Hand. Overplayed.

Pakistanis face the unlovely choice between a military dictator and a kleptocrat with a developing christ complex--or, of course, the even more likely scenario that some third party will emerge from the wreckage of this current confrontation a few years down the road and establish a tenuous, Islamic state as the Taliban did from the wreckage of the post-war Afghan state. Everyone seems to take it as a matter of faith that this last is the worst possible outcome because "Pakistan is a nuclear country." In other words, everyone seems to believe that a crazy mullah is more likely to lob a nuke at Mumbai than a crazy martial potentate. I cannot quite associate myself with that thesis, but there it is. The lay of the land.

In the meantime, it seems to me that Bhutto, the United States, and Musharraf were all too clever by half in the months preceding the ongoing crisis. I've yet to see a clear timeline of who made what overtures to whome, but clearly each of the major players believed that events were more or less under their control. Out of the tripartite play-for-advantage, with each party believing itself to have successfully manipulate the other two just so, what emerges is a portrait of extraordinary hubris on all sides. None of them knew what the fuck they were doing. I am not, of course, concerned with the "effects on the broader War on Terror," which is all the newspapers want to talk about, as if there were such a thing as "the broader War on Terror." I do, however, wonder what this means for an itchy subcontinent. Also, note that Pakistan shares several hundred kilometers of border with China. Just to make things even more interesting.