Here is the lineup:
War—Continuity in Change, and Change in Continuity by Colin S. Gray
An Appraisal of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy to Counter Terrorism by Malik Zafar Iqbal
Time for a Strategic and Intellectual Pause in Afghanistan by Raymond A. Millen
Positive Perceptions to Sustain the US-Pakistan Relationships by Randall L. Koehlmoos
A Counter-WMD Strategy for the Future by Albert J. Mauroni
Soldiers and Politics: Exposing Some Myths by Phillip S. Meilinger
The North Caucasus: Russian Roulette on Europe's Borders by Constance A. Phlipot
Google Confronts China's "Three Warfares" by Timothy L. Thomas
Book reviews and other departments can be found here.
Comments
I thought the good brigadier sahib is American? Thus the "sahib"?
At any rate, interesting article detailing the conventional wisdom. I'm not going to pile on, I've said the same as carl and omar before in these comments. I still wonder if all the years of defense cooperation between the US and Pakistan has left a set of mental impressions within certain institutions that are difficult to overcome?
The article is especially interesting in light of the CNAS Kaplan South Asia review recently posted here at SWJ.
Might I suggest less "handling" and letting things take their natural course? Trade will chart the course: it always does. The idea that the United States, with its particular culture and history, can barge in and settle age-old disputes by years-long international conferences and targeted aid packages (I'm talking the perpetually proposed "lets help India and Pakistan solve their mutual problems," here) seems both naive and hubristic.
It's not the Cold War anymore. We can dare to dream outside the old strategic partnerships. Renting armies and proxy nastiness had its downsides for us and others, didn't it? The phenomenal American economy - and letting it grow strong and thrive - probably did far more than our "handling" and rented proxies ever did in defeating enemies. Highly debatable point, I know, but worth considering given our lumbering confused post-Cold War behavior.
Shorter - and more to the point - comment: we'll get played even more if we continue to let others define our interests for us. I'm referring to many conflicts zones around the world, not just South Asia. Why does this seem so hard for our decision-makers? I suppose it's because we Americans haven't decided what we want to be in the 21st century.
The good brigadier sahib's article is very well written propaganda piece touting what seems to be the Pakistani Army party line: we are wise fellows with a "nuanced" appreciation of the situation, you Americans are mostly responsible for this situation, you are fools not to listen to us, we are innocent victims, we try very hard and oh by the way give us a lot of money and don't ask any questions. The brigadier sahib's wonderful command of the English language doesn't quite sell his alternate view of reality though.
It is hard to take seriously anything coming from an officer of an army whose primary strategy is to continually provoke the second most populous county (eventually to be the most populous) in the world, a country whose economy dwarfs that of Pakistan and gets bigger by the year. The applicable metaphors are all so obvious as to be trite; but they would all amount to the same thing, those guys are fools. (Of course, what does that make us, since so many of our inside the beltway crowd buy the Pak Army malarky.)
The good brigadier sahib has his heart in the right place, but 3 staff colleges in different countries have not helped his worldview. It remains India-centric, which remains a core problem in Pakistan and the main reason why the Pakistani army is the only army in the world which created free lance guerilla forces IN ITS OWN COUNTRY and is now stuck with trying to differentiate good jihadis from bad jihadis instead of biting the bullet and cleaning up its mess. This is the basic problem: eternal confrontation with India, need for a large army to sustain that confrontation, need for jihadis to improve our chances in that confrontation, need to interfere in Afghanistan to increase our leverage in that confrontation, need for Islamism to make us strong for that confrontation, need for "national unity" so that we can fight them better, etc etc etc...It leads eventually to the same disease: a Pakistan beset by militarism and Islamism and committed to confrontations it can neither afford nor benefit from......It may sound shocking, but we will be better off with a military posture and capabilities like Bangladesh. Sure, Bangladesh cannot force its priorities on India, but then, after 60 years wasted funding this army and its policies, neither can we....and look at the down side of acquiring strategic depth and other brilliant schemes to counter India.