Flying in to Japan on August 30 a few hours after he had received from Washington the text of the initial policy he was to carry out, he paraphrased the actions he was to take: First, destroy the military power. Punish war criminals. Build the structure of representative government. Modernize the constitution. Hold free elections. Enfranchise the women. Release the political prisoners. Liberate the farmers. Establish a free labor movement. Encourage a free economy. Abolish police oppression. Develop a free and responsible press. Liberalize education. Decentralize political power. Separate the church from state.[Winners in Peace]
Sounds like the songsheet for Richard C Holbrooke and General David Petraeus. I thought Winds readers will be interested in the argument I make over at Pragati--The Indian National Interest Review on what the US ought to do in Pakistan. Is the Obama administration audacious enough to face the reality: there's no solution to Afghanistan unless Pakistan is structurally transformed.
Pakistan today is not really Japan in 1945. The Japanese emperor renounced his divinity and the country acknowledged defeat after a long and costly war. I don't think anything comparable to the emperor's action is possible in Pakistan and at present it is hard to see the country submitting to outside judgment. Foreign intervention in Pakistan would risk a nuclear war.
Still, Pakistan faces difficult choices. The basic questions are whether nuclear weapons really guarantee future independence and whether religion is a viable basis for national unity. If the answer to either question is negative, then Pakistan will need an alternative to existence as a traditional nation-state. Its neighbors will also need to worry about what a desperate Pakistan could do.
India began as a nonaligned secular democracy. It is still a unique challenge to nations that derive their identity from religion or ethnicity or great power ambition. But if India succumbs to one or more of these kinds of identity itself, it will give its neighbors less incentive to consider joining a regional or world system later in this century that has India as its center. In embracing European state structures and the classic behaviors they encouraged, India and its neighbors could repeat the events that destroyed Europe between 1914 and 1945. The challenge to Indian policy is to find a future for everyone that can avoid this prospect.
If it were just Pakistan...
You have to wonder, sometimes, whether nuclear war might be Pakistan's most likely eventual future - more as a result of its own poisoned dynamics than because of anything another state plans.
I agree with the point that Pakistan needs a McArthur. However, I disagree with the analysis of religion and nuclear weapons on comment #1.
Religion is not a question of national unity directly, but a way to set up a domestic control tool. In one way, it can be used by the State as an excuse to get into the Pakistani's lifes, as it was done in Spain with the Inquisition, for instance, ruling over personal rights.
In the other sense, it provides the framework to set up terror groups that allow to shape the Pakistani society, eliminating concrete individuals, if needed, or, more directly, providing the excuse before the world's public opinion to carry out a coup.
I mean, externally, these conflicts look like a mess, but internally is the way they control the Pakistani society. Everything is well controlled. For the Pakistani real rulers the only problem now is that the Americans have moved to the house next door and sometimes their domestic control tool come flying across the fence.
Nukes constitute, IMHO, just another card to play with before the rest of the countries. They are, in some way, like the Mussolini's battleships: since Italy had no oil reserves to propel these thirsty units in a long war, their function was primary to being weighted in an international treaty.
Arising is the question of China. For now, I think they would like some mess in India's backyard.
Unfortunatly, everything is against the people of Pakistan.