With nukes and the need to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, we did not risk pushing democracy and instead backed "our man" General Musharraf.
The only thing that could be said positive about this was that we didn't have much choice back in 2001 after 9/11 when we looked for options to deal with the Taliban Afghanistan regime.
But this policy is not sustainable:
US policy towards Pakistan is in rigor mortis. Almost six years after 9/11, the substantial failure of the pact with Gen Musharraf is plain for everyone to see. Osama bin Laden remains at large, the Taliban are back in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, the A Q Khan network is believed to be in operation and the one thing the deal was supposed to avoid---severe political instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan---is at hand. Yet, the United States shows no signs of making some deft corrections to its Pakistan policy.
America's handling of the popular movement against Gen Musharraf's dictatorship fits a pattern. If it's not our "son of a bitch" facing a protesting crowds, then you have a "colour revolution", televised for international audiences. Spokesmen from various US government departments express sympathy for the struggle for democracy. But if it's "our son of a bitch", then Washington maintains silence in public, and hopes for a palace coup in private. Better that a dictator is replaced by another, than allow the mob on the streets to cause a new regime to be installed. There is some merit in this approach, especially if it can achieved along with a democratic veneer, but it is also one which America will be unable to take credit for. You won't, for instance, find too many Pakistanis thankful to America for the elections in 1988 that brought Benazir Bhutto to power, would you?
America must show greater sympathy and support for the mass movement against Musharraf. But not merely to become popular with the Pakistani people. Rather because, as Rohit Pradhan argues, the stable, moderate Pakistan that is crucial for international security is impossible unless it is also democratic.
And face it, Musharraf is no fool. He knows we aren't happy with needing him. So he has little incentive to really defeat our common enemies so that we will continue to need him. That's realpolitik, too. It isn't just limited to our side when we play the realism game. At some point, we need to make sure that we are not siding with a dictatorship against the people. If we can't transition to this, we will guarantee that popular support will flow to extremists and we won't be able to get off the tiger.
And yet, as long as we need Pakistan to have real access to landlocked Afghanistan, this is difficult to pull off. Which is another reason to destroy the Iranian mullah regime and cut the Gordion Knot:
Open up a supply route through Iran to Afghanistan and suddenly we don't need to be quite so reliant on our Central Asian bases or so careful with a Pakistan that will not crack down on the Taliban who hide and organize inside Pakistan. We won't have to be so shy when it comes to hunting bin Laden there, either.
Remember, Musharraf may be our sonofabitch, but he's still a sonofabitch. And the new realists want all our foreign relations to be based on the policy that has given us Pakistan.
