Musharraf looks to be on his way out.
Looks as if Musharraf is on his last legs. We’re going to spend the next couple of decades regretting the Clinton/Bush policy of treating that thug as “our S.O.B.” Even now, Condi Rice can’t work up the gumption to support the civilian leadership. They’re going to remember that once Musharraf is gone. And they’re going to remember our passivity when they tried to rein in the ISI, and failed.
This is, I think, the chief argument agaist “realism” as a foreign policy doctrine: it’s almost invariably associated with short-termism. Not, of course, that the civilian politicans of Pakistan are anything to write home about. But at least we could have taken the side of constitutional forms, even given that the content was and is rotten.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
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