Foreign Policy In Focus

Theoretically Pakistan is poised to respond to Indian military retaliation for a terrorist strike with tactical nukes.

It’s debatable how much nuclear weapons add to national security. But what's undeniable is that they add layer upon layer of complexity, sprinkled with convoluted and even counterintuitive thinking (such as how missile defense systems are seen as an offensive act), to national defense. By way of example, on April 30, in the Times of India, Indrani Bagchi, wrote:

India will retaliate massively even if Pakistan uses tactical nuclear weapons against it. [It] will protect its security interests by retaliating to a “smaller” tactical attack in exactly the same manner as it would respond to a “big” strategic attack. 

Two questions immediately arise.
1. Why did Pakistan develop tactical nuclear weapons?
2. Why would India respond disproportionately to the use of what’s often referred to as “battlefield” nuclear weapons? (Not to diminish their power or, by any means, condone a state’s possession of them.)

First, we’ll quote Ms. Bagchi, who quotes Shyam Saran, the convener of India’s National Security Advisory Board. Speaking for nuclear-weapons policymakers in New Delhi, Mr. Saran “placed India’s nuclear posture in perspective in the context of recent developments, notably the ‘jihadist edge’ that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability have acquired.” (No, jihadis haven’t – yet anyway – insinuated themselves inside Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program.)

Answering question one, Saran said that Pakistan hopes (according to Indian policymakers), by developing tactical nuclear weapons,

“ … to dissuade India from contemplating conventional punitive retaliation to … cross-border terrorist strikes such as the horrific 26/11 attack on Mumbai. What Pakistan is signalling to India and to the world is that India should not contemplate retaliation even if there is another Mumbai because Pakistan has lowered the threshold of nuclear use to the theatre level. … This is nothing short of nuclear blackmail.”

You can see how nuclear weapons have the power to cloud men’s minds. Pakistan (if the Indian policymakers are correct) thinks that it can keep India from retaliating to yet another terrorist attack. With the same dearth of commonsense that Pakistan exhibits in the above passage (if true), India then declares that it won't just retaliate with tactical nukes, but with strategic nuclear weapons.

Never mind that the best way to keep India from retaliating is, obviously, to refrain from attacking. Of course, that beggars the question of whether Pakistan can keep its militants from attacking India (except for when it wants them, too).

Providing an answer to question two, Saran says (emphasis added):

“India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary. The label on a nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant from the Indian perspective.”

Re what’s emphasized: ever notice how often bravado and black humor intersect? To buttress his argument, Saran claims:

"A limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms. Any nuclear exchange, once initiated, would swiftly and inexorably escalate to the strategic level."

In any event, another answer to question one may exist. Ms. Bagchi writes that Pakistan may – also? primarily? – have developed tactical nuclear weapons

… to keep its weapons from being confiscated or neutralized by the US, a fear that has grown in the Pakistani establishment in the wake of the operation against Osama bin Laden.

Western policymakers might be inclined to shoot down this line of thinking as a conspiracy theory. But, as historian Agha Humayun Amin, a former major in the Pakistani Tank Corps, writes in a recent ebook

The Pakistani military perception right from 2001 was that the USA was a threat for Pakistan's nuclear program and US arrival in Afghanistan had more to do with Pakistan and less with the Taliban. Therefore the Taliban had to be supported. As long as the Americans were busy with the Taliban, Pakistan or Pakistani nuclear assets were safe.

Mental Illness a Prerequisite to Run for Public Office

It’s unbelievable what people would do to be in power. I know: It happens everywhere. I can’t believe that normal people in their right mind would run for elected position. There has to be something wrong in their value system to go through what they have to go through. What I saw here was much worse: so much humiliation to run for office.
--  Vihar Krastev

Escape From Ignorance and Chalga, John Feffer, Focal Points 

No End to Atonement in Sight

Germany apparently remains eternally wounded, dependent upon the healing power of remembrance. Germans must live with their trauma and occasionally reopen the wound to prevent it from festering. … "History or, to be more precise, the history we Germans have repeatedly mucked up, is a clogged toilet. We flush and flush, but the shit keeps rising," Günter Grass concluded in his 2002 novel "Crabwalk."

'Our Mothers, Our Fathers': Next-Generation WWII Atonement, Roman Leick, Spiegel Online

From Marijuana and Heroin in Vietnam to Anti-psychotic Drugs in Afghanistan

… there has been a giant, 682 percent increase in the number of psychoactive drugs — antipsychotics, sedatives, stimulants and mood stabilizers — prescribed to our troops between 2005 and 2011. … The data suggest that military doctors may prescribe psychoactive drugs for off-label use as sedatives, possibly so as to enable soldiers to function better in stressful combat situations. 

