"Pakistan’s army chief warned Thursday that any repeat of the type of U.S. commando operation that killed Osama bin Laden would be viewed as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty and would imperil military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries.
The combative statement came as a senior U.S. defense official said Pakistan would have to take “very concrete and visible steps” to persuade Congress to continue providing $3 billion in annual military and economic assistance." Washpost
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"It's nice to be nice to the nice." Frank Burns
Let's see... What does Pakistan do for the US?
1-They let our Main Supply Route to Afghanistan run north from their ports to the Khyber Pass and to Quetta. This is a major vulnerability for us. With the size force we have in Afghanistan, we would have a difficult time supplying that force either through Russia or by air. Pakistani companies make a lot of money in the haulage on this MSR.
2- Pakistan's military keeps it's existing and future nuclear capability out of the larger world game. As has been discussed at SST many times, Pakistan either has or will soon have the real world CAPABILITY of ranging Israel's target set. They have around 100 fully engineered and manufactired deliverable nuclear weapons. They have aircraft and missiles (Shahiin 2 improved) that would do the job. The missile launchers are fully mobile. The US has zero control over this nuclear strike force. Logically, the willingness of the Pakistan military to keep this "piece" off the chess board is a major boon to the US. We do not want to see that willingness change to something else.
On the other hand...
Pakistan has been and continues to be secretly (maybe not so secretly any longer) aligned with Saudi Arabia and China. Many years ago the Pakistanis served as intermediaries for an IRBM sale by China to Saudi Arabia. That sale was conducted in circumstances of attempted secrecy that failed. Evidently nothing has changed much since then. The Pakistans are still involved in three way deals with China and Saudi Arabia that function to the detriment of US interests.
The Pakistani security services support many of our worst opponents in Afghanistan. This is so well documented that I won't bother to do so again.
Pakistan regards Afghanistan as a field of battle on which to confront their Indian opponents. In other words, their narrative of what Afghanistan is about is nothing like ours.
What to do about all this?
I have no idea what to do about the nuclear force.
In regard to the other US vulnerabilities, some objective change must be made that removes the logistics vulnerability. The only real possibility lies in greatly reducing the size of the US force in Afghanistan. The problem of Pakistani support for some Taliban elements in the Afghan civil war has a simple solution. We should remove ourselves from participation in that civil war. What we need to do is maintain control of enough basing in Kabul and other forward areas to facilitate our continued pursuit of Islamic zealot groups dangerous to the US. Such a continuation will require some degree of continued support for the existing "government." pl
Bottom Line: Counterterrorism not Counterinsurgency.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/todays_paper?dt=2011-05-06&bk=A&pg=1
PS There was a power failure and other confusion that occurred in Abbotabad just before and during the raid. Nobody seems to have thought that these were probably US diversions in support of the raid.
