United States' Pakistan Policy

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Pakistan is facing new realities. It’s once staunch ally; it’s great guarantor & savior, the United States of America has changed the direction of its gun and is now pointing it towards Pakistan. Once again, the West and the Allied forces have raped Pakistan’s sovereignty through indiscriminate use of artillery force by two NATO helicopters and this is not the first time such an incident has happened. NATO violated the sovereignty of Pakistan 5 times towards the end of 2010.
Before Pakistan decides on its course of action, it is important that the current international relations scenario is looked at from a couple of perspectives. Firstly, Regime Change, the tool the United States has for so long successfully used to maintain its dominance over the world doesn’t seem to be an option for it due to the fragmented political landscape of the country with most of the parties with no inclination to the West. The only political force that would have been somewhat compliant would have been the current ruling dispensation of PPP but that is extremely unpopular at the moment not just with the masses but also with the establishment, thanks to the memo-gate scandal. The other popular parties Tehreek-e- Insaaf & PML N are both right wing and the US would not be expecting much support from them.

The other factor is economic. Pakistan should not be expecting much economic support from the US the economy of which grew by 0.4% in the first half. This coupled with involvement with Iraq and Afghanistan implies that (a) the US will not be able to extend the same kind of economic assistance as in the past, & (b) it may not be able to engage in direct conflict with Pakistan either which will be more intense that Afghanistan and Iraq. With these limiting factors, subservience from Pakistan will be difficult to extract. With no stick and no carrot available to the US, two options for it remain: (i) pressurizing Pakistan through a proxy & (ii) balkanization of the country.
Let’s look at the first option first. Since the 1960s, what has forced Pakistan to take up a partisan foreign policy has been the India factor. Hence Pakistan signed the SEATO and CENTO to be able to safeguard itself under the United States umbrella. And guess what will cause Pakistan to kneel to the United States again: threat from India. It is therefore imperative that Pakistan works to manage its relations with India and the recent efforts to give India the MFN status in Trade is a wise one. But Pakistan needs to keep its guard up against any possible intervention by CIA to carry out a terrorist attack in India using Pakistani soil which could make matters bad for Pakistan.
The other option has been the food for so many conspiracy theorists. Much has already been written about the purported balkanization of Pakistan & can be found on the following link
http://www.google.com.pk/url?q=http://open.salon.com/blog/stuartbramhall/2011/03/09/redrawing_the_map_the_balkanization_of_pakistan&sa=U&ei=ahzRTtrwLsGZhQeq_5DiDQ&ved=0CBEQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNFGyJ83lRyY1b-s_gFSUMaDep7OsA

The conspiracy theory goes like this: the US would be ensuring that Pakistan and Afghanistan become embattled and meanwhile it would support the nationalist parties of Balochistan . At the same time, there would be disturbance in Karachi lead between ANP & MQM. In order to maintain peace and safeguard the nuclear arsenals, a peacekeeping force of United Nations would take over the country; hold plebiscites and then formally create a new country of Balochistan and merge Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Afghanistan.
But no country can fall prey to any conspiracy unless it allows itself to. It’s time for us to step up!

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