I suspect Matt’s always thought that Pakistan is the more important half of the Af-Pak clusterfuck, and today he comes out and says it. I’ve been beating around that bush for a while now too. Recently, however, I’ve been pondering the possibility that too much involvement in Pakistan might be a mistake as well.

I just finished carefully re-reading John Lukacs’ sketch of George Kennan last night and was struck anew by Kennan’s prescient calls to prudence in international relations, his conviction that most problems in the world are by their very nature too complicated to be “solved” in any meaningful way, and his counsel, therefore, that America be extremely selective in its engagements.

Remaking Afghanistan certainly doesn’t reach Kennan’s threshold for American involvement. One is tempted to wonder whether Pakistan does either. It’s not that the stakes aren’t high—nuclear weapons in a failed state are about as high as they can get. It’s that the paucity of our policy options and leverage is matched with a frightful lack of insight as to what’s happening on the ground, which makes the further improvement of our options seem unlikely. Indeed, the situation is so fluid and murky that even Pakistani journalists close to the events seem to be baffled by each new turn. It’s not that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with Pakistan, Kennan might say, but that we should be very hesitant about just “doing something” lest we muck it up more.