the U.S. makes him ‘a marked man’, a target for ‘jihadi sponsored attempts on his life’. Furthermore, as a result of heavy clashes in the Federally Administered Tribal Area’s the relationship between the army and extremists has deteriorated.
To continue, Markey sees two more favorable developments. To start with, the relationship between Pakistan and India has improved since India extended its ‘hand of friendship’ by the mouth of its Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in April 2003. This ‘offers tangible economic and political incentives for putting an end to the militancy over Kashmir’. The other development Markey discerns is the ‘commitment to building Afghanistan’s nascent democratic institutions, supporting President Hamid Karzai’s Pashtun-led government and remaining in the country for the foreseeable future’ which the United States and NATO ‘convincingly demonstrate’. As consequence of this commitment the Pakistani army will be more inclined to ‘invest in Afhanistan’s stability rather than hedge against collapse or the rise of a threatening neighbour’. Considering, for example, the desperate call for more troops on the ground by retired Canadian major-general Lewis MacKenzie, whom I quoted in the previous posting, Markey’s valuation of the state and nation-building process in Afghanistan sounds somewhat optimistic, so to speak. Therefore, his prediction that Pakistan’s military is now more likely to invest in Afghanistan’s stability doesn’t sound convincing either. Nonetheless, Markey might have a point here: when NATO shows true commitment as far as Afghanistan is concerned, Pakistan might become more willing to support pacification of Afganistan.
Now, what should Washington do to make the relationship with Islamabad more profitable? Markey sees a ‘twofold task for U.S. policy makers’. On the one hand they should stimulate Pakistan’s commitment in fighting terrorism. They can accomplish this by following ‘three basic rules’, which will demonstrate that Washington intends to maintain a long-term partnership with Pakistan and that allying with extremists isn’t an option anymore. To start with, rebukes and threats, whether issued publicly or privately, should be avoided, for they only undermine Pakistan’s confidence in a partnership with the United States. Secondly, the U.S. should show ‘tangible benefits’ of this partnership, by continuing to provide Pakistan with money and materiel, by addressing Islamabad’s security issues in Kabul and New Delhi and by promoting the ‘Indo-Pakistani rapprochement’ in order to, among other things, ‘link Pakistan’s economy into India’s massive growth engine’. Thirdly, when Washington feels the need to be more compelling towards Pakistan it should do this by demanding Islamabad to allow the U.S. to be more engaged in Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts. It’s important to note that Pakistan ‘is deeply averse to having U.S. armed forces operate autonomously’ within its borders, so it should try to integrate Americans into Pakistani forces in an unobtrusive way. This will show Washington’s willingness ‘to invest in long-standing, working-level ties and that its ultimate goal is deeper, closer cooperation’. More U.S. engagement could, furthermore, be expressed by assistance by improving ‘the effectiveness of Pakistan’s security and intelligence services’ and transforming its heavy army ‘into a more agile counterterrorism, counterinsurgency force’. Because a weak state and economy is a source of discontent and radicalization Washington should, to conclude, invest in Pakistan’s institutions and its infrastructure.
On the other hand, U.S. policy makers should not promote the democratizing of Pakistan as a means of getting rid of a government led by Musharraf and the military. Instead, they should acknowlegde the role of the army and prop a government consisting both of Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League as well as Bhutto’s PPP. The military shouldn’t be ignored for reasons expounded above. The PPP, a ‘nationwide mainstream party’, should be part of the government because it will make this government more rooted in Pakistan society and, consequently, better equipped to deal with extremism. Markey discerns three ‘basic principles’ which ‘top U.S. officials’ should use as a point of departure for their attempts to promote elections which will lead to a Musharraf-Bhutto government. First of all, they should prevent that the elections will be rigged by ‘hard-liners around Musharraf’ by, among other things, sending observers. Secondly, Washington should unequivocally advocate human rights and the rule of law to further the creation of an alliance of Pakistan’s ‘progressive political forces’, which will be better able to cope with the country’s extremists. Thirdly, to conclude, it should stress the importance of ‘internal party democracy’, because this will create parties that won’t depend on individuals or families anymore, parties that will outlast individuals and families.
