And I don’t think Pakistan feels any threat from China, in fact those two countries have very strong strategic ties, but of course if religious fundamentalist become more dominant in Pakistan then it can loose support of both US and China (who have their own troubles with Islamic separatists).
The best strategy for Pakistan right now is to have a democratically elected government, reign in madrasa’s and other sources which propagate fundamentalism and become economically important for the west rather than being only of strategic importance.

Regarding the politics, Bush has the problem that he has continually pushed for simple minded politics and good/bad dichotomies, rather than taking a more nuanced and complex view of shifting alliances that only last as long as they are useful. Pakistan was clearly given the green light and treated as an ally as they agreed to have a go at dislodging the ‘turrists’ in the northern parts of their country. Fair enough, but seeing as they couldnt achieve that – and its somewhat questionable how hard they tried, although its doubtful they could have had absolute success either way due to their limited military and civil intelligence, and an army not really set up for the task in hand.

Of course since they agreed a truce, the alliance should be over and they can return to being treated like any other moderately oppressive (from my understanding) dictatorship which could do with being pushed to a more representative governmental form – obviously as they are nuclear, most of the pressure has to come via encouraging internal pressure, which is generally a better way of operating in my view anyway.

If this does cause Musharaff to resign I dont know what will.

You would almost think there was one law for American client states, and one law for the rest of us.

A good example might be the fact that President Bush is opposing a bill which would link military aid for Pakistan to its efforts to tackle the Taliban.

That’s military aid to a nuclear-armed military dictatorship which, according to NATO’s former supreme commander General James Jones, allows the Taliban to base their headquarters in the Pakistani city of Quetta, and which recently signed a peace deal with the Taliban’s allies and hosts in Waziristan.

So President Bush is happy to supply weapons to a nuclear-armed dictatorship that is supporting the very people killing American and British troops in Afghanistan.

Now contrast that with policy toward Iran.

I think you missed the word ‘completely’ in my sentence. But apart from that, a politically stable Pakistan will not be as subservient to US interests as the current of dictatorship is.

I do agree that “nuclear-armed” “politically-unstable” and “religious-extremism” make a cruel recipe. However, when you remove the political-instability and bring in true democracy (which might come at the end of these recent events) and actually believe me when I say that religious-extremism is much less in Pakistan compared to what western media proclaims then the what is left is “politically-stable” “democratic” “nuclear-armed” Pakistan. This picture is not really acceptable to US because this would challenge to complete hegemony of US interests in South Asia.

It makes it very difficult to follow a developing thread.

Secondly, US would never want a completely politically stable Pakistan.

I may not know much about Pakistani internal politics, but I know that as far as the US is concerned (and most of the rest of the world I would imagine) “nuclear-armed” and “politically-unstable” form a combination which trumps any of the other conditions you mention by a wide margin. Mix in an element of religious extremism and you have a recipe for something truly horrific.

What is it? Five in the last two weeks?

The pink paper’s editors are entitled to their schoolboy crushes, but a blogger account would be the appropriate venue.

Dude, that’s Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben.

I haven’t seen much coverage in…the blogosphere of the developing crisis in Pakistan

I’ve been covering it all week and writing about Musharaff gaming the West for a couple of years.

Regards, C