Helping Pakistan Is In US National Interest

The flooding in Pakistan is an immense catastrophe and has overwhelmed the ability of the Pakistani government to respond. As the Progress Report today explains, “massive monsoonal flooding continues to ravage the country, leaving one-fifth of Pakistan underwater. After weeks of flooding, about 14 million people have already been affected by the floods — including six million children — and estimates of the dead have ranged from 1,200 to 1,600.” While the world has been slow to give, the US has been proactive, providing the most assistance thus far. Helicopters have been sent to the area and have “evacuated 3089 people and delivered 322,340 pounds of relief supplies,” with more on the way. Naval vessels have been parked off Pakistan’s coast to provide logistical assistance. Tanvir Ahmad Khan, a former Pakistani foreign secretary noted from Islamabad that:

The American assistance has been considerable, it has been prompt, and it has been effective.

Not only is helping people in desperate need a very good and moral thing to do, but as Larry Korb and I have argued previously, providing foreign assistance and humanitarian relief in the wake of a disaster is fundamentally in the US national interest. Rahm Emanuel’s statement that one “should never allow a crisis go to waste” is a reflection of the opportunity for change and transformation that a sudden crisis brings about. While this can be viewed cynically, the fact is that the same applies to the floods in Pakistan.

While working with Pakistan is vital to broader US counter-terrorism aims, the Pakistani public has an immensely negative view of the United States. Providing disaster assistance won’t automatically make everyone love us, but it will have an impact. Being on the ground providing aid and assistance in desperate situations following natural disasters, is something that is not soon forgotten. After an initially slow start following the Tsunami disaster in 2004, the US military and US aid agencies mobilized. The military essentially created a sea base, involving a flotilla of ships, of the coast off Indonesia. The US had 15,000 troops in the region and went about urgently ferrying needed supplies to the destroyed coastal regions that were unreachable by land due to the destruction of infrastructure. Following this effort, a Pew Survey found that 80 percent of the citizens of the world’s largest Muslim-majority country had a more favorable opinion of the United States after our response.

The US needs to think more strategically about how to make disaster response a core function of its foreign policy mission than an after thought. In short, the US should embrace being the world’s first responder.

Principally, the US military should make disaster response a core mission. Some may rightly worry about the militarization of aid, and there is no doubt that any disaster response would have to be a multi-agency activity with the expertise of USAID and State taking the lead roles. But no other agency, or frankly country, can provide the logistical reach and capabilities as the US military. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, commented during the Tsunami response, “We literally built a city at sea for no other purpose than to serve the needs of other people.” Yet disaster response remains an afterthought and is rarely taken into account in procurement decisions and in the design of new systems.

Some may see the mantle of global first responder as a distraction from “hard” security concerns. But this is nonsense. Responding to natural disasters helps promote stability, improves the image of the United States, and often improves ties and coordination with the affected country’s government. Finally, responding to natural disasters is the price of being the world’s largest superpower. As the guarantor of global security, the U.S. is looked to not just for its ability to deter threats but also for its ability to help when countries are in need. If we are going to have a global military presence, it would make sense for this presence to be seen globally in as positive a light as possible – and being seen as a global first responder is one such way to make this happen.