9/11,
afghanistan,
al qaeda,
benazir bhutto,
bhutto,
bush,
bush administration,
musharraf,
pakistan,
red mosque,
taliban
Time on Bush's Missile Defense Push · 6 June 2007, 06:46 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Why U.S. President Bush is so actively advancing his missile defense agenda according to Time’s Massimo Calabresi.
bush,
george bush,
massimo calabresi,
missile defense,
missile defense system
New Policy Towards Pakistan Required · 15 January 2007, 07:50 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In ‘Saving Afghanistan’, an article in the January / February edition of Foreign Affairs (volume 86, number 1, page 57-79) Barbett R. Rubin states that, ’[w]ith the Taliban resurgent, reconstruction faltering, and opium poppy cultivation at an all-time high’, Aghanistan is on the brink of relapsing into chaos. To prevent this the U.S. and its allies must rethink their strategy, especially as far as Pakistan is concerned. The latter granting a save haven along its tribal frontier from which the Taliban continue to destabilize Afghanistan.
After being expelled by the U.S. and its allies in 2001 the Taliban found an sanctuary in Pakistan, where they were able to regain strength and to threaten Afghanistan once again. In the first place this was the result of the policy of the Bush Administration to allow Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf ‘to focus on al Qaeda’s top leadership’ and to ignore the Taliban, Rubin states. In exchange for this the U.S. was allowed to set up bases and to hunt the al Qaeda leadership. Pakistan, furthermore, was forced to shut down A.Q. Khan’s nuclear proliferation network. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligences (ISI) grasped this opportunity to continue to actively support the Taliban leadership, which currently uses the capital of Pakistani province Baluchistan, Quetta, as its main operational base. It’s crucial for the coalition forces to understand this relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban, for according to Rubin it’s the key to a better strategy for dealing with the Taliban threat.
Quintessence in Islamabad’s thinking on national security is coping with India, which is far more populous and possesses far more resources than Pakistan and which, according to the Pakistani, has never fully accepted Pakistan’s existence. This partly explains why Pakistan supports Islamist militia’s like the Taliban: to counter India’s influence in Kashmir and Afghanistan, in which the Northern Alliance allegedly has been an ally of India. By supporting Islamism among the Pashtun, furthermore, Pakistan tries to cope with Pashtun and Baluchi nationalism. The aim of supporting the Taliban’s control over Afghanistan, to conclude, is preventing the re-emergence of a regime in Kabul that denies the Durand Line as the official border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The importance of Pakistan’s aid to the Taliban should not be underestimated, for, according to ‘Western and Afghan officials’ Pakistan could disrupt the Taliban’s top leadership, but it has chosen not to do so. Disrupting the Taliban’s top leadership, however, should be considered the key to victory, Rubin states. To persuade Pakistan to accomplish this, requires several steps.
To start with, it’s necessary to put Islamabad under high pressure. The Pakistani government wants to be viewed as a full-fledged member of the international community. The allies must make use of this by making clear to Pakistan that if it doesn’t vigorously fight the Taliban top in Baluchistan this will endanger ‘international peace and security as defined in the UN Charter’. Washington, furthermore, must suspend military assistence and international aid if it fails to dismantle the Taliban leadership.
Besides that Pakistan’s main strategic concerns, that is the influence of India in Afghanistan and Afghanistan’s support for Pashtun and Baluchi nationalists which are ‘operating accross the Durand Line’, should be addressed too. Secondly, the U.S. and its allies should urge Kabul to start a debate about the recognition of the Durand Line as the official border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in exchange for ‘guarantees of stability and access to secure trade and transport corridors to Pakistani ports’. This would involve cooperation instead of conflict, but to accomplish this ‘reform and development in the tribal territories’ are a prerequisite, Rubin states. Furthermore, Washington should spur India and Afghanistan to persuade Pakistan that their bilateral relations don’t constitute a thread to the latter. To continue, if the Taliban indeed are considering, as some sources claim, ‘to drop their maximalist demands and give guarantees against the reestablishment of al Qaeda bases’, they should be allowed to join the political process. To conclude, the U.S. should stop simply supporting Musharraf, but instead prop democracy in Pakistan. As support for extremism in Pakistan have proved to be ‘marginal’ and Pakistan’s business class, ‘which is profiting from the reconstruction of Afghanistan’, is starting to flourish, the U.S. should grasp this opportunity to establish a more solid relationship with the country that is not only based on ties with the country’s military.
