The Battle for Pakistan: The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood by Shuja Nawaz (review)

Among the large number of fine books on Pakistan in recent years by academics, think-tank scholars, and practitioners, Shuja Nawaz's The Battle for Pakistan stands apart. Like many others, his book underscores the inconstancy of the Pakistan-US relationship. It also resembles the rest in depicting Pakistan's military as dominating the country's narrative, and Afghanistan as driving much of Pakistan-US relations for almost four decades. Where Nawaz's book is most distinguishable is his ability to write about both countries with the detachment of an outsider and access of a trusted insider. As a leading Washington political analyst, Nawaz has long been a respected consultant to senior levels of the US government while also well connected through personal and family roots with key figures in Pakistan, especially with its senior military. Acting as a participant observer, Nawaz has at times helped to facilitate communications between the United States and Pakistan. As this book demonstrates, he manages to retain remarkable evenhandedness and objectivity in dealing with both countries.

The Battle for Pakistan is a thoroughly sourced, superbly written book providing comprehensive, richly detailed discussions of several dimensions of Pakistan's troubled relations with the US, mostly covering the period from 2008 through 2019. In accounting for their often-described roller-coaster partnership, Nawaz points up the mutual suspicions, distrust, and misunderstandings, much of them attributable to the incompatibilities of their regional strategies and objectives. In also highlighting critical areas of interdependence, especially involving Afghanistan, Nawaz is deeply concerned with the broad implications if Pakistan and the US are not rescued from possible divorce. In their often-misaligned relationship, Pakistan is described as having a "gullible partner" in the US that, given vague promises, can be fooled into parting with its money. He finds that the US has exercised poor judgement in allowing the relationship to become "transitional and mercenary" rather than making it "strategic and long-lasting" (p. xxxiii). The US is also criticized for relying too greatly on its military partners in Pakistan and also being too accommodating to a corrupt civilian leadership.

Author of a seminal volume on the Pakistani military, Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford University Press, 2008), Nawaz is well positioned to describe the Pakistani military's tight grip on the country's foreign policy. He addresses the dysfunctional relationship between the military and Pakistan's elected governments in their struggle for supremacy, especially its effect on relations with the US. Nawaz points to the poor coordination and lack of trust between military and government officials. He notes the lack of confidence among the country's civilians in standing up to the military and how, anxious to avoid a military takeover, governments have tried to use their separate relationship with the US as political insurance against a military takeover. Offering a window into the military's political culture, Nawaz observes the military's view of itself as the country's savior and its low esteem for the country's elected officials. He describes the political class's lack of faith in democratic practices and its frequent hypocrisy. While professing to uphold democracy, politicians are seen as having degraded public institutions and brought Pakistan consistently poor governance. Actions taken both under civil and military rule have, Nawaz fears, veered the country toward autocracy, kleptocracy, and dictatorship.

The book touches on several areas known to be sensitive to the military. Such topics as the dynamics of military leadership succession and the military's strategic thinking are normally off bounds for investigation by Pakistan's journalists and authors. By contrast, Nawaz had, among other military contacts, remarkable direct access to former army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who shared with him his thinking on Afghanistan and India, and also written communications to the US about the strategic partnership with Pakistan. Even then, Nawaz knows to tread carefully in discussing such topics as...