Dysfuntional

Whoa!

You know the type - uber hot arm candy - doesn't mind dining/drinking/dancing away up to $80.00 of your weekday larges on a Tuesday. You want to call her your GF - while she insists to all your near field competitors she's single. Periodically invites you up to crash (NOTHING HAPPENS) and actually cringes when ever you try for kiss. Aside from that kinda crazy run away bride look in her eye - her life really is crazy - like existing on the event horizon of a really bad about to happen event.

You wait and hope for a return text or call - panicking if it does or doesn't arrive. She hits you up for any and everything from cash to rides to hanging wrought iron doors 

As best understood - that is a dysfunctional relationship.

Can events in the eternal player quest be sexyfully segued right on in the realm of the diplopolititary?

Nishan - e - Haider!

Not unlike the dysfunctional relationship betwixt Great Satan and her only new clear rebellious client army with an illiterate nation state attached - Land of the Pure Alas, the past is after all the past - so what all happens next?

Hitting up GsGf's Pakistan expert (Oh! He got game bay bee!) intells there simply is no alternate for Land of the Pure sans Great Satan.

The fact is that Pakistan is extremely constrained in its options today. Unfair as it may be, the global narrative about Pakistan has forced even the best of friends to shy away from going the extra mile to back Islamabad’s case. Pakistani state policies have to be crafted keeping this reality in mind.

There is certainly a need to recalibrate the relationship with the US. That said, it is dangerous for the Pakistani state to create an impression that ties with America are a net negative and that "Slamabad will be better off without it. Let us face it — things may not be good at present, but they will be far worse if we go too far down this road. A breakdown may be bad for Washington, but it will be disastrous for Pakistan.

Against this backdrop--Pakistan careening from one crisis to the next and the Pakistan - Great Satan relationship at its lowest point in years--come two contrasting books from experts on the country.  

Somewhat disingenuously, Lieven downplays evidence of Pakistan's nuclear proliferation to Iran and Libya to make the case that a purely nationalistic impulse drove what Pakistan's own leaders have referred to as the Islamic bomb. Indeed, except for a passing jab at the army's obsession with India and the disputed territory of Kashmir, Lieven's book reads a bit like it was written by a general's houseguest. At times one can't help but wonder whether the author's self-declared affection for the country finds its deepest expression in regard for its men in khaki.

For a contrasting view of that institution, and of the threat emanating from Pakistan more broadly, one can turn to Bruce Riedel's Deadly Embrace. Riedel, a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution and one of Washington's most widely respected South Asia hands, chaired President Obama's interagency review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan completed in 2009. As a former CIA officer and advisor to three presidents on the Middle East and South Asia, Riedel has had a ringside view of Pakistan's evolution over three decades, and of its dysfunctional relationship with the U.S.

Pic - "Pakistan's State Motto could very well be sump like "Hey y'all! Watch this!"