aghanistan,
al-qaeda,
baluchistan,
bush,
bush administration,
inter-services intelligences,
isi,
islamabad,
kabul,
musharraf,
pakistan,
quetta,
taliban,
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'Redeployment From Iraq in four to six Months' · 12 November 2006, 19:24 CET by Charles Vermeulen
It’s barely one week after the Democrats won the congressional elections and President Bush tendered the resignation of Defence minister Donald Rumsfeld, but the winners show they don’t intend to let the grass grow under their feet as Democrat Senator Carl Levin said that the U.S. presence in Iraq is ‘not open-ended and (...) we need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months’ in an interview on ABC’s This Week. Levin will probably become chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the newly elected Congress.
bush,
carl levin,
democrats,
donald rumsfeld,
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The Invasion of Iraq Was About Oil, Bush Admits · 7 November 2006, 06:38 CET by Charles Vermeulen
During the run-up to the war in Iraq the Bush administration denied it ‘sternly’, but according to Washington Post Staff Writer Peter Baker president Bush admits it publicly now: the invasion of Iraq was about oil. Or at least partly.
bush,
iraq,
oil,
president bush,
united states,
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To the Fullest Extent of the Law · 18 October 2006, 07:04 CET by Charles Vermeulen
President George W. Bush on the website of The White House yesterday after signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
9/11,
bush,
george bush,
george w. bush,
military commissions act,
president bush
North-Korea as a 'Failed State' and the Bomb · 14 October 2006, 10:15 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In an op-ed in last Thursday’s edition of Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad entitled ‘Red de vrede, maak een atoombom’ (‘Save Peace, Make an Atom Bomb’) Israelian military historian Martin van Creveld states that the Bush administration overreacts on North-Korea’s recent nuclear test. Present-day Washington justifies its opposition to this by pointing at the threat that relevant nuclear technology might fall into the hands of terrorists. Van Creveld dismisses this as nonsense. First of all because no state would ever help terrorists to build a atom bomb, for the simple reason that it could be threatened itself by those terrorists. Secondly, it’s much easier for a small country with a small nuclear arsenal to prevent theft or abuse of its arsenal than for a great power, which possesses thousands of nuclear warheads spread all over the world. Van Creveld has a point here, but he wrongly doesn’t take into account the possibility that North-Korea, ranking 14th on the Foreign Policy and Fund for Peace Failed State Index in 2005, may very well collapse one day and fall into chaos. Who would control its arsenal in that case?
atom bomb,
bush,
failed state,
failed state index,
martin van creveld,
north-korea,
president bush,
van creveld,
washington
Bringing Democracy to the Middle East · 8 February 2006, 22:34 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In his article ‘Islam and Power’ Fareed Zakaria places the tumult in the Middle East about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons in a broader perspective.
arab world,
bush,
democracy,
fareed zakaria,
jyllands-posten cartoons,
middle east,
zakaria
Eager to Start on Second Term · 21 January 2005, 14:21 CET by Charles Vermeulen
It’s been somewhat more than a year ago that neoconservative Robert Kagan described the balance of power between the United States and Europe as follows in his ‘Of Paradise and Power. America and Europe in the New World Order’ (New York 2003):
Next week Condoleezza Rice will be confirmed as Secretary of State in the second Bush administration. During a hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations last Tuesday she stated the following:
And:
Nobody will contend that Europe now suddenly is a military great power. But the idea that America is powerful enough to realize its strategic and ideologically inspired ambitions under its own steam, appears to be an expensive, neoconservative miscalculation. Not for those who have the Iraq debacle on their conscience, however. Yesterday they eagerly started on George W. Bush’s second term.
america,
bush,
condoleezza rice,
europe,
european union,
george bush,
iraq,
kagan,
neoconservative,
president bush,
robert kagan,
united states