As massive bureaucracies, they also both contain a number of dimwitted people, who now ensconced in their well-paid bureaucratic sinecures, are solely concerned about moving up to the next pay grade, where the “Peter Principle” ultimately determines their ability to function.
To use a grim, black humor metaphor, a number of these suits have now well and truly ‘drunk the Kool-Aid” as regards Pakistan.
There is simply no other explanation for the implications of Washington’s potentially disastrous ratcheting up of its confrontations with Pakistan, as nothing good whatsoever can possibly come up it. Whoever in Beltwayistan decided that the “smart move” to pressure Pakistan to do more in the war on terror was to withhold $800 million, a third of nearly $2 billion in security aid promised to Pakistan, to show Washington’s displeasure over Pakistan's removal of U.S. military trainers, limits on visas for U.S. personnel and other bilateral irritants should be promptly bastinadoed, handcuffed, blindfolded and promptly dispatched on the first available military transport to Guantanamo.
Washington’s obtuseness in this instance is so breathtaking that it well and truly beggars belief.
Since 9/11, Washington has been obsessed with the war on terror.
And what exactly is the most horrifying weapon that those wishing America ill might use?
Nuclear weapons.
And the highly respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, estimates that Pakistan now possess 90–110 nuclear weapons. SIPRI Director Daniel Nord noted earlier this month that south Asia is “the only place in the world where you have a nuclear weapons arms race.”
Pakistan developed its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to India, which Islamabad has regarded as its existential foe since the Raj fragmented in 1947. This was and remains at the core of Pakistani defensive thinking, but the last decade has seen Washington flooding Pakistan with billions of dollars in aid, along with demands that Islamabad reorient itself to align with American objectives in south Asia, which means Afghanistan – period. This has increasingly become untenable domestically, as the Zadari government is perceived as a U.S. “lackey,” (to use a good Cold War term), while Washington cavalierly violates Pakistani sovereignty on a regular basis, raining Predator drone attacks on sites in the country’s turbulent NorthWest Frontier Province, abutting the country’s frontier with Pakistan. Today, three suspected U.S. missile strikes in north-western Pakistan’s Waziristan district killed at least 38 alleged militants, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Does Washington really want to destabilize this nation?
And, what will the implications be for the energy community if relations between Washington and Islamabad continue to deteriorate? More >>>
Location: Cayman Islands
