Assessment of U.S. Pakistan Policy and Nuclear Security Risks

[9 government’s ability to control its roughly one hundred nuclear weapons is a vital American national interest; the loss of a single warhead to extremists, whether through a government collapse or through a disaffected anti-American faction in Pakistan’s military or intelligence services, could be devastating. Strikingly, U.S. policy has given relatively little weight to this concern: the Bush administration subordinated a coherent U.S. strategy in the region to the optional invasion of Iraq; both the Bush and particularly the Obama administrations have emphasized the war against al-Qaeda to such an extent that the U.S.-Pakistan alliance is in tatters. Now Islamabad’s very stability has come into question. It is good to hear from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and other senior officials that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have suffered major setbacks. It was even better to hear that U.S. troops had finally killed Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, these triumphs have come at demonstrable cost. There was perhaps no reliable way to kill bin Laden without grievously offending Pakistan’s government and people, though a senior administration official has admitted that the United States “underestimated the humiliation factor” of the raid. Still, American officials could have structured U.S.-Pakistan relations in a way that would have made this necessary infringement on Pakistan’s sovereignty the exception rather than the rule in Washington’s approach to its admittedly frustrating and unreliable ally. Instead, the administration expanded drone attacks on less-than- essential targets (the average frequency of drone strikes under President Obama is one every four days, compared to one every forty days during the Bush administration); harshly criticized Pakistan’s government and military before the Abbottabad operation; embarrassed both by killing bin Laden inside the country; and then followed the action with further public criticism and cuts in assistance to the Pakistani military. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024610