New ASP Report Urges Long-Term Strategy for U.S. Policy Toward Pakistan

A new report released this week by the bipartisan American Security Project offers some perspective in the tenuous aftermath of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in Pakistan, and underscores the importance of a long-term U.S. commitment to stability in the strategic and nuclear-armed Muslim nation.

“The most serious threat [to Pakistan] is not a short term collapse and Islamist takeover,” notes report author Timothy Hoyt in Pakistan and the United States: Rebalancing the Relationship.  “It is, instead, the continued erosion of institutions that provide for economic well-being and development, political representation and participation, and physical security” that may set the stage for the expansion of ungoverned sanctuaries that threaten Pakistan’s central government.

To illustrate, Hoyt points to the historically lackluster electoral performance of radical Islamist parties and their peripheral support, largely relegated to the northwest frontier areas where the central government has never exerted much control.  Regardless, he notes, “the Islamist threat may emerge more gradually as a viable alternative if existing structures prove incapable of, or are prevented from, providing meaningful political reform, economic opportunity and representative government for the Pakistani people.”

Because of Pakistan’s strategic position and its importance to the United States in the “war on terror,” Hoyt, a professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, is calling on policy makers to reexamine American policy toward Pakistan in the interest of long-term security.

Too often in recent years he argues, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan has been framed exclusively by the “war on terror.” As a result, policy makers, journalists, and the public have been too quick to view the alternatives there as limited to a choice between military dictatorship and Islamist revolution.

Hoyt calls for an approach that harnesses all of the tools in America’s arsenal to help the Pakistani government meet this complex set of challenges itself and enable a “soft landing” in its transition to civilian rule.

His recommendations include refocusing U.S. policy toward Pakistan on strengthening those institutions of Pakistani society that provide for economic well-being, political participation, the rule of law, and physical security.  In the process, he notes, the United States must be willing to accept the results – including the winners of Pakistan’s upcoming elections – regardless of who they are. 

The U.S. must also encourage the Pakistani Army to disengage from politics while increasing ties between the U.S. military and its Pakistani counterpart, and help to transition the focus of Pakistan’s security forces from India and Kashmir to the more serious internal threat posed by jihadist groups.

Above all, notes Hoyt, the U.S. must completely recast the nature of its relationship with Pakistan away from its early Cold War status as a security partner with few strings attached and toward one that conditions future support on signs of progress.  “We must reassure Pakistan that we will stay in the region…. But we must also exercise the kind of diplomatic ‘tough love’ that confronts them in areas of non-cooperation.”

Read the full report, “Pakistan and the United States: Rebalancing the Relationship,” here [3].

Download full report (PDF) [4] 

The American Security Project (ASP) is a non-profit, bipartisan public policy research and education initiative dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of national security and foreign policy issues. It is organized around the belief that honest public discussion of national security requires an informed citizenry—one that understands the dangers and opportunities of the twenty-first century and the spectrum of available responses. ASP was formed to help Americans—from opinion leaders to the general public—understand how national security issues relate directly to them, and to explain challenges and threats in a way that spurs constructive action.