For the last 16 years, the Washington policy community has debated how the United States should deal with its problematic partner in its war in Afghanistan: Pakistan. During the Obama administration, there was a growing consensus that Pakistan was the problem, even if there was no agreement on how to manage it. Despite disagreements, at the end of the Obama administration, there was a grudging acknowledgment that the Washington needed to show some real stick while pulling back on the carrots. In apparent protest to this growing conviction that a more coercive suite of policies is needed, on June 16, Steve Hadley and Moeed Yusuf argued in The New York Times that any successful U.S. strategy in Afghanistan requires the “United States must understand and address Pakistan’s strategic anxieties,” which center around India and its neuralgic fantasies about India’s imagined pernicious role in Afghanistan. Both men should know better. This argument is not only flawed — it is deadly. Not only can the United States not address Pakistani anxieties, but U.S. efforts to do so have undermined vital U.S. interests in the region.
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