The West Needs a New Strategy for Pakistan

A new report by the German Marshall Fund and the Swedish Defense Research Agency argues that the United States and Europe should adopt a fresh approach to Pakistan as the decade-plus conflict in Afghanistan winds down. We now need a policy that focuses squarely on Pakistan rather than one in which that pivotal country is treated as an adjunct of a policy towards Afghanistan. As Western forces depart the region, violent extremism engulfs the Middle East, China and India assert their growing regional influence, and Pakistan’s internal instabilities mount, a new situation in the region requires a new approach.

Broadly, the report’s co-authors — Dhruva Jaishankar, Andrew Small, John Rydqvist, and myself — argue that the Western allies need an economic strategy to invest in Pakistan’s potential as an emerging market alongside a security strategy that pays more attention to the country’s alarming nuclear weapons buildup. The transatlantic allies, which are Pakistan’s major donors and important trading partners, need to more robustly engage with civil society and civilian institutions in Pakistan as part of a long-term strategy to tilt the civil-military balance in a healthier direction. We also need a more coordinated approach to counter-terrorism cooperation that leverages a growing realization within Pakistan — including within the security services — that violent extremism is more of a threat to the Pakistani state itself than to its neighbors and the wider world.

The report makes a set of policy recommendations for the transatlantic community in four key areas: economic development, civil-military relations and governance, nuclear proliferation, and counter-terrorism.

Economic Development

The United States and Europe should:

• Support and actively shape the new wave of regional infrastructure initiatives — and new economic entities such as the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — to facilitate Pakistan’s regional economic integration.
• Utilize economic influence, bilaterally and multilaterally, to bolster the civilian government’s efforts to advance the more politically difficult aspects of the connectivity agenda, particularly vis-à-vis India, whose vibrant markets could substantially boost Pakistan’s development trajectory.
• Liberalize trade and investment to boost Pakistan’s productive sector rather than emphasizing assistance to the government.
• Use the military drawdown from Afghanistan as an opportunity to reposition the West’s relationship with Pakistan around realizing its potential as an emerging market

Civil-Military Relations and Governance

The transatlantic allies should:

• Invest narrowly, but systematically, in key areas like energy supply and education, rather than spread Western public investments thinly across a wide range of sectors and actors.
• Expand U.S. and European funding for Pakistan’s public education system, but tie this assistance directly to curriculum reform to stem radicalization in the classroom.
• Invest in strengthening the Pakistani parliament’s standing committees to enhance government oversight, and expand education and training of the Pakistani judiciary.
• Invest concertedly in media training, including through exchanges for members of the Pakistani print and broadcast media, and expand media outreach into Pakistan directly through U.S. and European public broadcasters to counter anti-Western and illiberal propaganda.
• Hold the government accountable for human rights abuses that are within its power to mitigate, including by imposing standards of conditionality on assistance programs, as well as building civilian capacity to mitigate abuses stemming from absence of the rule of law.

Nuclear Proliferation

We argue that the West should:

• Highlight the dangers posed by Pakistan’s nuclear development — specifically its development of tactical nuclear weapons — through official public statements, and help define clearer incentives for Pakistan to adopt a more stabilizing nuclear posture.
• Insert and elevate the discussion of Pakistan’s nuclear program in bilateral and multilateral dialogues — both within the transatlantic community and with regional and global partners, particularly China.
• Further strengthen export controls for sensitive and dual-use technologies.

Counterterrorism 

The transatlantic partners should:

• Establish a clearer division of labor between the United States, the European Union, and NATO, including by assigning a concrete role to the European Union.
• Engage in a deeper transatlantic dialogue about the strategic implications of Pakistan’s support of militancy to develop common responses.
• Facilitate Afghanistan-Pakistan cooperation on counter-terrorism, with the objective of better tracking militancy in the region, and improving law enforcement and customs procedures.
• Make a more focused and cohesive effort to support wider police reform and capacity-building rather than channeling security assistance mainly to the armed forces.

These recommendations are modest rather than revolutionary; most will take years to bear fruit. They provide a basic roadmap for Western engagement with Pakistan, particularly in areas that have been largely neglected by the United States and Europe over the past decade. As great powers like China and Russia increase their focus on Pakistan, it is time for Europe and the United States to do the same — with an eye not so much on the future of Afghanistan, which has dominated our strategic thinking since 9/11, but on its far larger, more combustible, nuclear-armed neighbor.