Military, Inc

Military Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy.

The corollaries are that

1. It is well near impossible to break the hold the Pakistani military has on public life, without severe disruptions.

2. Veteran Pakistan watchers know that the civilian government is merely a facade the military uses as camouflage. The civilian government does not have full economic authority, let alone political authority. In particular, the Pakistani military, and not the civilian government, will be making national security policy decisions.

3. Having the keys to the Pakistani nukes, the Pakistani military will refuse to be displaced, and will threaten to take the world down with them if pressed too hard.

4. The Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Taliban among others were nurtured by the Pakistani military and continue so. One America-friendly general at the top cannot change it; the military constituency as a whole controls large private resources, and funding and aid will continue to flow to these groups.

---

My commentary is that the real danger of the Pakistani troops moving from the western border to the eastern border to face India is to Pakistan - when the West finds out that things actually start improving in Afghanistan (or at least get no worse) after that move.