| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Elizabeth Jones Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 8 of 9
As somebody who was in Afghanistan earlier in your career, in Pakistan, Ambassador to Kazakhstan -- the places that we now know were breeding grounds, for all kinds of reasons, for the kinds of terrorists who came to our shores, do you look back on your career and say "Yes, we understood that back then" -- not necessarily that 9/11 would happen, but that the conditions that breed terrorism exist? As a diplomat, did you want those issues to be addressed in those countries?
I was in Afghanistan at a very different time, so it probably doesn't relate very well. But here's an insight that I feel very strongly about, and it was one of your previous guests, Ahmed Rashid, who gave me this insight in one of his books, and that is the critical importance of engagement, of staying with civil society, continuing to work with the NGOs and people who are trying to make a difference, trying to address human rights concerns, rather than say, "We can't work with that leader, that guy is too much of a bad guy, we're walking away." So I use that argument now, with countries that people say, "Oh, how can you possibly be working in X country, the leader is an autocrat?" And I say, that's exactly when we need to stay in there, and make sure we're not supporting the autocrat, but we are helping the people who want to change the ability of the autocrat to be autocratic.
How do you explain this cycle of engagement and disengagement which is at the heart of the problem? Because as you suggest, we have to stay in these places over the long haul, and not just when they're in the news.
It's a dilemma. There's very serious tension in everything that I've said here, because it's very hard to decide what to do if a country has, say, gone off the rails, if a leader has gone off the track in a way that you find abhorrent or unacceptable. How do you punish that country in a way that makes sense, that the country gets the picture, that there is a consequence for bad behavior? How do you do that in a way that you then don't disengage with the entire country? I think Pakistan is a good example of that. We shut down a lot of our programs in Pakistan because they had developed a nuclear weapon. There are U.S. laws that require that. But what that meant was is that we no longer could do the military training that we'd been doing, so we no longer have a relationship as we used to with the Pakistani military, and they are no longer as Western oriented, therefore, as they used to be. It's a very clear change.
So what is the answer? Part of our problem, in the particular case you're talking about, is the multiplicity of goals that we have as a great power.
That's right.
We want to further the nonproliferation regime on the one hand; on the other hand, we have an interest in working with the military. So what is the answer here? That one keeps at it, and in the long-term, it will come together?
You keep at it, you try to differentiate how can you get a tough message to the government that doesn't harm U.S. interests. I think the critical thing is to keep in mind what are the U.S. interests here. Yes, we want to stop nuclear proliferation, but we don't want to stop training of military officers in ways that make them into democrats rather than autocrats.
When you were in the embassy in Pakistan, the death of Zia occurred, and our ambassador, Arnold Raphel, was in that plane.
That's right, he was in the same plane as the military ...
Tell us a little about that experience, and how at that moment it was critical to stitch together our ties with the Pakistanis.
In the first instance, it was devastating, because [Ambassador Raphel] was extremely, extremely well liked and well respected. But the question then became, if they (General Zia, head of state in Pakistan, and the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan) had been killed in this one plane crash, who did it? Was it an accident, or did somebody do it? If somebody did it, who was it, and what does that mean for Pakistan, what does it mean for the U.S., what does it mean for American citizens in the country? Are we safe, or are the tanks about to roll down the street because there's a coup under way? As it turned out, what I believe it to be was a freak mechanical failure in the airplane and an accident. So you didn't have a coup, you didn't have tanks in the streets, Americans were safe. But what it meant was we had to be very clear in our minds that this was an opportunity to push hard on democracy development, in ways that we had failed to be able to do with the President Zia there. And that was when Benazir Bhutto was elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Now, in the present situation, are our policies exacerbating the process of democracy in Pakistan? We see something, sort of an election, in which there is a new assertion of power by Islamic parties that seem very much opposed to our interests in that region.
When a situation like that occurs, there are a lot of questions we ask ourselves in terms of policy development. The Islamic parties did very well. The Islamic parties did well: why? Because there's a crisis of confidence in some way? Is it particularly focused on the U.S.? If it's focused on the U.S., what aspects of what we do or don't do? Is it a measure of disappointment in the lack of jobs and the lack of educational opportunities, and can those issues be addressed? So you really have to pull apart what the reasons may be for the vote to have gone that way. And what is it that the U.S. can do to change the dynamic that may be at play in Pakistan, in order to serve U.S. interests?
Next page: Lessons Learned
See also: Interview with Ahmed Rashid (March 2002)
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