U.S. President Barack Obama is right to talk about "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan" and the need to evolve an integrated U.S. strategy toward these two closely tied countries. But even as he has embarked on some major steps, his evolving strategy does not suggest a meaningful integration.
While pursuing a large "surge" of U.S. forces in Afghanistan without clarity on the precise nature and length of the military mission, Obama is seeking to do, albeit in more subtle ways, what U.S. policy has traditionally done vis-a-vis Pakistan — prop up that state.
Obama's priority is to prevent Pakistan's financial collapse while getting the Pakistani military to break its close nexus with the Taliban. Toward that end, Obama is set to more than triple nonmilitary aid to a near-bankrupt Pakistan, already one of the three largest recipients of U.S. assistance, but with the military aid currently being three times larger than the economic aid.