Waging Peace, Pages 48-49

Middle East Institute President Speaks at Iowa State University

AMBASSADOR Wendy Chamberlin, president of the Middle East Institute (MEI), a Washington, DC think tank and policy shop founded in 1946, spoke before an audience of about 50, mostly students, in the Great Hall at Iowa State University’s Memorial Union in Ames on Jan. 27.

“What I thought I’d tackle tonight is something I know a little bit about, and that’s Pakistan,” Chamberlin began, reiterating the title of her talk: “”˜Can the United States Save Pakistan?’”

“If I had to give you a quick answer,” she said, “the answer would be, ”˜No.’ Saving Pakistan is really for the Pakistanis, not for the United States. And frankly, our relationship with the Pakistanis is really too strained for us to be of much help.”

Chamberlin seemed hesitant to admit that “our drone program” is a destabilizing factor in relations between the U.S. and Pakistan. “We find it to be exceedingly effective in taking out the top leadership of al-Qaeda,” she stated. “We know the Pakistani military passively supports it, quietly, but publicly we get a lot of criticism from the establishment about that drone program as being a violation of Pakistani sovereignty, when in fact it is one of the most effective instruments for going after those groups that are trying to bring down the Pakistani government.”

Chamberlin went on to question Washington’s approach to relations with Pakistan, however.

“Every U.S. diplomat knows what our mission is; our mission is to promote U.S. interests. But promoting U.S. interests with an American-centric approach dooms us to this distrustful relationship with Pakistan,” she said.

“The only approach that is going to make sense is that we stop focusing on U.S. interests...and start to focus more...on the broader interests of the Pakistani people. This is where real trust can begin. In the longer term, we have much more to gain in our diplomacy when we promote the human aspirations of the people,” she argued, “especially in a country that is the second-largest Muslim country in the world, 170 million people, and with a population that is growing at double the world average.”

During the question-and-answer period, this reporter asked Chamberlin how Americans might react if “the Pakistani government were in our country doing what our government is doing in their country?”

The response of the former U.S. ambassador to both Pakistan and Laos tilted toward the traditional U.S.-centric framework for diplomacy that she had earlier criticized.

“I do believe that the number one responsibility of our government...is to protect the citizens of the United States....The threat that we face today is not coming from behind the Iron Curtain. We know exactly where it is coming from. Al-Qaeda’s core is in Pakistan, so we have very clear security interests in Pakistan,” she said.

Expressing support for a broad regional strategy, Chamberlin said her personal view is that the Pakistani military “should be going after all terrorists and not cherry-picking.

“We have every reason to be there,” she maintained, “and we have every reason to be working closely with the Pakistanis against these guys, because they are out to get hold of us.”

Chamberlin’s presentation at ISU was sponsored by the YWCA and the student body-funded World Affairs Series.

—Michael Gillespie