Last week’s decision isn’t a one-off. What we’ve witnessed is an initiation of a brinkmanship exercise ‐ the firing of an opening salvo that declares intent to impose pain on Pakistain to get it to deliver on America’s principal ask: action against the Afghan Taliban
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and Haqqani network
.Brinkmanship is a battle of nerves in which both sides believe they have more resolve to stay the course than the opponent. Failure to get the opposite number to cave in adds to the pressure to try harder in the next move. Neither actor necessarily wants a total breakdown, but in the process of out-nerving the other, either can make a miscalculation.
The pressure to climb the escalation ladder was built into the US’s first move as it was sure to draw a blank. Even proponents of last week’s decision in Washington who argue that Pakistain can be moulded by leveraging US assistance agree that withdrawing security aid and the Coalition Support Funds was going to do little to deliver any strategic gains for the US. The fiscal year 2017’s appropriated amount of US security assistance to Pakistain was around $300 million. Actual disbursements are often lower. CSF authorisation was around $1 billion annually for fiscal years 2015-17, but between a third and a half of it was already conditioned on Pakistain’s anti-terrorism performance and withheld.