Dangerous Indifference
For weeks, the U.S. presidential campaign has been unfolding with truly disturbing indifference to the outside world and its dangers. That changed with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Thursday.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been wrestling to determine whether her (non-existent) "experience" should matter more than his (self-invented) "identity."
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee has surged to first place in Iowa as a "Christian leader," despite repeated demonstrations of his utter unpreparedness in--and radical indifference to--world affairs. Now however the world has returned, and with a vengeance.
The Bhutto killing should force the candidates to confront some dangerously neglected facts:
1) Without Pakistan's acquiescence, the NATO position in Afghanistan would be unsustainable. Yet Pakistan is a desperately unstable state, whose institutions are deeply penetrated by radical Islam.
2) Unstable Pakistan owns some dozens of nuclear bombs. For months, all eyes have been focused on Iran, for fear that the radical Islamic republic might become a nuclear-weapons state. Yet it is equally possible that the nuclear-weapons state of Pakistan might become a radical Islamic republic.
3) To fend off the Islamists, the U.S. and its allies have lent backing to the military regime of Pervez Musharraf. There are worse governments in the world than Gen. Musharraf's. Tolerant of minorities, liberal in its treatment of the media, the regime has also presided over important economic reforms and impressive economic growth: an average of 6.5% per year since 2003. The World Bank reports that under Musharraf, poverty in Pakistan has declined "significantly."
On the other hand, alliances with unelected rulers are always devil's bargains. Sooner or later, the strongman falls or dies, and when he does, his foreign supporters get the blame for his sins, real and alleged.
4) Many had hoped that Musharraf might bring about a transformation, not only of Pakistan's economy, but also of Pakistani society. President Bush used to muse privately about Musharraf as a Pakistani "Ataturk"--paying homage to Kemal Ataturk, the modernizing ruler of Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s.
But Pakistan has seen modernizing strongmen before. Ayub Khan, the general who seized power in Pakistan's first coup, in 1958, was also once hailed as a potential Pakistani Ataturk. Ayub Khan too presided over impressive economic growth. Ayub Khan likewise tried to haul Pakistani Islam into the modern age, suppressing both polygamy and the right of husbands to abandon their wives by pronouncing the formula, "I dismiss thee" three times. And in a final possible parallel, Ayub Khan's regime ended in failure and a swerve back to fundamentalism.
5) Above all, the Bhutto killing should remind us of this grimmest reality: the force we call Islamic extremism--or jihadism--or, simply, "terrorism" is as much a function of the failure of Pakistan as it is of the troubles in the Arab Middle East or the scheming of the mullahs of Iran.
Minus Pakistan, there would have been no Taliban in Afghanistan. Minus Pakistan, no campaign of terrorism against India--a campaign that has claimed even more innocent lives than have been lost to Arab terrorism against Israel. Of all the Islamic communities in Europe, the Pakistani diaspora in Britain is far and away the most militant and violent.
More troubling still, Pakistani extremism is not a purely indigenous phenomenon. By one much-cited estimate, the Saudi government has spent US $70 billion since 1979 to spread Wahhabi Islam. The single largest destination for this money: Pakistan. Private individuals have donated uncounted billions more. Saudi money financed the Pakistani nuclear bomb program launched by Benazir Bhutto's father, former prime minister Zulfikar Bhutto.
Nor is the threat posed by Pakistani instability a purely local one. Pakistan and India came to the verge of nuclear war in 1999 and again in 2002--the last narrowly averted by intense American diplomatic work. While Musharraf seems to have made a strategic decision in favour of peace, that decision may last only as long as he does--and he has been the victim of at least three serious assassination attempts, the most recent in July, 2007.
To date, the presidential candidates have offered only the haziest generalities about South Asia. The one exception to the hazy rule--Barack Obama's July, 2007 suggestion that as president he might send U.S. troops into Pakistan's tribal areas--got bad reviews. OK, it may have been a dumb idea. But at least it represented the beginning of thinking in an election year that demands more thinking than most--but has been hearing less.