I have long believed that strategic success is achieved not by making extraordinary calculations in ordinary times, but rather by making ordinary calculations in extraordinary times. So while the world mourns Bhutto, here’s my icy assessment.
Bhutto was a terrible PM of Pakistan. She was Pakistan’s Yeltsin — a kleptarch whose “reforms” made for a great media narrative among her obliging sycophants in the Western press, but which served only as a smokescreen as her clique plundered Pakistan.
Bhutto was effectively “the Saudi candidate,” airdropped to exploit the fissure among secular Pakistani elites over the constitutional crisis triggered when Chief Justice Chaudhry bucked Musharraf.
Musharraf has been the Pakistani equivalent of Vladimir Putin — a former special ops (ok, Putin was KGB, but it’s close enough) officer as comfortable as he was adept at deciding life and death in the blink of an eye. He has become obscenely wealthy, but ordinary Pakistanis never had it better than they did under Musharraf. In the meantime, Musharraf has proven himself the most talented geo-politician since Chiang Kai-shek. Thanks to Musharraf, Pakistan’s political and economic heft in the region have increased significantly, even as Pakistan has been riven with internal divisions and one axis of the war on terror runs through Islamabad. Pakistan is paying the piper now, but these crises would not have erupted had Bhutto stayed away.
Bhutto would not have been able to hold Pakistan together. It’s a very dark day for Pakistan, but not because Bhutto’s dead — rather, because Bhutto’s provocations will metastasize into a much deadlier eruption, catalyzed by her death.
In practical terms, it will be wind at the back of the anti-Musharraf rebels within the ISI, as well as the jihadist proxies which the ISI used to control, but which have now united and turned their guns on Islamabad.
Basically, Bhutto bet that Musharraf would protect her, because he could not afford an exponential increase in Pakistani unrest. Musharraf took the bet. Bhutto has been proven wrong; it remains to be seen if Musharraf will be proven right.
I think you are being too cynical about Bhutto. She had to know she was taking a huge risk to put herself out in the open in Pakistan. That took guts, and even if Musharraf wanted to protect her, it was a practical impossibility. Give her a little credit.
Eh. Cynicism is what I do best.
It has certainly paid off in terms of gold ;-)
Anyway, my attitude is, if you are going to rule a country, you should be judged by how much better off you left it. Bhutto was obscenely corrupt, Pakistan stagnated, and the people turned to jihadism and other revolutionary ideologies. Bhutto also allied with the jihadists when it suited her. She has no principles.
Musharraf is very corrupt himself, but he has stabilized the country and allowed others to realize very impressive returns on investment, as well. Musharraf got the trains to run on time. He is a capitalist and a secularist, in the Putin tradition. He accomplished many of the things for Pakistan that Putin did for Russia, without the commodities “free lunch.”
Bhutto played up her gender and faux-liberalism to the Western press very adroitly, but her actions and track record bear no resemblance to her fatuously MSM-cosseted media image.