Pakistan: duplicitous and impotent
that even this surreptitious and duplicitous augmentation of Pakistan’s capabilities against India — especially strengthening the country’s air defenses — were for naught.
Just think:: What if instead of American forces looking only for bin Laden, we would have had an Indian commando group entering the country to decapitate the Pakistani political and military leadership as a prelude to an all-out Indian attack on Pakistan? Pakistan would be doomed before the game even began.
Advice to U.S. policymakers: It is time to reconsider the massive aid to Pakistan. Recall former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir’s comment regarding an especially egregious corruption scandal in Israel: “Just see how much public money could have been wasted yet — had it not been stolen.” With regard to Pakistan: ditto
2. Nuclear weapons
Why is everybody worried about Pakistan? Because it has between 60 and 100 nuclear bombs. Nuclear weapons are the poor man’s military equalizer. Even a poor, corrupt, and dysfunctional country like Pakistan can do a lot of damage because it has nuclear weapons.
A few months ago the administration brought to Congress a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia which would have cut the nuclear arsenals of both countries. Senator John Kyle (R-Arizona) led the opposition to the treaty, but it was eventually passed. Kyle had specific reasons for objecting to the treaty, and was at the end mollified by some $80 million added to the defense budget for research into better and more efficient nuclear warhead.
Other critics of the president criticized the treaty, which they saw as part of the president’s sweeping vision of a world free of nuclear weapons — a vision he elucidated in a speech in Prague in May 2009. These critics view any call for nuclear disarmament — let alone the actual reduction in the number of nuclear weapons the United States has — as measures weakening the United States.
It is doubtful that the vision of a nuclear-free world can be realized. Let us assume, for a minute, that it could: Nothing would make a greater contribution to U.S. national security than ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Nothing — absolutely nothing — would bolster the position of the United States as the preeminent military power in the world than dismantling all nuclear weapons, including those of the United States.
The reason? When you list the countries of the world according to how much they spend on defense, the United States is not only in the No. 1 position — it spends more on defense the combined expenditures of the countries in positions 2 through 14. These vast amounts of money are used to develop and equip our troops with the most advanced weaponry and the most advance command and control systems.
These advanced systems, if used wisely, allow the United States to win every military engagement in which it is involved — and more often than not, as was the case in Abbottabad — win in trying circumstances.
No country in the world can withstand the U.S. military machine — except those countries that have nuclear weapons which they would use to kill many American soldiers, or even to destroy an American city.
Those who want to promote American interests, preserve U.S. global military preeminence, and allow the United States to lead with its strength should be the most ardent supporters of the vision of a nuclear-free world. It will be a world in which the United States more easily and at less risk to itself could throw its weight around.
Another advice to American policymakers: Strength is relative, not absolute. It is not enough to be strong. Better to be smart in what kinds of strength we accumulate, and what kinds of strength we deny our potential adversaries.
Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire
