America ignores friends, bribes enemies insufficiently and mismanages the resulting crises. The country spends tens of billions dollars in a pointless Afghan war which it failed to end promptly on the winning note. Pakistan is America’s closest – indeed, indispensable – ally in that war. The US recently lost the Central Asian bases after Russians bribed the locals with mere $2 billion of aid. America proudly refused the auction and left the bases humiliatingly. Obama didn’t get a lesson and continues a similar policy with Pakistan.
One reason is the State Department’s high-nosed Old European attitude unmitigated by European cynical pragmatism. Another reason is sheer stupidity and idealism. There is no shortage of inflationary cash: the US spends tens of billions on the Muslim-dominated UN, hundreds of billions on Iraq, and trillions on the likes of AIG.
Obama offered Pakistan mere 1.5bn a year for the next five years. That’s a slap on the face for a nuclear power which abandoned the Islamic world for Americans. The amount is negligible for a country of 150 million people. It does not compensate Pakistan for lost profits from ceasing nuclear proliferation.
Obama attached impossible strings to the aid. How Pakistani ISI secret service is supposed to end its cooperation with Taliban? When the US clearly loses the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan reasonably seeks pacifying its unruly border regions, and so ISI engages Taliban and their Pashtun support base.
Curiously, democracy-minded America opposes to Pashtun involvement in Afghani government as it would undermine the America’s puppet ruler Karzai who can hold on neither by democratic nor military means. Taliban is America’s problem but Pakistani solution. Perhaps the solution is misguided as the tolerated Islamists would eventually take over Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal – but Obama can hardly convince Pakistani government that he knows better.
If America wants Pakistan to act against its own perceived self-interest, even half-heartedly, it has to pay a lot. The West’s quest for Pakistan is lost: unless its government miraculously gets the common sense of divesting from western provinces with heavy presence of militant Islamists, they will definitely take over the corrupt and inept government.
The US administration only worsens the things with its liberal rhetoric. Only the warped minds of Washington pundits could produce an idea of liberalizing a country which strives to survive the onslaught of Islamists whose mentality belongs to the Middle Ages. Torture and mass executions cannot save secular Pakistan at this point, either, but at least the Americans should not impair the Pakistani government’s attempts at saving the country. At least, that struggle will buy Israel a few more years before Pakistani nuclear bombs make their way to international terrorists.
The North Korean case is dauntingly similar. The communists only want to survive. In their wildest dreams after Camus cognac they don’t presume attacking Japan or even South Korea. By now, the disparity of weapons is beyond doubt, communist fifth column in the South is no more, and the North has too many of industrial targets that it cannot run a guerrilla war. All of its military provocations are the regime’s way of crying for aid.
Supporting the brutal regime is exceedingly immoral, and an alternative is there: bombing the North’s nuclear and missile facilities. In that scenario, the West would also have to use nuclear weapons against Korea’s underground storages of plutonium. Such a bombing would reestablish the American nuclear credibility and reinstate international deterrence and stability.
Short of such bold measures, America has no alternative to buying the communists off. Unlike the Iranian nukes which target Israel, the Korean ones can also reach America as the North won’t hesitate selling them to terrorists, especially that the communists have strong connections to Al Qaeda through A.Q.Khan, the progenitor of Pakistani and Korean nukes.
The US failure to pay adequately would result in North Korea selling the bombs around. It certainly has enough plutonium for five or six bombs, and can reprocess spent uranium rods for one more. Iran, by the way, follows the lead and mastered the technology to extract plutonium from its Russian-built Bushehr reactor.
After having been paid, North Korea will continue extortion and yes, America will have no choice but to continue the aid. Succumbing to extortion versus fighting on, that’s always the choice. Despite payments, the North will continue selling nuclear and missile technology, and possibly the bomb. We would see a critical confirmation of the upcoming sale when the communists conduct the second successful test – as we’ve noted before, the first one has failed. They need to show the buyer that the big fat thing works.
The only way to stop nuclear bombs from reaching the market is offering to buy them for astronomic amounts, no string attached. American government can always overbid the terrorists.
Eventually, nuclear technology will be widely available. Nuclear programs of Pakistan, Algeria, Libya, and Syria took the world by surprise. With know-how from Pakistan, Korea, and Iran, any country can build nukes clandestinely.
The world where large cities live in relative safety is doomed, but Obama is wrong to bring the showdown closer by refusing adequate payments to Pakistan and North Korea.
