The World Turns

World politics took a decided downturn this Thursday, December 27, with the martyring of Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan - the only woman ever elected head of a Muslim state - recently returned to her nation following eight years of exile in Dubai, and was in good position to again be elected to Pakistan's highest available republican position. Given the political climate, such post ("Prime Minister") would theoretically have been co-equal with that of Army Chief of Staff and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in 1999 through a coup d'etat. Musharraf seized headlines this fall by suspending Pakistan's constitution in the name of addressing civil unrest. The reality was that other branches of the constitutional government (the Supreme Court) were about to rule on Musharraf's ability to legally run for another term in office. Such political abuses have never been smiled upon by other countries, particularly where they involve placing the local (Pakistani) Supreme Court Justices under house arrest.

It was into this picture that Bhutto returned to pick up the reigns of her left-of-center political party, in hopes of getting the nation back onto the right track after many years of civic violence, economic insolvency, and perpetual border conflicts with India, all of which Pakistan had gotten the worse of. Bhutto's return was marked with a variety of bombings intended to take her life, including a series of bombs going off at a rally on October 19, which killed over 140 people, an impressive tally by any terrorist's standards.

Benazir Bhutto was shot several times by a gunman, who then set off the explosive harness he was wearing, killing an additional 20 people. This also is an impressive figure for a human bomb, as the laws of physics generally play against mass mayhem from a device that can be easily concealed on a person. Moment of silence for a truly remarkable woman.

...

...

...

Naturally, there is rife speculation as to who is to blame, with the usual suspects coming to bear. The first, and - candidly - most likely, is the existing regime, or some faction thereof, which would have had to share power with Bhutto's camp following election. In the prior election - before Bhutto's return as a candidate, and before Musharraf suspended the constitution - Musharraf had won over 95% of the relevant vote. His camp cannot have been pleased about being upstaged by, of all people, a woman. The other usual suspect is - wait for it - al Queda, who really didn't like Bhutto based on their traditionalist Muslim opinions, further exacerbated by Bhutto's historic and ongoing efforts to work with The West. Both those suspects had motive, means, and know how (as above, bomb-making is not easy, since in many ways the laws of physics work against you).

Anyone who claims to be surprised by the sudden death of Bhutto doesn't know much about the Muslim world, or about Pakistani history and politics. Bhutto's own father - a former Prime Minister in his own right - was tried and executed himself by the Pakistani government that deposed him. This event led to Benazir's first stint in exile (that time in England), before her own reign as PM. Add in the general strife intrinsic to both that part of the world, and in any state trying to accommodate fundamentalist virtues into a 21st century economy, and SOMEBODY was going to die. Unfortunately, that's often the way of things. And not surprisingly, the one who died was someone other than the reigning King, who had full control of the national military.

Which brings us to the point of the issue. Pakistan, but for One Thing, is generally a pimple on the ass of the world. No major economic hubs. No great natural resources to take advantage of. Historically a re-headed stepchild of a parent nation (India) that openly hates it. Pakistan regularly made things worse by pretending to be significant, and by pissing in everyone's international soup by maintaining ties with pariah nations like, for example, Afghanistan's former Taliban government-in-exile. Notwithstanding the fact that the current decedent was extremely charismatic (and spoke excellent English), Pakistan is hardly a country worth writing headlines about, any more than headlines are written about political strife and changes in other insignificant nations. Raise your hand if you know who Charles Ghankay Taylor is? Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev? How about Mohamed Farrah Aidid? Omar al-Bahir? Yeah. Little power-plays make great opportunities for the world media to leach onto as humanitarian studies, but in the grand scheme of things, nobody really gives a shit.

But for that One Thing. On May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducted tests in which it detonated several nuclear weapons, which were home-grown, with assistance (most likely) from China. Plutonium-based weapons, in the hands of a state with a government not far removed from a warlord autocracy, and which could most politely be called "in transition."

Realistically speaking, this poses no direct threat to the United States. First, there is the fact that Pakistan's best nuclear shot would do only moderate damage to the United States (vaporizing a few cities) whereas the American counterstrike would turn the entire nation of Pakistan into a plain of scorched glass. Second, there is the fact that Pakistan has nations other than the U.S. high on its shit-list, and there are only so many Nukes to go around. And Third, a nuclear attack against the United States poses a daunting logistical challenge, which Pakistan can't (yet) overcome. Nukes have been around for over 50 years; other items of cutting-edge technology from the WWII period can be bought at the dollar store (digital calculators) or built in your garage (jet engines). Nukes aren't even all that complicated, except for the difficulties in procuring the components. They don't even have any moving parts. So setting off a nuke is really not so important as setting off a nuke where you want it to go off. Having a nuke inside your borders, as coveted as that position is, is useless: you can't set them off until they're inside your enemies' borders.

In reality, the vast majority of expenditures towards nuclear warfare are not for the bombs themselves, but for the delivery systems. Which is a common trend. After all, a bullet, for example, costs only pennies: the gun that fires the bullet will typically be more valuable than the bullet by several orders of magnitude. A nuke is by far the most expensive bullet imaginable, and the delivery systems are the most complex and expensive devices every built. After all, the challenge is to build a weapon that, when the trigger is pulled, can hit a spot - give or take 50 yards or so - SEVERAL THOUSAND MILES AWAY. It's not easy, and it's not cheap, even though the smartest people on the planet have been trying to solve the problem for sixty years. But the practical upshot is that Pakistan - like every Asian nation except Russia and (to a surprisingly limited degree) China, lacks the ability to conduct direct nuclear attacks against the United States. They've got good bullets, but their guns are too short ranged to hit so distant a target.

For all the fervor in the media, the risk of Pakistan selling nukes to someone else (e.g. a terrorist group) is also not so severe as you might imagine, for reasons beyond the scope of this writing. If you're interested in that subject, let me know; I'll write about it.

But notwithstanding the lack of a direct threat, the United States is and should be very interested in the instability created by the targets that Pakistan can hold at risk. Notably India, a close economic partner of the United States. Likewise China, with whom we have our ups and downs. And also a great many places where Americans (typically soldiers) are present, where Muslims don't want them present. Like the Middle East. As a nuclear nation, however constrained, Pakistan MUST be taken seriously. The White House can politely ignore events in Liberia, Nepal, Somalia, and/or Sudan. It can just roll its eyes at Argentina and Venezuela. But it is important that events in Islamabad Go Right.

Returning then to the death of Benazir Bhutto. The current ruling regime is in pretty good shape; it they can weather the storm of public outcry following the death of so beloved a figure as Bhutto, they will be sitting high on the hog, in full control, without meaningful challengers to their authority. Lets hope their deniability of the assassination (be such denial either true or merely plausible) weathers the storm, because the simple truth of the matter is that there's not a damn thing that anybody is going to do about this, save possible for Bhutto's followers. Everyone else is much more interested in preserving the status quo as it stands, including the United States. It is even possible that Musharraf receives aid from the United States, overtly or covertly, to prevent destabilization of a nuclear power. Hopefully we'll do it with enough tact to avoid another one of those Shah of Iran issues.

So, let us mourn the loss of a truly remarkable woman. And let us hope that more people will not need to die to keep things turning smoothly.