A reader emailed to remind me what I wrote just three weeks ago:
Musharraf claims the declaration of a "state of emergency" in Pakistan -- which is for all intents and purposes an imposition of martial law -- is due to terrorist threat. This, by all credible accounts, is false. Musharraf is reacting to approaching elections, an impending supreme court decision on his role in the government, and the ascension of opposing political groups, highlighted by the return of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. [...] [T]he idea that this was some big, out-of-nowhere surprise is also totally false. Foreign policy observers have been worrying about this for a while.More after the jump... If you thought it was bad that the US government had a "dramatic drop-off" in expertise three weeks ago, it's now a full-blown disaster. A few commenters were unhappy that I said the Bush administration deserves some blame for this deterioration, that the US has no responsibility for this kind of thing, but *we do.* And the Bush administration does. And nothing from today gives me any confidence that the next year will contain anything but continued foreign policy blunders.
Unfortunately, according to WaPo, there's literally no one at the wheel with this issue:"The problem is exacerbated by a dramatic drop-off in U.S. expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in U.S. history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State's policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney's office."The article says "even in" the VP's office, of course, because that's where US foreign policy is run, so apparently it's the most important place to have experts.
And some -- many, perhaps -- will end in tragedy, however remote or disconnected from our direct foreign policy actions.
