Sameer Lalwani: All Related Content

Introduction: Command of the Commons and U.S. Primacy

In 1805, British Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain that threatened to deny Britain command of the sea around Western Europe. Nelson’s success ensured that the United Kingdom retained what analysts would today refer to as “command of the commons”—the ability to project military power and engage in trade at times and places of its choosing while denying the same privileges to others.

Though Pakistan has not completely adopted the models, tactics, and best practices of counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine advocated by Western strategists, there is considerable evidence of movement in recent years toward a hybrid approach. Security forces have historically employed a variety of tactics including raids, “coercive sorting,” and sometimes population security, but they experienced repeated failures from 2001 to 2008. Though results of the more recent approach seem promising, prospects for long-term success remain unclear.

Faced with a rising and emboldened insurgency in its tribal belt, Pakistan’s military has come under fire in recent years for failure to adapt its military doctrine, which is based around conventional warfare, to tackle the internal threats of insurgency and terrorism.¹ Not adapting to unconventional warfare has been used to explain Pakistan’s failures to quell insurgency in the tribal areas, high civilian and soldier casualties, rising levels of resentment and militancy, three major operational failures in South Waziristan, and its overall poor battlefield perfo

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The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is right to warn that efforts to rebuild that country depend on winning the "struggle to gain the support of the people." And few issues do more to stoke the resentment of ordinary Afghans than the tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid from which they have seen little or no benefit. They see legions of Westerners sitting in the backs of S.U.V.'s clogging the streets of Kabul and ask themselves what exactly those foreigners have done to improve their daily lives.

Executive Summary

As a more effective Taliban steps up its operations along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Western observers increasingly are calling on Pakistan to implement a strategy of population-security counterinsurgency, or COIN. This paper will offer a net assessment of Pakistan's military capabilities to conduct such a campaign based on clearly stated assumptions, an analysis of open-source materials, and textbook COIN doctrine and best practices.

During the 1980s covert campaign against the Soviets, Pakistan's General Zia ul-Haq told CIA Director William Casey that being an ally of the United States was like living on the banks of a major river—"The soil is wonderfully fertile, but every four or eight years the river changes course and you may find yourself alone in the desert." Since then, Pakistan has remained cognizant of Zia's warning and insulated itself from fully allying with the United States.

While the battered state of the economy in the days winding down to the presidential election determined the fortunes of Senator Barack Obama in his victory over Senator John McCain, it was arguably his pragmatic foreign policy vision that helped him edge out the heavily favored Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.

These are rough days for Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan’s president is beset on all sides by critical U.S. politicians and pundits, a hostile judicial establishment, a resurgent al Qaeda, and an increasingly militant religious extremist wing. Smelling weakness, two ambitious former prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, are plotting their triumphant returns from exile. Musharraf may finally be running out of options. Speculation is rampant that he may soon have no choice but to take off his military uniform and work out a power-sharing arrangement with Sharif, Bhutto, or both.