The Election -- Pakistan

There are a great many issues where president Obama and governor Romney do not agree. Few of these make it into the public debates, but many are crucial to the future of the USA. Over the next few weeks, I am going to try to select some of these issues for discussion. The press may not care about these issues, but we all should.

In the last few days, there have been major anti-American demonstrations in Pakistan. The demonstrations were suggested by the leader of Pakistan who declared a national holiday to give people the time to attend those demonstrations. Before that, we saw the Pakistanis hide Osama bin Laden for many years in their equivalent of West Point. Then we saw Pakistan cut off the USA from shipping supplies to our troops in Afghanistan across Pakistan. That made resupply of troops in Afghanistan much more difficult and expensive. We also had the problem that the Pakistani intelligence agency has been coordinating with the Taliban in anti-American attacks. All during that time, the USA kept shoveling foreign aid money to Pakistan's government. To say the least, the Obama policy for dealing with Pakistan (if there is one) has been a failure.

Pakistan is not a sexy subject for the presidential race. Obama's policy looks like a clear failure, so the main stream media does not want to highlight this. It would be a fair question, however, to ask Obama how, if at all, he would change the approach to Pakistan during a potential second term. No one has even asked that question yet. Governor Romney, however, has discussed the issue. Romney proposes using Pakistan's main rivalry as the basis for moving it towards more accomodation with America. Since the founding of India and Pakistan in the late 1940's, the two countries have been mortal enemies. Nothing, absolutely nothing, strikes fear into the heart of Pakistan's leaders more than the prospect of a stronger India. During the Bush administration, America moved much closer towards India and the Pakistanis tried to win back our favor with cooperation. Obama has moved away from India and towards Pakistan with the result that the Pakistanis lost their motivation to treat us well. Romney has said that we ought to go back the other way.

In many respects, it seems that the Obama policy towards Pakistan was adopted just because it was the opposite of the Bush policy. That, however, is not a good way to run American foreign policy. Remember, Pakistan is the only Moslem nation with nuclear weapons. It is a very important country. We need to have a policy towards Pakistan that actually works.