The Great U.S. Crisis in Pakistan

by Jack D. Douglas

Recently by Jack D. Douglas: The Secret Government

Karzai's public denunciation yesterday of the U.S. collusion with Taliban forces in Taliban attacks on his government forces in Afghanistan to lead the U.S. forces to stay in Afghanistan longer may be true or false, but they miss the point of U.S. military strategists who want to stay in Afghanistan with massive bases and forces. They are not simply playing an imperial game of milking the resources of puppet nations. That is probably true for U.S. Oligopoly Corps., but the U.S. is playing a vastly more deadly game than that.

I have argued for years that a crucial reason the U.S. wants major air bases and massive forces in Afghanistan is that the U.S. is very afraid of what will happen in Pakistan, especially the massive nuclear forces and missiles. The Pakistani government is very likely to fall soon. The society is in worse shape than the U.S. economically and financially and politically and legally, so it may implode at at any time or erupt in civil war[s]. It does have a dominant cultural-ethnic nation and religion, unlike the U.S. which is very splintered now. But it has massive subcultures and simmering civil wars on the borders of Afghanistan and inland. The U.S. has relied on its secret satellite spying and forces within Pakistan to keep tabs on where the nuclear weapons are so a sudden strike can take them out or even land forces and seize them. But Pakistan is hiding them more and more and, like North Korea, with whom they cooperate, they are apparently rapidly building up small nuclear forces that can be moved around and hidden better. The U.S. cannot rely on carrier air strikes because they could be knocked out and, if not, cannot provide sufficient land forces against a major power like Pakistan, if they become needed. India will not likely cooperate for many reasons with the U.S. on this, such as Pakistan's nuclear weapons that could easily target their vast cities. China is a major ally of Pakistan. That leaves major U.S. bases and forces in Afghanistan looking necessary to the imperial central planners in Washington.

N.B. Nothing is simple in Afghanistan. The major guerrilla forces, some paid by the U.S., some Taliban, some anti-Taliban, and Karzai, and the three major nations within Afghanistan have their own strategies. Karzai is trying to become more "cooperative" with the winning Taliban and other guerrilla armies, in case the U.S. does leave.

But any strategist not blinded by hubris would worry most of all in that area about Pakistan's disintegration and nuclear weapons.

On the other hand, the U.S. has been the major cause of the disintegration of Pakistan and the building of more and better hidden nuclear forces. The longer the U.S. stays on its borders and keeps slaughtering women and children inside Pakistan with Obama's Drone Slaughters, the worse the U S. makes the Pakistani threats, thus the more the U.S. wants to stay, thus…..

It's a lose-lose situation, something U.S. central planners of the world can almost never see because they are blinded by ignorance and hubris.

It seems most likely the U.S. is maneuvering to leave vast bases and mobile force capabilities in Afghanistan. The U.S. has done this in Iraq in a major but not huge way because it has massive forces in the Persian Gulf region, bases it can use all around Iraq if necessary, and puppet allies like Saudi Arabia. The heavily armed U.S. division sized forces and secret Special Ops in Iraq can call on those massive forces in the region within hours. Not so in S. Central Asia where the Pakistani crisis is soaring.

The U.S. strikes against Pakistan or invasion when Pakistan implodes or is taken over by a more openly anti-U.S. army dictatorship could trigger the first nuclear war. Or they might simply lead to another huge land war in Asia for the U .S. that will help to bleed the U.S. to death immensely faster than Vietnam, Iraq, Afghansitan, etc. and trigger its own financial-economic-political-cultural implosion. The U.S. was loved by most Pakistanis before it invaded Afghanistan and slaughtered women and children in Pakistan. Now even Western polls there show almost total loathing of the U.S., which is obvious without any poll.

March 12, 2013

Jack D. Douglas [send him mail] is a retired professor of sociology from the University of California at San Diego. He has published widely on all major aspects of human beings, most notably The Myth of the Welfare State.

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