Pakistan's Rational Irrationality

In a December 5, 2011 editorial, the New York Times laments that Pakistan is refusing to do anything to calm the public fury within that country over the NATO attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, or participate in a joint investigation with the United States to determine the cause of the incident. [1]  This is a move that the paper believes is self-defeating for the Pakistanis.

But why would the Pakistani government care if its populace hates the United States?  What the Pakistani government does not want the Pakistani population to hate is the Pakistani government, and if that government becomes an apologist for the United States regarding an incident in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed it is likely to be viewed by Pakistanis as an American puppet.

As for an investigation, what need does the Pakistani government have of that?  The Pakistanis have already decided what happened: an unprovoked attack by the United States and NATO on Pakistan.  A decision by the government to participate in a joint investigation with the U.S. would indicate a willingness to consider another possibility, and neither Pakistan’s populace, nor its military, will have any of that.

So it is difficult to see how Pakistan’s government is doing anything self-defeating here.  In fact, it seems to be doing the rational thing for purposes of its own survival.

Another move by Pakistan that the New York Times calls self-defeating was its boycott of the international conference in Bonn, Germany where the future of Afghanistan was discussed.  “Pakistan has a strong strategic and economic interest in Afghanistan’s future,” the paper says.  “With its boycott, it has denied itself a voice and increased its own isolation.”

Actually, Pakistan has done no such thing.  Unless the United States wants to keep its troops in Afghanistan forever, the country that will decide Afghanistan’s future is Pakistan.  But the United States does not want to stay in Afghanistan forever, and the government in Kabul is feckless and corrupt.  As things now stand, once the U.S. and the rest of NATO leave Afghanistan, the country will be taken over by Pakistan’s Taliban proxies in short order.

Pakistan is not behaving irrationally or against its best interests.  It is waiting us out.