Since the top-secret raid that killed the al Qaeda leader near Islamabad last month, Washington has sent a host of top officials, including CIA chief Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to call in Islamabad, ramping up pressure on an already strained alliance.
Analysts say Washington may be seeking to goad Pakistan into assaulting militant havens in North Waziristan or into going after bomb-making factories believed to be fueling violence in neighboring Afghanistan.
Officials in Pakistan, facing intense public pressure over the unilateral raid, have pushed back by throwing out U.S. military trainers and warning that scoldings from Washington may send it into China's open arms.
My basic view is that it is better to have Pakistan as an imperfect ally rather than as enemy. It is frustrating that so many of Pakistan's problems are self inflicted, but they do have problems. And as long as we need Pakistan to fight in Afghanistan, there are limits to how far we can push Pakistan. It would be nice to have the freedom of action to really lay down the law to the Pakistanis and tell them what they need to do to keep us as an ally. But we aren't there yet.
And Pakistan has friendly relations with China which Pakistan threatens to open up as an alternative.
Fortunately, Pakistan's China card won't allow them to draw to an inside straight. China declined the Pakistani offer to set up shop in the port of Gwadar (or Gawadar), which China has been developing. This highlights the main reason Pakistan needs America--India could blockade Pakistan into submission in case of war. Pakistan needs someone to keep those sea lines of communication open. China is nowhere near the stage where they could think of basing naval elements in Gwadar to defend Pakistan's sea trade from India let alone America. So Pakistan can't stray very far from us.
Of course, that assumes Pakistan makes the choice between America and China on a rational basis. Part of our problem is that we never know if our pressure will cause the Pakistanis to just go irrational and make a clean break with us out of frustration--just as we seem to be in the mood to do that despite the benefits we get from the American-Pakistani alliance along with the frustrations.
So we need each other. And we each hate that we need the other. This is where our State Department earns its pay. Call it "smart" or "nuanced," but just get it done.
