The Real Fight Updated Posted by Michael Cohen

Listening to the Netroots Nation discussion on Afghanistan, Matt Yglesias makes the following observation - and references the moderator of the panel, NSN's own Heather Hulrburt:

Hurlburt observed that everyone on the panel kept acknowledging that Pakistan is really the more important half of this equation and yet all the talk had been about Afghanistan. So she got her panelists to briefly address Pakistan. But then with that done the discussion shifted again, as if by force of gravity, back to Afghanistan.

That’s reflected my general experience of how these discussions go, and I think it’s a real problem. It’s genuinely true that the situation in Pakistan matters more and that the Afghanistan situation is worrying primarily because if its possible implications for Pakistan. That means we really do need to be talking about Pakistan.

My colleague Parag Khanna and I agree - and we said the same thing a few weeks ago. Now we took some grief on some of our specific Pakistan suggestions: some of them deserved. But the larger point stands; the real fight is in Pakistan not Afghanistan and that's where US energy needs to be focused and not just militarily, but also economically and diplomatically.

Comments

[Zathras]

Consider what happens in the event of a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. The argument could be made that the Pakistani security services are somewhat constrained now, with Taliban embattled across the border and seeking to expand their control within Pakistan, from supporting Islamist terrorism in the way they had prior to 9/11. Without the American military in Afghanistan, a return to the old policy of supporting Islamist groups, including al Qaeda, in Afghanistan would be at the least tempting to Pakistanis still convinced that the country's main security problem is India.

The problem here is plainly of Pakistani rather than American provenance. Pakistan has so many internal political troubles mostly because its government has been deficient since Partition, many years before the American government took an interest in the region. What the United States can do to win the "battle for Pakistan" it is mostly doing already: blowing up key Taliban leaders, providing aid and intelligence. No doubt there are a number of things the Obama administration could be doing better, but shifting "nation-building" efforts from Afghanistan to Pakistan -- a much larger country with more complicated politics and greater levels of anti-American feeling -- is a Plan B borne solely of despair that Plan A can work, not a real alternative.

[SNLII]

Consensus: The center of gravity is in the Pasthun population of Pakistan.

OK, everyone go back to debating what we're going to do in Afghanistan.

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