Wars on Drugs, Richard A. Friedman, The New York Times

Iron Lady Surpasses Hitchens's Record for Most Disrespectful Obituaries of a Brit

… when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman. … It always irks when rightwing folk demonstrate in a familial or exclusive setting the values that they deny in a broader social context. They're happy to share big windfall bonuses with their cronies, they'll stick up for deposed dictator chums when they're down on their luck, they'll find opportunities in business for people they care about. I hope I'm not being reductive but it seems Thatcher's time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most.

Russell Brand on Margaret Thatcher: 'I always felt sorry for her children', Russell Brand, The Guardian

Giving the C.I.A. Its Head in Pakistan

[American ambassador to Pakistan Cameron] Munter was reporting daily back to Washington about the negative impact of the armed-drone campaign and about how the C.I.A. seemed to be conducting a war in a vacuum, oblivious to the ramifications that the drone strikes were having on American relations with Pakistan’s government.

How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States, Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times

Emphasis, as always, added.

U.S. Concerns About Security Only Makes Pakistan More Insecure

“When the U.S. says that they are worried about the security [of] Pakistan’s nuclear arms, it means it fears that these might fall in the hands of such elements as the extremist Taliban,” said a commentary published by Pakistan’s Frontier Post in late 2011. “However, when [former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood] Qureshi says so, he means that these are in danger of being whisked away by the U.S. armed forces.”

Why Almost Nobody Likes News About Pakistani Nuclear Security, Elaine M. Grossman, National Journal

The Lone Gunman

The catalyst for changing course was the shattering defeat Pakistan suffered at the hands of the Indian army in the 1971 war, during which Pakistan lost half of its territory (when East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh). Khan argues that a sense of “never again” and a corresponding inability (or unwillingness) to rely upon allies have been powerful motivators for some countries to “go nuclear,” most notably China and Israel. The same held true for Pakistan. 

Pakistan's Nuclear Past as Prologue, Frank Klotz, The National Interest

Wasting Human Resources (Off-Topic From Foreign Policy)

There was a time when academia was society’s refuge for the eccentric, brilliant, and impractical. No longer. It is now the domain of professional self-marketers. As a result, in one of the most bizarre fits of social self-destructiveness in history, we seem to have decided we have no place for our eccentric, brilliant, and impractical citizens. Most languish in their mothers’ basements, at best making the occasional, acute intervention on the Internet.

Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit, David Graeber, The Baffler

Nuclear Whac-a-mole 

The Air Force wants to upgrade its aging nuclear missiles and the hundreds of underground silos that hold them. One idea it’s exploring: the construction of a sprawling network of underground subway tunnels to shuttle the missiles around like a mobile doomsday train. … During an atomic holocaust, mobile missiles are harder for an adversary to target than a static silo. Missiles could be positioned at launch holes placed at “regular intervals” along the length of the tunnels.

That's No Train! Air Force Eyes Subway for Nuclear Missiles, Robert Beckhusen, Wired Danger Room

Cost of One B-29: $605,360; Cost of One B-2 Stealth Bomber: $1.5 billion

… I just always was baffled by the debates over health care which always started with the premise that everything costs a zillion dollars and it's super expensive. … If you slip and fall and you go to the emergency room, it's $25,000. The debate was over who should pay for it instead of, "How come it's $25,000?"

… In something like the giant Lockheed planes, the debate is should we spend, what is it, $400 billion? … Why does each of those planes cost that much money? … What percent of that is profit for Lockheed Martin? Who died and said they have to get a seven percent carry on all their hours, and all their parts, and all their labor? Why?

Podcast: Steve Brill on Healthcare and the Media in America, Mike Webb, Pro Publica

U.S. Policy in Afghanistan a Study in Avoiding the Obvious

Concretely and consistently confronting the Pakistani leadership on its use of extremist proxies, or President Karzai on the criminally extractive nature [aka, corruption -- RW] of his government -- and not just in occasional spurts of public huffing and puffing -- would have taken a significant investment of political courage and fortitude. And those are attributes that I did not see much in evidence among senior U.S. civilian officials.

What Vali Nasr Gets Wrong, Sarah Chayes, Foreign Policy

Does conventional thinking that Afghanistan will revert to the Taliban upon U.S. and NATO withdrawal need to be reexamined?

