If Joe Biden Became Obama's VP Candidate...

The grapevines are buzzing over the idea that Joe Biden might be picked as Barack Obama's running mate. While some people are pointing out that he has made some bizarre foreign policy suggestions in the past, such as splitting up Iraq, as far as Pakistan is concerned, it may just be the best thing to happen to Pakistan in an otherwise dismal year for the country.

First off, Joe Biden has a much better appreciation of what is happening in Pakistan than the concerns of Pakistanis than other Presidential candidates. But better than that, have a look at Biden's proposal for what direction its policy towards Pakistan should take.

What does he propose?

We've got to move from a transactional relationship -- the exchange of aid for services -- to the normal, functional relationship we enjoy with all of our other military allies and friendly nations. We've got to move from a policy concentrated on one man -- President Musharraf -- to a policy centered on an entire people... the people of Pakistan. Like any major policy shift, to gain long-term benefits we'll have to shoulder short term costs. But given the stakes, those costs are worth it.

And how would he do this?

1. Triple non-security aid to $1.5 billion annually for at least 10 years.

2. Make security aid conditional (so for example, don't just pour in money for submarine hunters and air-defense radars which have no relevance to the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan's northern areas, but focus it on COIN-relevant stuff and tie it to what the army is doing against militants).

3. Give a "democracy dividend" of $1 billion above the annual non-security aid to help the new government with the promise of more aid tied to developing democratic institutions.

4. Focus on creating ties with the Pakistani public and not just the elite by "improved public diplomacy and educational exchanges" and "high impact projects that actually change people's lives."

There's an interesting comment on Biden's plan here.

Suffice it to say that it sounds pretty good at least on paper. Its a perennial complaint that whenever Pakistan has a military government that the US needs to do its bidding, money flows like wine, but whenever there is a democratic government, the aid seems to dry up and various sanctions tend to pile up against the country. So its good to hear a Biden recognizing that the aid needs to be based on something other than a transactional basis.

As for making military aid conditional - well if it will help convince our generals to abandon their proxy militants and focus on stamping out the Insurgency in FATA, thats all to the better. My guess is that they would want at least some of the money to be spent on expensive anti-Indian toys as well, but I'm all for measures that actively help fighting militancy in Pakistan (and by extension, Afghanistan).

So it will be interesting to see what happens next. I personally don't know too much about the other candidates for the VP slot, but generally I've been underwhelmed by Obama as far as foreign policy goes (though he certainly seems better than Mr John "In-the-21st-century-nations-dont-invade-nations" McCain.) But for Pakistan, I think Joe Biden's plan would be much-needed good news.

P.S.: McCain actually went one dumber and recently claimed that the Georgia-Russia war was the “first serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War”. So there you have it. 9/11? Not serious. Invasion of Iraq? A cakewalk. Darfur? Afghanistan? Mid-East? All just giggles. No, the Georgia-Russia war is SERIOUS!

P.P.S.: We've just learned that those evil commie Chinese are using underage athletes to cheat the US of A out of well-deserved Olympic medals. This must be the most serious crisis internationally since the Barbarian invasion of Rome! Something must be done about it!

Yet More Updates

Some interesting articles that serve to follow up on some of my previous posts:

The United States says it will release $200 million in emergency aid to alleviate food shortages in Africa and other parts of the world. While I hope this is a useful step, the cynic (realist?) in me wonders if this may not be another disaster in the making like the one where food aid arrived in a drought-stricken country a year late, and only served to bankrupt local farmers.

The Ghosts of Alexander blog has an interesting post called The Afghan Individual as a Unit of Analysis, which takes to task the intellectually lazy tendency amongst journalists and academics to "talks of groups in Afghanistan as if they were a coherent unit with a single will".

On a similar note, the folks over at the Kings of War blog, take aim at silly statements like this:

"Muslim countries are not like other countries. In as much as occupying troops are a much bigger theological, psychological problem for Arab countries than somewhere like Japan and Germany. And if you don't understand that about Islam, then you really aren't judging and you really haven't learned from the last four or five years."

Quite apart from the lazy, interchangable use of Muslim and Arab, one wonders if what the reporter in question is trying to suggest is that other racial/religious (same thing, no?) groups have much less of a problem being occupied by foreign troops than Arab/Muslims (same thing, no?)

The money quote from the blog: "Whenever I hear talk that smacks of cultural determinism, I reach for my revolver!"

I had also previously written about Obama's attempts to improve his image in Israel. The Rootless Cosmopolitan has an excellent article entitled "Obama and the Jewish Vote".

Barnett Rubin at 'Informed Comment: Global Affairs' provides the text to the policy speech of the ANP's Amir Haider Khan Hoti, the new Chief Minister of NWFP. Its worth reading, and as a policy statement, seems to me to be nuanced and sounding all the right notes. Lets hope the NWFP government has the ability and wherewithal to implement it.

Finally, I leave you with this excellent guest post by Alastair Cooke at the Rootless Cosmopolitan blog about Iraq and the U.S. faith in violence:

Although there are different ideas about how and when to use it, there is, I think, a consensus in Washington on the idea that by applying its overwhelming advantage in military force, the U.S. can do good in the world. It can make the world a better place through the transformative impact of violence, in the way that the violence of the hero in a Hollywood movie “cleanses” the world of incorrigible evil.

Was it Worth It?

First Barack Obama, and now John McCain have been forced to apologise for saying that American lives "were wasted" in the Iraq war. Apparently they were diminishing the achievements of the American soldiers by saying that their deaths (3100 and counting) were a waste.

On the note of the achievements of the war, the UN now says that there are over two million Iraqi refugees who have fled the chaos in the country. On top of that there are an estimated 375,000 internally displaced refugees.

This article chronicles some of the hardships refugees have to face when they leave the country. Many of Iraq's vulnerable minorities are being targeted amidst the sectarian violence. This articles is about the plight of Sabian Mandaeans (monotheistic non-Christian followers of John the Baptist.)

That's a great deal of sacrifice for very little gain. Its tough to say what that is, if not a waste.

IZ