Magnificent Delusions

This is a character-led history of the bizarrely ill-suited alliance between America and Pakistan, written by a uniquely insightful participant: Pakistan's former Ambassador to the U.S. The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension, and has always been. The US-Paki [...]
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This is a character-led history of the bizarrely ill-suited alliance between America and Pakistan, written by a uniquely insightful participant: Pakistan's former Ambassador to the U.S. The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension, and has always been. The US-Pakistan alliance was born in an environment of ignorance on the part of leaders of both countries about the other. John Foster Dulles thought the Pakistanis were Gurkhas, whom the British described as the best fighting men in the subcontinent. He was encouraged by the thought of having a large army of professional soldiers from South Asia with British trained officers, on-board for the impending war against communism. Pakistan's emerging military leader General Ayub Khan assumed that once Pakistan's military had been equipped with modern weapons supplied by the Americans, ostensibly to fight the communists, Pakistan could use them against India without causing a breach in the ties with the United States. In the end, the expectations of both were manifestly disappointed. From these inauspicious beginnings the relationship has swayed like a willow in a hurricane.Pakistan - to American eyes - has gone from being a stabilizing friend to an essential military ally to an Islamist nuisance to an essential military ally again to a seedbed of terror. Along the way it has regularly abandoned democratic principles. America - to Pakistani eyes - has been a guarantee of security, an essential military ally and supplier, a coldly distant scold, an enthusiastic military supplier and ally again, and now a threat to national security and a source of humiliation. In the 65 year history one country has become a global superpower, the other perilously close to a failed state - perhaps one of the most dangerous places in the world. So the relationship between the two - the Brahmin and Dalit of geopolitics as it were - is a tale of continual drama and tension. It reached its apogee when US troops invaded Pakistani airspace and soil to assassinate Osama Bin Laden, without ever intending to forewarn the Pakistani government they were doing so.It was a huge invasion of the country's sovereignty; but Pakistan continued to insist that it knew nothing of Bin Laden's whereabouts in a well guarded compound a short distance away from the country's military headquarters. Clearly, not everyone was being entirely straightforward. Husain Haqqani has a unique insight into Pakistan, his homeland, and America, where he was the Pakistani ambassador and is now a professor at Boston University. His books is a character driven narrative of two nations who never really bothered to examine the essential contradictions of their relationship. The 65+ year history is a gripping tale of two highly distinctive countries, each redefining itself in the world: one as a global power, the other as a newly emergent independent nation at a crucial crossroads. The alliance that was forged between them was, as the book's title suggests, based on magnificent delusions on both sides, here memorably laid bare.