How Serious is the Obama Administration About Civilian Rule in Afghanistan

As Saeed Shah from McClatchy reminds us, civil-military relations in Pakistan are an always touchy enterprise:

Suspicions by Pakistan’s powerful army that the country’s civilian leadership is growing too close to the United States are fueling a political crisis that analysts here believe threatens the survival of the government and could divert attention from the battle against Islamic extremists.

Military officials believe that secretly taped conversations between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and his ambassador in Washington prove that it was at Zardari’s insistence that a $1.5 billion U.S. aid package passed by Congress in September contained several provisions that angered the Pakistani military. The military publicly protested the aid package last month.

“The reaction (from the military) was not so much to what was in the bill but to the thought that the government was trying to create a civilian-to-civilian dialogue (with Washington),” said a senior Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Apparently at today’s Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a pretty hard line on the need for civilian rule in Pakistan:

On Pakistan, Clinton repeatedly emphasized “democratic” and “civilian” rule while pledging “we wish to be [Pakistan's] partner for the long term.” Message: the United States will accept whatever civilian elected government the Pakistanis desire. But it won’t accept another military coup.

Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t this seem like a bluff? Especially given the administration’s just-made commitment to send more troops, more civilians, and more money to Afghanistan do we really believe that if there’s a coup next week the Obama administration is going to cut Pakistan off? This strikes me as on a par with the problematic “no blank check” for Karzai part of the speech. If you want to make American commitment to something conditional (on good-faith anti-corruption efforts by the Afghan government, or on the Pakistan military’s willingness to stay out of politics) then you need to define the rationale for engagement in terms that make the conditionality seem credible.

The reason something like the Millenium Challenge Corporation can work is that it’s perfectly credible that the U.S. government would just walk away from development projects in, say, Senegal if the government really antagonizes us. We don’t spend that much money on development assistance, and there are a lot of countries in Francophone Africa that could use some money. So people really know that if they want MCC money, they need to take MCC conditionality seriously.