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Nawaz Offers Views on Changing Pakistani Perceptions of U.S.
Shuja Nawaz, Director of the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center, was interviewed on The Takeaway morning radio news program on the Pakistan flood situation. The discussion focused on the U.S. being the single largest donor of aid, and the potential for Pakistanis to shift their perceptions of America. However, Nawaz warns of the long-term effects of America's goodwill, stating that "changing image takes a long time."
South Asia Center's Shikha Bhatnagar Spotlighted
Shikha Bhatnagar's recent appointment as Associate Director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, is yet another manifestation of a growing trend of second generation Indian Americans' advent into leading Washington, DC think tanks as senior policy analysts and associates.
Chuck Hagel Discusses START Ratification on RussiaToday
Atlantic Council Chairman Chuck Hagel was interviewed for RussiaToday on delays in ratification of the START treaty in both the U.S. and Russia.
FEATURED ISSUE
In August the sunny calm and quiet that is a Swedish summer will be shattered by the impact of Joint Direct Attack Munitions dropped by F-16CM Fighting Falcons from US Air Force Europe.
Escalation in Pakistan?
Bernard Finel | March 20, 2009
David Sanger and Eric Schmitt’s report in the New York Times that "President Obama and his national security advisers are considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the unruly tribal areas to strike at a different center of Taliban power in Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan" raises serious questions about the Obama Administration’s policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There are three issues here:
(1) Airstrikes don’t work. Occasionally, we do manage to kill of a senior AQ or Taliban leader. But there is literally no evidence that this has had a positive strategic impact. AQ remains in business. They maintain a powerful virtual infrastructure and communicate with followers. They trade best practices and continue to build ties to other Islamist organization. And the Taliban, of course, has been growing more powerful year in and year out. When the strongest argument one can make for a policy is a counter-factual (i.e. Afghanistan and Pakistan would be even worse off without our Predator strikes) you know you have a tremendously weak policy option.
( 2) These airstrikes represent an unsustainable, and likely unlawful, continuation of a policy of extrajudicial killings adoped in extremis after 9/11. Ultimately, it simply cannot be the policy of the United States that it has the right to target for execution any individual anywhere in the world that it unilaterally — and in secret — judges to be an enemy combatant. Simply because of the incredible danger of establishing this precedent we should back away from it.
(3) The public diplomacy consequences of this policy are nothing short of disastrous. We cannot have a productive policy with Pakistan without the support of the Pakistani people, and this approach absolutely poisons the well. For that reason alone, if no other, the presumption against airstrikes in Pakistan ought to be tremendously high. Which is not to say that if you can kill someone like Bin Laden it should not be done, but this should be an extremely rare last resort, not a center-piece of our approach.
Dr. Bernard I. Finel, an Atlantic Council contributing editor,is a senior fellow at the American Security Project. An earlier version of this essay was published at ASP's FlashPoint blog. AP Photo.
Comments
It is hightime that global comity of nations under the umbrella of UN to give fresh thought to the rising pandemic of terrorism and extremism, it is time for a unique but absolute approach to counter such evil & the most feasible answer in our arsenal today is NEUTRON bomb.
Both Al Qaeda & Taliban are ripe cases and need to be taken head on for a possible another half century of peace - perhaps.
(1) Actually, airstrikes *do* appear to work. If they didn't, Pakistan and the Taliban wouldn't care, and two US Presidents (who are totally different) would not have followed the same strategy. This is just an observation of how multiple players are behaving.
(2) Oh please, the US isn't setting a precedent. How many centuries have there been "wars in the shadows"? Nor is this the first time the US has done "extralegal" activities. See the Barbary Pirates and US Marines. So much for the moral position; turning to the current reality and "realpolitik": let's say the US suddenly stopped to "set a higher standard". Who will care? Who would change their behavior? Could I see your cost/benefit analysis?
(3) This approach doesn't appear to poison the well with the Pakistani people. There's large demonstrations in Pak, but not against UAVs. Which appears to demonstrate two things (a) people in Pak *can* hold demonstrations for things they care about, and (b) UAVs aren't on the list. Now if there are broad demonstrations against UAVs, please post them - I want to learn more about the Pak situation than I know.
You'd have far more credibility if your statements referenced real-world events, rather than being extremely broad brushstrokes, using only assumptions. I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just saying that the data I have to date disagrees with you, and so you'll need to provide data to make me change my mind.
good review!
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