Recent coverage of Afghanistan by Newsweek-slash-the Daily Beast has been illuminating. On December 30 Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau wrote:

"A shroud of anxiety hangs over the coming year in Afghanistan. It’s not only the country’s war-weary civilians who are beset with trepidation and uncertainty—even the Taliban are uncharacteristically worried. … To be sure, the Afghan insurgents unabashedly welcome the impending U.S. troop drawdown. Maybe now they can start to regroup and regain some of the momentum they’ve lost over the past three years. At the same time, however, they’re acutely aware that their ranks have been decimated, while the Americans have worked overtime to transform the Afghan National Army into a credible fighting force. The Taliban’s propaganda department keeps claiming that the ANA is a laughably hollow threat, unable to fill the vacuum left by the departing Western troops. But privately, the guerrillas in the field aren’t sure which side is stronger now."

Also …

… powerful former warlords are hastening to rebuild and rearm the private armies they commanded during the 1990s, preparing to fight the Taliban—and quite likely each other—once again.

Before that, on December 12, Yousafzai had asked Will the Taliban Destroy Itself? 

A serious power struggle has broken out among the Afghan Taliban’s top leaders. … the two top-ranking members of the Afghan insurgency’s ruling council, the Quetta Shura, are battling each other for control. … Some insurgents blame [top-ranking members] Mansoor as well as Zakir for the Taliban’s setbacks. Both men have failed to gain territory in the southern Afghan provinces of Kandahar and Helmand. On the contrary, they have lost control of former Taliban strongholds. "… they’ve started pointing fingers at each other," says [a] former cabinet minister. … To make the situation worse, he says, none of the other current leaders have any outstanding abilities as military commanders or as leaders.

A former Culture Ministry official told Yousafzai:  "Pakistan is sharpening its knife to remove the Taliban like a cancer from its body."

As one who doesn't follow Afghanistan as closely as he should, the idea that, once the United States and NATO leave it, Afghanistan will revert to Taliban rule was received wisdom. For added perspective on whether or not that prognosis has been upended, I enlisted the aid of a few colleagues.

Robert Naiman, Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy:

U.S. officials have been cited (not quoted) in the press as saying that when the U.S. leaves, it is de facto ceding control of Taliban-dominated areas to the Taliban. I don't see how you can credibly call that "losing" for the Taliban. Of course, you can move the goalposts, and say that the Taliban lose if they don't take Kabul. That the Taliban can be prevented from taking over the whole country seems like a very plausible goal; after all, the Taliban didn't control the whole country before the U.S. invasion.

Mark Safranski, historian and proprietor of ZenPundit:

The Taliban controlled 95% of Afghanistan before the US invasion.

That was a different Taliban though than what exists today.

The Taliban has several strategic problems, if their goal is ruling Afghanistan as an independent government:

1. They are deeply dependent on the ISI for support, training, intel, safe houses, supplies, etc. Far more so than in 2001. They have not been able to move in large-formation units in open combat as they did against the Northern Alliance in years and most commanders with such experience are long dead. Shaking free of Pakistani Operational control will be very difficult.

2. They remain a radical Pushtun movement.  … They are also unpopular and feared which will come to the fore when America withdraws.

3. Without very generous foreign aid, the economy of Afghanistan is going to rapidly implode by orders of magnitude. Resulting in widespread destitution and likely, unrest and militarization of the population as groups scramble to grab what dwindling resources they can from whomever has or will offer any. Only some kind of negotiated settlement will keep the international aid flowing on which the economy of Afghanistan depends.  A Taliban victory by force of arms will end that aid, or most of it.

Steve Hynd, editor of the Agonist:

The unstated question is whether preventing the Taliban winning is the same as a victory worth the name. We're talking about a reset back to the immediate post-Soviet civil war -- I wouldn't call that a win for anyone. 

Naiman:

I agree that the situation has changed since before the US invasion. My point was simply that to the extent that the goal is to keep the Taliban from controlling all of Afghanistan, that's a very realistic and modest goal, because it was true before even the US invaded. There are a whole bunch of folks who don't want the Taliban to control all of Afghanistan who have the power and willingness to do something about it and have demonstrated that power and willingness in the past: armed Tajiks, India,  Russia,  Iran, for example. If in addition to everything they had before, they now have US airpower, and if the US accomplished anything in the last 10 years, it stands to reason that the Taliban are going to have a hard time taking back the 95% of Afghanistan they had before. 

