The "AF-PAK" situation, in outline, is this: everyone now knows that the Pakistani government--in part or in whole--is supplying elements of the forces fighting us in Afghanistan and has a dramatically different geopolitical conception of a future Central Asia then we do. Everyone knows, in turn, that the Pakistanis tacitly allow us to carry out drone and special operations inside their borders, while using these unpopular actions to demonize us. It is also common knowledge that the United States, simply by virtue of what Pakistan represents, is dependent on Islamabad for a host of both technical and political services. Lastly, despite the geopolitical importance of Pakistan, a bipartisan grouping of defense intellectuals feel that the United States, allied partners, and major players in the broad region have not stepped up to the plate in terms of disaster relief for one of the most devastating floods in recent memory.
So what is to be done? A conventional idea might be to formulate a new, whole-government strategy for American engagement in Pakistan. Such a strategy might be worked out utilizing a cutting-edge political science or sociology method. But strategy exists to implement a policy. There is creativity within strategy, tactics, and the operational methodologies that join them but they are instrumental devices, and the broadest field of creativity lies within the policy realm. But the cognitive incoherence and contradiction in the second paragraph suggests that something might be wrong with the overall policy that forces us through these logical contortions.
When we talk about "strategy"--as in what kind of strategy does a candidate have for dealing with the terrorist threat, we're in reality really talking about policy. A threat exists (terrorism), and a policy is formulated as to what to do about it. The instruments of national power, in turn, carry out a strategy designed from policy. It's a bad linguistic tick, and I'm frequently guilty of conflating the two in my mind and in everyday speech and writing. If you believe in the concept of grand strategy, a grand strategy would be a set of practices effective at a given time for accomplishing basic policies such as surviving, making $$, or knocking the other dude off the pedestal to be the big kahuna.
What might this tendency to merge policy and strategy suggest, though? It means that we both don't want to dredge up the debates policy might bring (especially in a time of great political polarization), or that we see policy problems as essentially issues of engineering akin to building a bridge in structurally difficult conditions. With all of the talk of complexity, design, problem-framing, and adaptation, it seems lost to many that these methodologies are not just effective on tactical, operational, or even strategic levels. The idea of "wicked problems" is something that social scientists thought of originally in the policy context, and was later adapted for military practice.
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