The Limits of 'Hard Power'

In light of the belligerent US stance on Iran you might have thought that any regime which

(a) is as autocratic as Tehran’s;
(b) has a proven and realised nuclear weapons program;
(c) stands a fair chance of being involved in an actual nuclear exchange with one of its neighbours;
(d) has experienced serious problems with nuclear proliferation; and
(e) has deep and long-standing links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban

would be public enemy number one in Washington’s eyes. Not so. In fact, just two doors down from Iran, Pakistan has been a valued ally in the “war on terror” for the past five years – at least, until now.

Recall that when the US was facilitating support for extremist Islamic groups fighting the USSR in Afghanistan during the 1980s, much of that support reached those groups via the Pakistani security services. The Taliban grew out of that network, as did al-Qaeda, but after the attacks on Washington and New York on 11 September 2001, Pakistan joined Washington’s fight against the same groups they had both done so much to cultivate in the past.

The Pakistani dictator, General Musharraf now claims that this decision was made with a gun to his head. Musharraf told CBS news that US officials had said that if he did not cooperate then Pakistan should “Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age”.

"One has to think and take actions in the interest of the nation, and that's what I did," says Musharraf. Of course we should be mindful of the fact that his alliance with the US is profoundly unpopular domestically and within parts of the Pakistani security services, so these revelations may be designed or timed to deflect pressure. Nonetheless, it serves as a fresh reminder of the limits of “hard power”. Not only is the US-led coalition apparently losing Afghanistan, it is apparently now – despite the purported threats mentioned above - losing the principal one of two countries whose support it desperately needs to stabilise Afghanistan (the other is Iran). Syed Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan Bureau Chief for Asia Times Online, says that “with a truce between the Pakistani Taliban and Islamabad now in place, the Pakistani government is in effect reverting to its pre-September 11, 2001, position in which it closed its eyes to militant groups allied with al-Qaeda and clearly sided with the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

Since September 2001 Islamabad has been torn between the demands of Washington and internal forces pulling it in opposite directions. Musharraf’s remarks of this week and the Taliban-Pakistan truce appear to indicate Islamabad’s belief that the balancing act can be maintained no longer and that a choice has to be made. It says a good deal about the state of US power today that given the choice, Islamabad has chosen to appease a loose collection of insurgent frontiersman over the greatest military power in all history.

Tehran’s defiance of US pressure may well have inspired Islamabad, which may now feel that its links with anti-US forces in Afghanistan give it a much stronger position at the geopolitical bargaining table than mere subservience to Washington – just as Tehran’s influence in Iraq makes a mockery of the isolation the US has tried to impose on it. In each case, the “soft power” of alliances with local groups in key areas trumps the “hard power” of the threat or use of US military muscle. And all this is played out with the backdrop of Russia and China increasing their power and influence in Central Asia without so much as launching a single war.

There are few good-guy / bad-guy choices in international affairs. Just disparate nations and groupings competing in various ways for power and influence. For those of us concerned by the consequences of this system of effective international anarchy, what is important is not choosing sides so much as working to promote countervailing forces such as respect for human rights and international law, which might ultimately lead to a global system aligned to democratic principals. As regards ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power, we need not feel particularly favourably towards any of the protagonists mentioned above to nevertheless welcome signs that the world’s nations may be learning a lesson (albeit not a moral one) about the futility of war and the value of non-violent interaction. So far as it goes, its an encouraging development.