Gates on Pakistan: We'll Never Leave You

Responding to recent polling on Pakistani attitudes toward terrorism and the United States, Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested that America must convince Pakistan that we'll never leave Afghanistan:

“First of all, one of the reasons that the Pakistanis have concerns about us is that we walked away from them twice,” Gates said during a Pentagon news conference. The United States left Pakistan after the Soviets left Afghanistan, and later in the 1990s cut off military contacts with Pakistan in response to Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“So, our military-to-military relations were significantly interrupted,” Gates said. “I think that the Pakistanis, with some legitimacy, question how long are we prepared to stay there?”

But let's turn this question around - how long do we have to stay there for Pakistan to stop hedging? Five more years? Ten more years? A little further on, Gates says that the U.S. will win Pakistan over by bribing them. But we know that such aid is insufficient - it simply frees Pakistan up to spend money on conventional and nuclear weapons to deter India.

Absent making Afghanistan the 51st state, it's perfectly reasonable for Pakistani officials to reason that at some point in the future, the U.S. will not be occupying Afghanistan.

(AP Photos)