Pakistan is shrugging off proposed U.S. aid cuts but frets that Washington could take more drastic measures to deter what it sees as the South Asian nation's support for Taliban militants causing chaos in neighboring Afghanistan.
Washington plans to imminently slash "security assistance" to Pakistan, U.S. congressional aides told Reuters on Wednesday, although the type, scale and length of the cuts was unclear. A day earlier, the White House said it would suspend about $255 million in already delayed military assistance.
This American decision is not unjustified.
But I will caution that if Iran looked like Pakistan--a nuclear power with a troubled relationship as a frenemy--we'd call our Iran policy a tremendous success.
And we do need Pakistan for supply lines to Afghanistan.
And some help with Afghanistan is better than full opposition.
Yet we need more help from Pakistan to shut down jihadi sanctuaries in Pakistan that enable Afghan jihadis to fight on. That's the real point of a "regional" strategy for Afghanistan.
But it isn't all stick given that Pakistan just received new attack helicopters from America:
Pakistan received the first three of 24 American AH-1Z “Viper” helicopter gunships at the end of 2017, with another nine arriving in 2018.
Weapons like that are valuable on the border to hunt jihadis--if Pakistan will seriously hunt jihadis, of course.
Pakistan can certainly look more to China in place of America, but Pakistan will find that trading an American ally for China, given that India-America relations will automatically go up, is a poor Plan B. China is unlikely to provide aid without even worse strings. And reequipping with Chinese weapons will be a long and expensive path that will reduce Pakistani military power in relation to India that will have more access to American weapons and technology.
Let's hope the pressure works and gets Pakistan to behave better on the jihadi issue. It would be better for Pakistan, America, India, and Afghanistan.
UPDATE: America offers hope to Pakistan to avoid backlash:
The senior Trump administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington hoped that the aid suspension would be enough to communicate its concern to Islamabad.
But the official cautioned that the freeze was also not the only tool that America had to pressure the country -- suggesting it might resort to other measures, if needed. ...
[Secretary of Defense] Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, said he was not concerned about America's ability to use Pakistan as a gateway to resupply U.S. forces in Afghanistan. ...
"We're still working with Pakistan and we would restore the aid if we see decisive movements against the terrorists -- who are as much a threat against Pakistan as they are to us."
So pressure--and ways to relieve pressure. Maybe it will work this time.
UPDATE: Yeah, the way out is explicit according to Mattis:
[We're] still working with Pakistan, and we would restore the aid if we see decisive movements against the terrorists, who are as much of a threat against Pakistan as they are against us. If you look at the checkered history of what terrorists have done along that border region.
We need this to work.
