The 1% Consensus

I found Fareed Zakaria's interview this week with CNN on Afghanistan and President Obama's military escalation rather interesting. The entire interview is worth a read, but Zakaria made what I thought was an especially salient point on Pakistan:

CNN: Do you think the president was justified in raising the specter of nuclear disaster in connection with terrorism and Pakistan?

Zakaria: I used to believe that the Pakistani nuclear weapons were secure and the Pakistani army was strong enough to maintain control over them, but I have seen recent reports, including one from Bruce Riedel who is advising the president on this which cast doubt on the security of nuclear command and control, the security of the weapons themselves.

So yes, reluctantly I would have to say the president was right to raise the specter of some possible collapse of parts of the Pakistani state which could put the nuclear weapons in the wrong hands. I think it's remote, but ... you want to do what you can to minimize the chances of a remote but very bad outcome.

This reminds me of Vice President Cheney's now famous "1% chance" line on the possibility of al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear capability via Pakistan. "It's not about our analysis," said Cheney at the time, but "our response."

This was obviously the guiding doctrine for the Bush administration, but what's interesting is how the very same doctrine, if reluctantly, has found consensus within the Obama administration as well. Zakaria admits to a reluctant acceptance of this, and we heard much of that same reluctance in the President's speech this week.

It is fascinating however--all of the back and forth sniping notwithstanding--to see the same driving paranoia bind the previous and current administrations together. While data indicates that most Pakistanis, prompted in part by drone attacks inside their borders, view the United States as the problem--not the Taliban.

Yet a nuclear al-Qaeda/Taliban consumes our imaginations. To paraphrase the former Vice President, it's not the analysis of such a possibility that matters, but our preparedness to react to that possibility in preponderant fashion. In an age where asymmetric warfare meets nuclear know-how, paranoia may be the new norm. Whereas past enemies fighting with conventional means could be 'contained,' today's enemies must be assumed at their worst, and dealt with in apparently equal fashion.

(AP Photos)