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The sound you hear in Pakistan is a couple of pillars of Bush administration foreign policy crumbling away.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf — the army chief of staff who seized power in a 1999 coup — figured that if he declared a state of emergency and suspended his country’s constitution, a Bush administration that has made the promotion of democracy a matter of gospel would merely tut-tut and keep the aid dollars flowing. It might be the only correct judgment the embattled general has made in the past year.

Musharraf’s lurch back toward dictatorship, with the Bush administration unwilling to try to do anything serious to counter it, is another blow to the administration’s doctrinaire commitment to democracy-promotion. It shows how other primal geopolitical instincts, such as simple fear of the unknown (who would replace Musharraf if he fell?), necessarily trump a preference for the ballot box.

Musharraf has been touted as one of President Bush’s most important allies in the war on terror, but he has made a mockery of the you’re-either-with-us-or-against-us polarity of the Bush Doctrine. Like that other nettlesome U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, Musharraf wants to be “with us” just enough to stay on our right side, while “against us” enough to placate hostile domestic political forces. These governments can always respond to pressure from us to do more with the (persuasive) argument that the alternative to them would be even worse. Thus, Bush’s black-and-white principle founders in a morass of gray.
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