Follow-Up: The US Bombing Strategy in Pakistan

Canuckistan pulls me up on yesterday's analysis on US strategy in Pakistan:

Sorry to be argumentive, but I disagree that the missile strikes are designed to crush the insurgency. By their very nature, they are not going to do that....

What the U.S. is doing in Pakistan is the equivalent of targetted assassinations. Targetted assassinations aren’t going to crush the insurgency, but they may slow it down even as they generate more anger and recruits (this isn’t a contradiction but there seems to have been a calculation made that killing leaders trumps new recruits generated by the attacks). It is also possible that the Taliban are hit as secondary targets–the real target remains al-Qaeda and, in that sense, it is an effort to disrupt operations and destabilize.

This is a useful correction, but I think it reinforces the concerns expressed in my original piece.

This US "targeted assassination" may have the effect of disrupting and destabilising Al-Qa'eda, but it also --- for those inclined to mythology --- may have the Hydra effect. Take out one terrorist with these tactics, and two may spring up in anger. As Canuckistan admits, this isn't a winning strategy in the sense of quelling once and for all the Al Qa'eda challenge, merely a perpetual attempt to keep the enemy on the back foot.

So this is the far-from-incidental effect of the operations. If there is no victory, only the ongoing battle, then there are the ongoing casualties in Pakistan who are not Al-Qa'eda or even Taliban. And if that is so, there will be no space for political calm and negotiation, only more and more hostility.

Which, I think, gives me the answer to the question put yesterday: "Can Washington’s planes take out enough bad guys before the Pakistani Government falls and internal conflict in the country becomes more violent?"

No.