So, to the extent that some people in the Taliban think that they can restore the pre-US invasion status quo, they are likely to be disappointed. People can call that "losing" if they want. To the extent that their goal is to drive the US out, they can claim victory to the extent that the US leaves. Studies of the insurgency have indicated that fighting the Americans/the foreigners has been a prime motivation for many insurgents. To the extent that that is true, it stands to reason that if the US withdraws, some people are going to say, ok, I accomplished my goal, I defeated the Americans, now there's no reason for me to die fighting fellow Afghans. In that sense, a US withdrawal will weaken the insurgency, but I don't think this is the kind of "victory" that the Pentagon originally had in mind.

People in Afghanistan are talking about what happens when the US leaves. That's good. It causes fear, and that's not good, but it also makes people talk more realistically about the future. A similar dynamic happened in Iraq when people started to believe that the US was really leaving: they started to focus on other problems. The Taliban will likely come to accept that they can't control all of Afghanistan; people in Afghanistan who don't like the Taliban will likely come to accept that the Taliban, in some form, are a permanent feature of the Afghanistan landscape, whether they like it or not. Hopefully, people on both sides who want to live in a unified country in some sense will at some point decide that they prefer accommodation to continued war. It's beyond of the power of the West to decide when that point will be, but it's more likely to occur the more the West withdraws its ground troops. 

Hynd:

I believe Yousafzai is dead wrong about Pak intentions re: the Taliban. What they've been doing is spreading money around with the Pak Taliban to get them to stop attacking Pak assets and ditto for trying to bring the Afghan Taliban back under their full control as a proxy force. Anyone who thinks the Pak military and ISI are going to excise the Taliban like a cancer is either a subject of Kayani's Jedi mind tricks or smoking Afghan hashish. They're too valuable a potential proxy -- mostly to deny Indian influence, to act as a training ground for other proxy groups and to enable/allow Pakistani strategic maneuvering space in Afghanistan in the event of an Indo/Pak war -- and that calculus has not been significantly changed by a decade of US involvement.

Naiman:

I'm not privy to the internals, but common sense broadly supports Steve's view. If you believe that the ISI and Pakistani military have been pursuing this proxy policy to the extent that they could get away with it for the last 10 years, why would one expect them to cut off the Taliban now? It doesn't make any sense. Particularly, given that the US is now "leaving," and that the US recently has made noises in the direction of accommodating Pakistani concerns and trying to bring Pakistan onside in its "reconciliation" plans. If I'm Pakistan, I'm thinking: my policy has been vindicated. Now is not the time to cut; now is the time to play through. To cash in chips Pakistan needs to keep the Taliban as close as they can, not cut them loose. Pakistan's main value to the US in all this now is not helping the US kill Taliban leaders but helping push Taliban leaders towards a deal.

We'll give the final word to Naiman:

As for unstated questions, my favorite is: how is the deal that the US can get with the Taliban now better than the deal it could have gotten from the Taliban in 2006? Who considers that difference justified by the additional bloodshed of the last six years?

At the New York Times, Declan Walsh and Donald G. McNeil write about Islamist extremists targeting Pakistani women who work for the UN administering polio vaccines.

After militants stalked and killed eight of them over the course of a three-day, nationwide vaccination drive, the United Nations suspended its anti-polio work in Pakistan on Wednesday. … Militant commanders have been criticizing polio vaccination campaigns … since 2007 when Maulvi Fazlullah, a radical preacher on a white horse. … claimed that polio vaccines were part of a plot to sterilize Muslim children, but in recent years Taliban commanders in the militant hub of North Waziristan have come up with a more political complaint: they say that immunization can resume only when American drones stop killing their comrades.

Compounding matters

Suspicion of vaccination has also intensified since the C.I.A. used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to run a hepatitis B vaccination scheme in order to spy on Osama bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad in 2011.

In fact

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who analyzes local support for vaccines in different countries, believes the C.I.A.’s use of Dr. Afridi has hurt the polio drive more than the Pakistan government or the eradication campaign itself will admit.

As with Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old education activist that members of the Taliban shot in the head and neck, they're demonstrating that "they consider women to be legitimate targets." On a side note, this amounts to a declaration that, in fact, the Taliban are less concerned with theological credibility -- 50 Islamic clerics subsequently issued a fatwa against the attackers -- than in enforcing their whims.

Another victim of Pakistans' use of Dr. Afridi is the doctor himself. Matthieu Akins reports at GQ. Pakistan's ISI, its main intelligence agency

… arrested him as he was driving home in Peshawar on May 23, and as they say in Pakistan, "he was disappeared." Afridi was taken to a secret prison, leaving unanswered the question of what exactly happened that day in Abbottabad.

The $25,000,000 reward for bin Laden was left unclaimed.