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Distributive domestic response
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 August 2010
Abstract
When former US ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlin, said of the US, ‘We are a player in the Pakistani political system’, she was pointing out how challenging it is to achieve US policy goals under the kinds of volatile political conditions engulfing that country. In late 2007, the Bush administration was banking on the political future of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who had recently returned to Pakistan, and was still providing President Pervez Musharraf with the substantial aid and support it had been giving him since 9/11. And yet by early 2008, Benazir Bhutto was dead, assassinated as she rose from her car to greet crowds of supporters, and Pervez Musharraf was a political liability, since his party had suffered a resounding defeat in the February 2008 election. These events demonstrated that even the foreign policies of a country as powerful as the US can be scuttled by the flux and flow of local power politics.
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References
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