--- title: Is the U.S. Ready to Strike Inside Pakistan | TIME description: In this episode of Command Post, policy experts consider whether the U.S. needs to attack the Haqqani network and other trouble-makers inside Pakistan in order to win the war in Afghanistan canonical: https://time.com/video/45kbgRrr/ og:title: Is the U.S. Ready to Strike Inside Pakistan og:description: In this episode of Command Post, policy experts consider whether the U.S. needs to attack the Haqqani network and other trouble-makers inside Pakistan in order to win the war in Afghanistan og:url: https://time.com/video/45kbgRrr/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/45kbgRrr/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Is the U.S. Ready to Strike Inside Pakistan twitter:description: In this episode of Command Post, policy experts consider whether the U.S. needs to attack the Haqqani network and other trouble-makers inside Pakistan in order to win the war in Afghanistan twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/45kbgRrr/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Is the U.S. Ready to Strike Inside Pakistan > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Is the U.S. Ready to Strike Inside Pakistan [Watch (HLS stream): Is the U.S. Ready to Strike Inside Pakistan](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/45kbgRrr.m3u8) (4:18)  _Published 2011-10-19. In this episode of Command Post, policy experts consider whether the U.S. needs to attack the Haqqani network and other trouble-makers inside Pakistan in order to win the war in Afghanistan_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:18 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Nikki Haley on Pakistan and Afghanistan](/video/CTEDoYdq/) ### Nikki Haley on Pakistan and Afghanistan [Blast Inside U.S. Base in Afghanistan Kills 4](/video/7RJKszXx/) ### Blast Inside U.S. Base in Afghanistan Kills 4 [Command Post: The Pakistan Effect](/video/WDUdGBdv/) ### Command Post: The Pakistan Effect --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] This is Command Post. A series of discussions about military matters from Time and The Center for a New American Security. Brian, US military's talked in recent weeks about the need to maybe take action unilaterally in Pakistan. To stop this rash of assassinations that's going on. Is that a real threat? And if so how do you think it would unfold? I think it's a very real threat, and I'm interested to see what reaction this illicits from the Pakistanis. US Pakistan relations have I think hit an all time low, and it's not only the consequence of the Osama Bin Ladin reign, and I've heard about it before that there have been many fights about Pakistan [ INAUDIBLE ]. And a number of other terrorist organizations. You add to it the fact that Pakistan has nearly doubled its nuclear arsenal in the last you know five years. All of these things indicate that there's a lot that's going on inside of Pakistan that we're trying to wrestle with. My assesment. Is that the Obama administration has thrown the kitchen sink at this, they've tried everything, and we're not getting the responses that we had hoped. My worry is, that though I understand the intent behind these public condemnations, that it may not get the sort of response and cooperation that we need. Anyone who assumes in congress or in the US that we can just throw up our hands and walk away from this problem in Pakistan, their fooling themselves. I think Brian is absolutely right, that the issue in Pakistan is the primary security issue in all of South Asia. And I grew with, with Bryan that we should use leverage where we have, have it. I would be surprised however if we succeed. The Pakistanis support the [ UNKNOWN ] For perfectly rational reasons, they are Pakistan's plan b. In the event that the United States project in Afghanistan fails [ UNKNOWN ] collapses and they end up with chaos. As long as they are hedging their bets against American failure, what we are in effect asking them to do when we pressure them, is to act against their manifest self- interest. And I think it's very unlikely that we'll have the leverage at our disposal to, that will be sufficient to make any serious dent in this. Okay, but this conflict Steve hasn't. Didn't start last year, we're now a decade in. I mean is it fair, is it wrong to suggest that we've been played for suckers? They've taken all of our aid, all of our military training yet, they're still dealing a double gain without counting that work in others. Sophisticated American officials have known all along that that's what's going on. I mean, if sucker implies that we didn't know we were being taken, I think we know we're being taken. No, but once they go, once you get the chairman of the Joint Chiefs going public, and saying this was done with a connivance Of ISI and the Pakistani army. After he's been budding up to general Figani for so long. Well what I think represents is a deliberate concious change in US policy in the direction of ratcheting up the attempt to bring leverage to bear to get them to reduce the scale of the resistance. Its not that it hadn't occurred to us before that the Pakistanis were supporting these groups. It's also not like it hasn't occurred to us before, that they're doing it for strategic reasons of their own. If it represents a belief on the part of the administration that they think they can end this activity, then I think they're being naive. My guess is what they're trying to do is they're trying to reduce the more egregious examples of it and return it to the kind of lower level chronic problem that it had been in the past. Yeah I I agree with that and I think any notion of a reconciliation process inside of Afghanistan it needs to have some form of a Pakistani buy in. And right now I think we're Heavily focused, as we rightly should be, on the immediate security concerns and if there's clear evidence that our embassy or other military presence was attacked with the complicit support of, the, the Pakistani establishment, we need to raise that as an issue, but strategically, we need to think through also what is the main point when we're engaging Pakistan on Afghanistan. Quite often over the last two and a half years it has been messages such as, go into North Waziristan with your troops, take out the Haqqani network. And I think the only thing that's sustainable given our stakes and given the Pakistani's interests is a much more inclusive process. All of that is easier said than done. It's hard to execute given sort of the fissures within Pakistan and, and inside their agencies but I think we need to try a little bit harder on that. That front. 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