Doc Madhu on “Sweet Strategery of Strategic Depth”
Onparkstreet, a.k.a. Dr. Madhu has a post I rather liked on Pakistan’s maniacal quest for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, over at Chicago Boyz:
The Super Sweet Strategery of Strategic Depth
Pakistan’s beliefs in the value of seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan were influenced by two factors. The support it received from the U.S. in waging an armed response against the Soviet occupation triggered the belief. The success of that endeavour with no apparent costs to itself, gave Islamabad the illusion of being able to play a major role in the geo-politics of Central Asia. This more than anything else led to the belief that Afghanistan provided the strategic leverage Pakistan had long been seeking. The energy-rich Muslim states of Central Asia beckoned both Pakistan and the energy-seeking multi-nationals. Iran’s standing up to western pressures was proving an obstacle to long-term plans for energy extraction from the region. Afghanistan offered both shorter energy routing and political control through Pakistan.
V. R. Raghavan (The Hindu, 2001)
Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, “wants a reliable proxy that has territorial control of the P2K area,” Mr. Dressler adds. This desire is the result of Pakistan’s historic conflict with India. “If India comes across the border, Pakistan can fall back into Afghanistan and drive them out. It’s about strategic depth vis-à-vis India. As long as that continues to be a driving concern, Pakistan’s support for the Haqqani network will continue.”
The Christian Science Monitor (via Small Wars Journal)
A highly plausible future scenario indeed (regarding the second quoted item). In the event that the Indians decide on a massive ground invasion into Pakistan and march sturdily through the landscape of jihadi-networks and scattering Pakistani troops – with nary a nuke in sight and the US sitting idly by – it sounds like a winner of strategy. The supply lines to the Indians will, of course, be Bollywood unicorns pooping ammunition and some sort of MREs.
On the other hand, serious people seem to take Pakistani strategic depth worries seriously. The Indians are forever being told that they must take Pakistani fears of regional encroachment into account so that the United States (ISAF) may have a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan that is stable. Although….
Read the rest here.
The key to understanding Pakistan is that it does not really function like a state in the Westphalian sense, nor do it’s rulers want it to do so, the state merely being a vehicle for their own personal and class aggrandizement. Nor are the official borders of Pakistan the same as the borders that exist in elite Pakistani imaginations. Nor is Pakistan an ally of the United States in any sense that most normal people would use the term “alliance”, as allies are rarely the epicenter of one’s enemies in a shooting war. It is as if in 1944, as we jointly prepared for Operation Overlord, the British were raising volunteer Scottish Waffen SS divisions to kill American troops on the beaches of Normandy.
Strategy works within the confines of reality, strategy does not confine reality. We give Pakistan billions of dollars in military aid annually, and they use some of it to fund and train Taliban who have killed Americans, every year, for the last ten years, and continue to do so while their leadership is safely ensconced in Peshwar, Quetta and Rawalpindi.
Every year.
Think about that as you sign your 1040.
If we our leaders can’t recognize admit in public who America’s enemies really are, how can we win a war?
Our relationship with Pakistan is strategically toxic.
onparkstreet:
January 7th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Thanks for the link and discussion zen! . The impetus behind the post was the fact that I kept running up against vaguely "approving" comments of the Pakistani strategy on some "milblogs" that I read. Approving in the sense of "it makes sense in terms of the Pakistani point of view." . So I wanted to explore the conventional wisdom that I hear so solemnly repeated here, there, and everywhere and see whether it made sense. I think a good case can be made that the strategy doesn’t accomplish anything. The first link points out that Benazir Bhutto herself questioned the strategy and wanted a partnership with Iran instead. Iran is not landlocked, produces oil, etc. . The other bit of conventional wisdom I wanted to attack was the idea that the Army is a force of moderation – something Max Boot hints at in the blog post I quoted in my own. . One of the many 800-pound gorillas in the room is that the Af-Pak strategy created by the Obama administration (and the Bush admin made the same conceptual error) is that the thinking on Pakistan is not based on a good quality understanding of the history of the region. . Old Washington hands went back to the old Cold War relationship without even thinking about how everything is different now. To this day, our generals swan around with Pakistani generals and have their pictures taken for photo-ops. This so misunderstands the situation as to make your head hurt. . I hate saying this btw. I mean, I really, really, really hate it. Good people really screwed some things up because they laked the intellectual curiosity to understand the region. . Instead of obsessing about Galula and Lawrence of Arabia – and all of that – someone should have been reading about the history of India and Pakistan and the various insurgencies therein. . In a way, my post fits into Dr. Finel’s points. You need to know what you are talking about before you design a plan. Big duh, huh? . – Madhu
onparkstreet:
January 7th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
One more thing: my post really was about American thinking and not Pakistan. I wanted to understand how it is that decision-makes came to the conclusions they did.
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Here are some of my theories:
1. Poor quality information about India and Pakistan and Afghanistan- and all the regional relationships.
2. Lack of intellectual curiosity by the military leadership about insurgencies outside those favored for study by the military intellectuals.
3. The use of non-regional experts and, instead, political favorites, for advice.
4. Old Cold Warriors going with what they know: a transactional relationship with a rentier army.
5. Anti-India bias at the higher levers of decision-making because of the old Cold War animosity.
6. What else? I’d like someone to write about it someday.
7. I hope I am not being unfair. I don’t mean anything by the above. The best people have blinders. All human beings do. I know I’ve got them too.
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– Madhu
onparkstreet:
January 7th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
And, finally. All of the above is speculative and very likely could be bunk. With the exception of the ease with which our senior leaders in the military and State and all that went with the bad old Cold War thinking. There, I think, the evidence is overwhelming. The Army is NOT a force of moderation institutionally so no amount of carrot or cajoling – or even, in a way, sticks – was going to fundamentally change things. We wasted a lot of time chasing a chimera.
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– Madhu