On Tuesday, the Pakistan’s military ordered its forces along the Afghan border to repulse all future American military incursions into Pakistan. The story has been subsequently downplayed, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, flew to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, to try to ease tensions. But the fact remains that American forces have and are violating Pakistani sovereignty. ~Robert Baer

What is remarkable about this is that these incursions have been administration policy for the better part of a year, and they are the recommended policy of a future Obama administration, and the conventional wisdom among both Bush and Obama supporters is that this is a brilliant idea.  Trotskyites and Obamacons agree–stand up to Pakistan!  By stand up, of course, they must mean fight, since that is what implementing their plan will require.  What else is there to say about this view except that it is more belligerent and confrontational than the one held by John McCain?  In fact, there is a good deal more to say, but we might start with the frightening truth that McCain represents the voice of reason on whether or not to launch strikes inside Pakistan.  If McCain is the voice of reason, the others have pretty clearly gone mad. 

Why is Pakistan taking this position now?  First of all, while we should not discount the existence of dangerous elements in the ISI that continue to support the Taliban and Al Qaeda just as they support jihadis in India (including possibly the latest bombings in Delhi), Islamabad is not “giving refuge” to these forces.  The Pakistani government is, however, insisting that its sovereignty be respected in the wake of the Bush administration’s egregious violations of it, and one would think that a major non-NATO ally’s sovereignty would be something that would not be taken so lightly.  I am well aware of how dangerous elements of Pakistan’s government are, and I have been quite clear in my views that Pakistan has been a poor ally, but there are larger considerations here.  

Partly because President Zardari is weak, and because Sharif broke up the coalition with the PPP and weakened Gilani’s government, the government has evidently felt compelled to take a stronger line on Pakistani sovereignty than Musharraf did to shore up its position.  Besides, the new government has been provoked and humiliated, since Gilani was in Washington not two months ago stating that American strikes inside Pakistan without their permission were unacceptable.  The main reason why Washington and much of Obama’s cheering section have had no problem with violating Pakistani sovereignty is that they seem to have assumed that there would be no hostile reaction on the part of the Pakistani government.  Musharraf was eager to show his patrons in Washington that he was cooperating–or at least that he was not stopping U.S. forces from operating inside Pakistan–in order to give the administration some reason to keep backing him, so I suppose many people were misled into thinking that what an enormously unpopular dictator would allow our forces to do would also be permitted by an elected government.  This is clearly wrong, and the situation now requires much more than tete-a-tetes between Mullen and Kayani. 

It requires reconsidering what U.S. interests dictate, and it seems fairly clear that they do not dictate entering into open conflict with the Pakistani military.  Were our forces to engage Pakistan’s military, the consequences would be dire for the cohesion of the country, which is indeed every bit as artificial and unstable as Iraq, and for regional stability.  Let’s be very clear about this: if we stir up Pakistan against our presence in that part of the world, we will end up losing whatever gains we have made in Afghanistan and will turn one of the largest Muslim states in the world, and the only one with nuclear weapons, from an unreliable ally to an open enemy.  Remember the Pakistani boy Andrew thought would look at Obama’s face and be overwhelmed by American soft power?  If Obama follows through on the war policy that he would now have to endorse to continue launching raids into Pakistan, that boy will see Obama’s face as the face of the enemy and will react accordingly.   

It is telling that it was mostly opponents of the invasion of Iraq who saw Pakistan for what it was years ago, understanding that it sponsored terrorism against India, engaged in nuclear proliferation and had been exploiting the military aid we provided to build up its forces on the border with India.  The warmongers, Hitchens included, were indifferent to Pakistan then, preferring instead to back a war against a government that had no ties to Al Qaeda and had no weapons programs.  Having plunged into that war for no reason, they are now quick to discover what we have known all along, and, of course, their solution is always escalation.