Tens for the Tens: Pakistan
Jan. 2nd, 2010 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pmcrayThere are eight declared nuclear states plus Israel. Of these nine, only one is a candidate for a failed state. (OK, OK, I don't suppose North Korea isn't a great place to live, but it does not appear to be a failed state. In fact, rather the opposite. Of course, that could change and change quickly. Which might not be a good thing if you live in Seoul, which is only about 20 miles south of the DMZ. As I understand it there are thousands of artillery pieces ready to rain shells down on Seoul at a moment's notice. Yes, North Korea is a candidate for the a Serbia - the source of the spark of the next world war- of the Tens.) Surely the only reason why Pakistan is allowed to have nuclear weapons is because the US intelligence knows the location and status of them at all times. Doesn't it? Doesn't it?
The US chose to invade Iraq, which didn't have a WMD programme and wasn't really a state sponsor of terrorism on any significant scale. The US chose to invade Afghanistan, which wasn't in a position to have a WMD programme even it wanted one, but was certainly happy to harbour terrorists. Iran on the other hand does have a WMD programme and is a major state sponsor of terrorism. Given the US's performance in Baghdad, it is perhaps as well that didn't go to Tehran in the Noughties. But give that there is likely to be a Republican president in either 2012 or 2016, it is quite likely that the US - and the UK and what other bits of the Coalition of the Willing can be cobbled together - will be doing what Real Men do and going to Tehran - and Islamabad in the Tens.
The borders between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan are more or less as arbitrary as they are porous to the populations that live there. The remit of Islamabad barely runs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, especially North Waziristan and South Waziristan, and the United States is unable or unwilling to do much to help. Osama bin Laden disappeared in to the tunnels of Tora Bora in 2001 and it has to be assumed that he was of more value to the US as a (probably) living (if impotent) bogeyman than as a corpse or problematic future martyr in US custody.
The future of the world might hinge on a rugged hills of South-West Asia. The concerns of the Pakistani military, intelligence and political elites might be more focussed on a symmetrical standoff with arch-rival India than fighting a proxy war for the US against recalcitrant tribespeople. Pakistan was founded as a Muslim state in 1947 and the US has reaped what it sowed through its encouragement of militant, fundamentalist Islam as an ideological weapon with which to beat the Soviets in Central Asia. If India does become the new China in the Tens, the tension between a vibrant, democratic, multicultural nascent superpower and repressive, kleptocratic, fundamentalist candidate failed state might lead Pakistan to increasing desperate adventures in sponsoring terrorism in India and some in the military might prefer a honorable fight with the old enemy (with the insidious hope of glorious and unexpected victory or at least the manevolent consolation of a smoldering Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore) to constant corrosion and slow decay.
Pulled, pushed and prodded two ways, something might give in Pakistan. That give might lead to a nuclear warhead inbound for Kolkata or on a container ship to Seattle. Perhaps Web of Everything-type technology will eventually give the US a decisive enough advantage over the indigenous irregulars. Perhaps the West will be able to devise innovation solutions that resolve the issue - economic, political, social and cultural - faced by the people in the region. But something needs to be done. It is all too easy to imagine US and UK conscripts fighting and dying in the hills of Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province in an unending war in a decade's time.
The US chose to invade Iraq, which didn't have a WMD programme and wasn't really a state sponsor of terrorism on any significant scale. The US chose to invade Afghanistan, which wasn't in a position to have a WMD programme even it wanted one, but was certainly happy to harbour terrorists. Iran on the other hand does have a WMD programme and is a major state sponsor of terrorism. Given the US's performance in Baghdad, it is perhaps as well that didn't go to Tehran in the Noughties. But give that there is likely to be a Republican president in either 2012 or 2016, it is quite likely that the US - and the UK and what other bits of the Coalition of the Willing can be cobbled together - will be doing what Real Men do and going to Tehran - and Islamabad in the Tens.
The borders between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan are more or less as arbitrary as they are porous to the populations that live there. The remit of Islamabad barely runs in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, especially North Waziristan and South Waziristan, and the United States is unable or unwilling to do much to help. Osama bin Laden disappeared in to the tunnels of Tora Bora in 2001 and it has to be assumed that he was of more value to the US as a (probably) living (if impotent) bogeyman than as a corpse or problematic future martyr in US custody.
The future of the world might hinge on a rugged hills of South-West Asia. The concerns of the Pakistani military, intelligence and political elites might be more focussed on a symmetrical standoff with arch-rival India than fighting a proxy war for the US against recalcitrant tribespeople. Pakistan was founded as a Muslim state in 1947 and the US has reaped what it sowed through its encouragement of militant, fundamentalist Islam as an ideological weapon with which to beat the Soviets in Central Asia. If India does become the new China in the Tens, the tension between a vibrant, democratic, multicultural nascent superpower and repressive, kleptocratic, fundamentalist candidate failed state might lead Pakistan to increasing desperate adventures in sponsoring terrorism in India and some in the military might prefer a honorable fight with the old enemy (with the insidious hope of glorious and unexpected victory or at least the manevolent consolation of a smoldering Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore) to constant corrosion and slow decay.
Pulled, pushed and prodded two ways, something might give in Pakistan. That give might lead to a nuclear warhead inbound for Kolkata or on a container ship to Seattle. Perhaps Web of Everything-type technology will eventually give the US a decisive enough advantage over the indigenous irregulars. Perhaps the West will be able to devise innovation solutions that resolve the issue - economic, political, social and cultural - faced by the people in the region. But something needs to be done. It is all too easy to imagine US and UK conscripts fighting and dying in the hills of Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province in an unending war in a decade's time.
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