The ‘chicken hawks' led by then Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld were able to effectively sideline the State Department. The economic and political costs of a decade of unrepentant militarism included an economically and diplomatically bankrupt United States. When he came to power a year ago, President Barack Obama faced a serious dilemma - to find a way to go about rationalizing US imperial overstretch abroad while revitalising the domestic economic base without doing to the United States what Gorbachev did to the Soviet Union.
Having achieved a pyrrhic victory in Iraq while continuing to be frustrated by Taliban and al-Qaeda resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a Muslim world seething with resentment after a particularly noxious decade of incompetent and heavy-handed Western adventurism, the United States appears to have almost knocked itself out. This does not mean that the Muslim world is about to taken over by Taliban-like movements.
Pakistan's own experience suggests that public opinion is hostile to religious extremists. However, that same public opinion is as, if not more, hostile to the United States and imposes very substantial political costs upon any government seen to be subservient to American wishes and interests.
The Obama administration's grand strategy, to the extent that the United States can be said to have a grand strategy, has, therefore, three major objectives. First, rein in American militarism by reasserting the State Department's control over relationships with strategically important countries such as Pakistan. Second, embark upon a charm offensive through high profile visits to important Muslim countries and express contrition for past mistakes and the desire to turn the page and build constructive long-term partnerships. Third, avoid getting involved in additional military conflicts and give preference to multilateral diplomacy over armed confrontation.
Hillary Clinton's visit to Pakistan aimed to further all three of these objectives. The Secretary of State's visit sought to demonstrate that the State Department is now calling the shots and the cozy GHQ-Pentagon relationship of the previous eight years can no longer be taken for granted. Clinton also met selected representatives of the Pakistani ‘public' and, mercifully, only had to dodge a few hard questions. Clinton also sought to assure Pakistan that the tactically oriented approach of the Bush years was being changed in favour of a broader and longer term partnership. The reason why these public pronouncements masquerading as grand strategy cannot work lies in the reality of US-led interventionism in the Muslim world. In order to illustrate this point let's reverse the power equation.
How would the West react if a coalition of Muslim (or Confucian, Buddhist, etc.) countries had invaded and occupied Spain and Italy? Or, what would be the Anglo-American reaction to presence of Muslim naval and air forces in the English Channel or the Gulf of Mexico? How would the people of Europe react if corrupt and dysfunctional governments were be foisted on them and then perpetuated with the support of Muslim arms, economic subsidies and political clout? Under these conditions is it not probable that at least a small section of Western society would be sufficiently radicalized to take up arms and proclaim a global crusade against the Muslim imperialists and their resident collaborators? Herein lies the tragedy of contemporary imperialism - it generates enemies that push and pull the imperialists inexorably towards over-extension, steadily undermining their sources of internal strength.
A shift in the tone and emphasis of US declaratory policy is a very poor substitute for a change in the actual policy. The fact remains that one of Obama's first decisions was to dispatch an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan and pressurise Pakistan to undertake offensives that killed thousands and displaced millions without disabling the terrorists striking capability. During his first ten months in office Obama gave the go ahead for as many drone attacks in Pakistan as Bush did between 2006 and 2009. There also seems to be no substantial shift in policy towards Israel or Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Obama's fluency and eloquence, though a pleasant contrast to his predecessor's fumbling, cannot mask the far more serious elements of continuity.
It is precisely these elements of continuity that complicated Hillary Clinton's task in Pakistan and the Middle East. One cannot envy being in a position, where one is trying to convince a partner who desperately wants a divorce from an spouse, of the advantages of a stronger marriage. The public reaction in Pakistan to the Kerry-Lugar Law stands as a case in point. The public response was one of hostility which gave both the military and the opposition parties the opportunity to be openly critical of it, thereby making the civilian government at the centre appear as being out of touch with popular sentiment and desirous of selling Pakistan's residual sovereignty for the insufficient sum of $1.5 billion per year.
In the Middle East, Clinton's visit cannot in any way alter the dramatic shift in favour of Iran produced by the US invasion of Iraq and the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It must be a matter of some amusement in Tehran's elite circles how the United States drove the Taliban out of power in Afghanistan and the Baathists out of power in Iraq even though the Taliban and Baathists were Iran's most implacable enemies. Now, confronted with the reality of a maturing Iranian nuclear programme, one that is likely to trigger a regional nuclear arms race and jeopardise Israel's survival, the United States has no option but to negotiate, which, in turn, gives Iran the opportunity to stall.
At the same time, the contradictions within the American establishment on how to proceed in Afghanistan appear to be coming out into the open. Between July and August 2009, some two hundred coalition troops were killed in operations designed to provide security for the August 20 elections. Those elections, it has now been established by the United Nations, were blatantly rigged. Hamid Karzai, derisively called the ‘Emperor of Kabul' by his American benefactors, now has the distinction of being both ineffective and illegitimate. The United States military wants Obama to send 40,000 more troops. The American ambassador to Afghanistan along with many of the saner (conservative and liberal) elements in the United States realize that they cannot win and now is as good a time as any to get out and focus on helping Pakistan. Obama is taking his time and mulling the options, carefully asking for further revisions before he makes a final decision. Actually making the hard choices that need to be made will require President Obama and Secretary Clinton to go beyond the semantics of distraction and deliver substantive changes in US policy towards Pakistan and the Middle East.
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