Scary!(for us or for them?)

For just the tiniest of glimpses at the kind of behind-the-scenes tactical and strategic planning which takes place at American think tanks, you might want to read the op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times, Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem, by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.

They start by scaring the huggoo right out of righteous god-fearing Americans: “As the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss.... We need to think — now — about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that.” Though they do go on to say (bless their little hearts), "We do not intend to be fear mongers.”

Some choice titbits before dinner, m’ludd:

“...unless we had precise information about the location of all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials, we could not rely on bombing or using Special Forces to destroy them.”

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“One possible plan would be a Special Forces operation with the limited goal of preventing Pakistan’s nuclear materials and warheads from getting into the wrong hands.... Somehow, American forces would have to team with Pakistanis to secure critical sites and possibly to move the material to a safer place. For the United States, the safest bet would be shipping the material to someplace like New Mexico...”

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“So, if we got a large number of troops into the country, what would they do? The most likely directive would be to help Pakistan’s military and security forces hold the country’s center...”

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“There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly a humanitarian worry; today it is as much a threat to our basic security as Soviet tanks once were. We must be militarily and diplomatically prepared to keep ourselves safe in such a world. Pakistan may be the next big test.”

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Do you think they move about coloured pieces on a giant Risk board in their merry little kriegspielen?

(Thanks to the mysterious chapati for the link to the quoted article.)