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.If India and the United States are to build an enduring alliance, Amer-ica must learn one key lesson: though eager to join the boardroom of execu-tive nations, India will not embrace a subordinate role in an alliance.Indiahas responded to U.S.arms sales to Pakistan by building up its own arsenals,diverting money away from development.India s acquisition of arms meas-ured in dollars between 2003 and 2006 has surpassed that of all other devel-oping nations, but its people feel no safer, making them deeply resentful ofU.S policies.The U.S.relationship with the subcontinent illustrates several seeminglyinsurmountable obstacles for U.S.foreign policy.First, it is difficult for Amer-ica to reconcile its short-term security dilemmas with its wish to see thenorms of democracy take root around the world.This difficulty compromisesthe moral foundations of America s global leadership.Second, the UnitedStates is unable to draw the relevant lessons for establishing democracy in athird world environment.Third, and most ominous, Jinnah s promise thatCommunism would not flourish on Islamic soil has turned out to be one ofthe cold war s failed prophesies.The belief that Islam would inoculate theregion from Communism blinded the United States to another danger: Islamcould itself become a radical force, once secular reformers were eliminated.Itis in Iran where this certainty first collapsed.But Pakistan could be the placewhere the consequences of misapprehending Islam s social and politicalinfluence might be even more lethal to Western interests.Applying a doublestandard by renouncing its own values, the West alienates Pakistan s urbanmiddle classes as well as those of India, serving neither Western nor SouthAsian security.There will be a huge price to pay for the mistaken policies of the past.Thestatus quo Pakistan as the last rampart against extremism is not secure.But believing that flawed cooperation is better than none at all, the Westseems unwilling to exchange today s risks, which it believes can be managed,for the hope of a better tomorrow that it may be unable to manage. 10-7556-0 ch10.qxd 5/9/08 9:57 PM Page 170 11-7556-0 ch11.qxd 5/9/08 9:57 PM Page 171partIIIU.S.Security Risks fromFailures of GlobalEconomic Development 11-7556-0 ch11.qxd 5/9/08 9:57 PM Page 172 11-7556-0 ch11.qxd 5/9/08 9:57 PM Page 17311Walking with the Devil:The Commitment Trapin U.S.Foreign Policy My children, it is permitted you in time of grave danger to walk with thedevil until you have crossed the bridge. Old Balkan proverb used by Franklin RooseveltBy the standards the George W.Bush administration set for itself, asuccessful conclusion to the Iraq invasion was well within reach by the timethe president declared victory on May 1, 2003.A constitution was ratified onOctober 15, 2005, and a general election took place on December 15, 2005, toelect a permanent 275-member Iraqi council.A government, headed byPrime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, took office on May 20, 2006.Yet this govern-ment as of early 2008 had not met one of Washington s benchmarks fornational reconciliation, security, or governance.Maliki s government refusedto distance itself from radical clerics or curb their private militias.Non-sectarian technocrats were not invited to join the cabinet.Police units thatpracticed sectarian partisanship were not suspended, Government ministriesstacked with loyalists bred corruption.1 Even the surge of additional Ameri-can troops in the winter of 2007 08 has failed to provide the breathing spaceto pass the 18 legislative benchmarks the Bush administration called vital topolitical reconciliation.How could a government so utterly dependent on American collabora-tion defy U.S.wishes, yet hope for U.S.forces to remain in Baghdad? Withample evidence of Iraq s failure to meet the public security and civil servicecriteria of a secular state, why had the Bush administration not tied aid topolicy performance? Why has it not made continued support contingent onachieving explicit milestones?The trap the United States faces in Iraq exemplifies a recurring dilemma inU.S.foreign policy.Presidents have continuously coddled client regimes thatare unwilling to make the political trade-offs necessary for national legitimacy.Despite American rhetoric about overseas reform and ambivalence about173 11-7556-0 ch11.qxd 5/9/08 9:57 PM Page 174174 Risks from Failures of Global Economic Developmentbacking dictators, throughout the cold war many U.S.political leaders reliedon one authoritarian regime to help defeat another more odious authoritar-ian regime.And there were the proxy wars, too, when the United States armedIraq against Iran and the mujahedin against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.Such myopic policies consequently impaired America s ability to forcefullyadvocate domestic reforms within those regimes.Once engaged, U.S.supportweakened American demands for pro-reform quid pro quo terms.This is the U.S.commitment trap.Committed to the survival of allies butlacking the leverage to discipline recalcitrant regime leaders, America createsa strategic vulnerability that even weak client states can exploit.The commit-ment trap reduces America s credibility as a reform advocate.It binds theUnited States so that America cannot walk away from allies without erodingits credibility.2 Curiously, this trap isn t sealed abroad but at home by thefears that have driven the U.S.electorate since the cold war.Supporting Reform in Cold War Client RegimesClient regime reform is within the U.S.ideological tradition, and attempts atsuch efforts have been an important component of American security policysince the cold war.In 1946 General George Marshall attempted, without suc-cess, to form a coalition government in China and to persuade Chiang Kai-shek s ruling Kuomintang Party to accept Communist Party participation inelections.3In another example of U.S.efforts to change the behavior of a clientregime, Secretary of State Dean Acheson suggested to the shah of Iran in 1949that the best way to deter war and achieve security was not by militarypreparations but by so developing free economic and social structures as toprotect them from foreign aggression and upheaval. 4 Presidents Kennedy,Eisenhower, and Carter gave similar advice to the shah.In early 1950 Presi-dent Truman warned South Korea s strongman, Syngman Rhee, that hewould receive no more U.S.aid if he canceled elections.His successor, ParkChung-hee, was put on similar notice by Kennedy in 1961 and again in 1963.However, under stress of civil war or external aggression, even U.S.presi-dents who entered office advocating overseas reform eventually reinforcedthe very regimes they once condemned.Regardless of their political philoso-phies, every American president has put democracy on hold when largersecurity issues arose.As keen observers of U.S.policies, autocrats such asChiang Kai-shek, Shah Pahlavi, Ferdinand Marcos, and Park Chung-hee usedsecurity threats of insurgency or invasion to serve their private ambitions. 11-7556-0 ch11.qxd 5/9/08 9:57 PM Page 175The Commitment Trap in U.S.Foreign Policy 175When Chiang Kai-shek defied a cease-fire and attacked Manchuria, he wasconvinced that resumption of hostilities against the Communists would leavethe United States with no choice but to support him.Decades apart, bothPresidents Kennedy and Carter looked the other way when the shah of Iranused violence to suppress leftists
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