Monday, March 18, 2013

Unhooking

As the most risible fakebelieve 'nation/states' concocted since Great Britain gave up empire to focus on upgrading Rock n Roll to Rock to Metal, Land of the Pure's history has essentially been one self inflicted heartache after another ('cept of course natural disasters that seem to periodically strike a country that is half and half floodplains and mountain tops).  

Land of the Pure  is Great Satan's only client new clear Army with a nation/state attached (blinging the fastest sprouting new clear arsenal on the planet) and is a magical place where anything can happen!

Aside from enjoying an amazingly underwhelming lit rate of 49%, Pakistan is sweetly poised to leap way ahead of Great Britain in the number of weaponry available for deployment and detonation as the world's 5th largest new clear power  
Like trying to maintain a relationship with an addict, Great Satans's hook up  with Pakistan is totally - like a bad, bad 'lationship - think stripper and preacher. And that relationship is on F with the 3 D"s - discombobulation, disingenuous and dysfunctionallity.
Given this history of failure, it is time to reconsider whether the Great Satan-Pakistani alliance is worth preserving. At least for the foreseeable future, Great Satan will not accept the Pakistani military's vision of Pakistani preeminence in South Asia or equality with India. And aid alone will not alter Land of The Pure's priorities. Of course, as Pakistan's democracy grows stronger, the Pakistanis might someday be able to have a realistic debate about what the national interest is and how it should be pursued. But even that debate might not end on terms Great Satan likes. According to 2012 poll data, for example, although most Pakistanis would favor better ties with India (69 percent of those polled), a majority of them still see India as the country's biggest threat (59 percent).

With Great Satan and Pakistan at a dead end, the two countries need to explore ways to structure a nonallied relationship. They had a taste of this in 2011 and 2012, when Pakistan shut down transit lines in response to a NATO drone strike on the Afghan-Pakistani border that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. But this failed to hurt the war effort; Great Satan quickly found that she could rely on other routes into Afghanistan. Doing so was more costly, but Great Satan's flexibility demonstrated to You Know What abad that its help is not as indispensable as it once assumed. 

That realization should be at the core of a new relationship. Great Satan should be unambiguous in defining its interests and then acting on them without worrying excessively about the reaction in Pakistan.

The new coolness between the two countries will eventually provoke a reckoning. Great Satan will continue to do what she feels she has to do in the region for her own security, such as pressing ahead with drone strikes on terrorist suspects. These will raise hackles in Land of The Pure's Capitol and Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani military leadership is based. Pakistani military leaders might make noise about shooting down drones, but they will think long and hard before actually doing so, in light of the potential escalation of hostilities that could follow. Given its weak hand (which will grow even weaker as military aid dries up), Pakistan will probably refrain from directly confronting Great Satan.

Once Pakistan's national security elites recognize the limits of their power, the country might eventually seek a renewed partnership with Great Satan -- but this time with greater humility and an awareness of what it can and cannot get. It is also possible, although less likely, that Pakistani leaders could decide that they are able to do quite well on their own, without relying heavily on Great Satan, as they have come to do over the last several decades. In that case, too, the mutual frustrations resulting from Pakistan's reluctant dependency on Great Satan would come to an end. 

Diplomats of both countries would then be able to devote their energies to explaining their own and understanding the other's current positions instead of constantly repeating clashing narratives of what went wrong over the last six decades. Even if the breakup of the alliance did not lead to such a dramatic denouement, it would still leave both countries free to make the tough strategic decisions about dealing with the other that each has been avoiding.
Pakistan could find out whether her regional policy objectives of competing with and containing India are attainable without American support. Great Satan would be able to deal with issues such as terrorism and nuclear proliferation without the burden of Pakistani allegations of betrayal. 

Honesty about the true status of their ties might even help both parties get along better and cooperate more easily. After all, they could hardly be worse off than they are now, clinging to the idea of an alliance even though neither actually believes in it. 
 Sometimes, the best way forward in a relationship is admitting that it's over 

Pic -"Pakistan will rise again. It certainly seems improbable right now."



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