OK, someone’s left an armed UAV in the changing rooms. Is it you, Harrowell? No? Speak up? America? Turkey? Italy? Well, it would be interesting to ask somebody how many Predators the RAF possesses at the moment, compared to a few weeks ago.
Relatedly, this is wrong:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation and trans-national Islamic terrorism are now fully enmeshed. They are one and the same, and a failed state, Pakistan, is the linchpin to them all.
No. Not you either, John. Pakistan isn’t a failed state in any reasonable sense of the term; it’s misgoverned, frequently with the assistance of the Western alliance in various forms, it has problems. but its systems function, its economy has been doing well, it is well able to defend its borders and it is making this very clear – 7.62mm clear.
PPB says that it was getting there just before Musharraf’s coup and it’s only offensive to say so if you’re Nawaz Sharif. But that’s not the point; the problem is that the US is horribly likely to behave in Pakistan as in Somalia if the failed-state meme takes hold. And nothing makes states fail like the perception of state failure – it’s very like a bank in that sense. Nobody can afford this in a country with (as everyone, hackneyedly, clichedly says) nuclear weapons, with the Indian and Chinese dimensions, with the coast on the tanker routes, and the MSR to Afghanistan.
Of course, it’s a crappy cliche to assume that the Pakistani military elite doesn’t keep the nukes very close. But cliche seems to drive policy here. Pakistan doesn’t need gap shrinkers, assault ships, setting up the precinct or any other Thomas Barnett bollocks. What it needs is respect, and specifically respect for civilian government.
But don’t imagine that there won’t be people who want to burn shit down. For example; I don’t believe this, even though Sean Taylor’s Not a Good Day to Die was good. Note the total lack of direct evidence. Gordon Brown was apparently in Washington over the last couple of days, so he had the opportunity to take my advice; but then, as a comment says, you want to talk to America, but what phone number do you call?