My Sunday column offers advice from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the late American envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, for the crisis we now face in relations with that region. Holbrooke couldn’t speak out publicly at the time, but his posthumous views could not be more relevant at a time when we face a crisis in relations with Pakistan.
There’s obviously enormous American resentment at Pakistan and the double game it plays, and there should be. It’s frustrating that Pakistan pretends that its biggest enemy is India and spends vast amounts on troops on its Indian border and on a nuclear arsenal — when its biggest enemy is actually the illiteracy that feeds backwardness, unemployment, discontent and radicalism at home. When Pakistan spends seven times as much on its military as on its schools, that’s a catastrophic myopia. That said, washing our hands of Pakistan will only make things worse. In some sense, Pakistan truly is now (like Citibank) “too big to fail.” As I see it, the only way forward is to construct a real, honest relationship with Pakistan, not transactional in the sense of “you do this and we’ll give you that,” but an actual relationship that goes beyond the generals to the Pakistani people. That’s a long-term project, but it’s the opposite of abandonment.
This approach might mean less aid to the generals, but more support for the civilian side of Pakistan. Liberalizing trade rules to encourage Pakistani garment exports to the U.S. would be a huge force for stability in Pakistan, and a way of building up the business community. This approach of nurturing a long-term relationship won’t work terribly well — but it will work better than walking away in disgust.
Likewise, in Afghanistan, we need to have a strategic sense of where we’re going. And the only plausible path, it seems to me, is a peace deal to end the Afghan civil war. That too will require Pakistan at the table — along with many other players. So I hope as we review our Afghan troop presence, we’ll realize that $10 billion a month on military force is not only unsustainable but that it also needs to lead to something. And that something has to be peace talks, or we’ll be there forever.
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