washpost's story on 'deteriorating' u.s./pakistan relations.
After years of sporadic tension between Washington and Islamabad, the immediate cause of the rupture was the raid on bin Laden’s compound, located minutes from Pakistani military installations. Pakistan was not informed before the operation, a level of secrecy that left its military and intelligence services angry and humiliated.
it was completely obvious already, but is also even more completely obvious now, that the only rational approach, if we were serious about killing bin laden, was not to share the intelligence and planning with the government of pakistan. i think the cia believed that the pakistani government (or 'elements' of it) was shielding or harboring him. and they certainly believed with good reason that bin laden would be warned and would disappear if we told them what we were about to do.
you'll hear all the officials and the experts (peter bergen, e.g.) describing the relation as 'troubled but indispensable.' but i think we'd better start considering what happens once it is dispensed with, because i think it is really collapsing, perhaps with good reason, from both sides at once. so they're certainly sitting there thinking about how they could get by without our billions, and we're certainly sitting here thinking about how we're going to get by without even their half-hearted cooperation. or we better be, anyway.
