The Foreign Service Journal, January 2011

personnel from the well-established, colonial cadres. However, something evenmore important was lacking: a suf- ficiency of well-seasoned politicians. As Oldenburg points out, the In- dian National Congress had evolved into an all-India mass movement with leadership depth well before becom- ing the ruling party of independent India under Prime Minister Jawahar- lal Nehru. Civilian politicians, not the military nor the unelected bureau- cracy, dominated India from its very beginning. By contrast, not only did Pakistan’s MuslimLeague lack the long history of the Congress, but its leader Moham- mad Ali Jinnah opted to become pres- ident instead of assuming the challen- ges of parliamentary leadership. Demo- cracy has played second fiddle to gen- erals and bureaucrats ever since; mili- tary coups are all but institutionalized in Pakistan. Fear of India, understandable but often exaggerated, also enhanced the power of the military in Pakistan. One solution to this longstanding “security situation” was to seek an alliance with the United States. The U.S., alarmed by India’s closeness to Cold War Moscow, happily sealed the deal, with consequences that should be noted carefully by U.S. policymakers seeking to strengthen Pakistan’s democracy today. As Oldenburg writes, although Washington has supported Islamabad’s efforts to institutionalize democracy, those efforts do not come close to matching the support the military has received. And this contradictory pol- icy continues. In 1971, both India and Pakistan faced existential crises. Pakistan’s east- ern wing rebelled and became Bangla- desh. The army was humiliated, but within a few years General Zia-ul-Haq had deposed Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. By contrast, after suffering through two years of Indira Gandhi’s imperious emergency rule, Indian vot- ers tossed her out of office. They had alternatives. In short, as other political analysts have also noted, founding political choices have consequences. Accord- ingly, Oldenburg sees little prospect of convergence between India and Pak- istan in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the message to U.S. policymakers is this: there are no quick and easy recipes for cooking up demo- cracy. Patricia Lee Sharpe was an FSO with the U.S. Information Agency (and then State) from 1978 to 2001. A longer version of this review appeared on WhirledView, the world politics, public diplomacy and national security blog she co-writes with former FSO Patri- cia H. Kushlis (http://whirledview.type pad.com ). J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 B O O K S Civilian politicians, not the military nor the unelected bureaucracy, dominated India from day one. Appl i cat i on Deadl ine February 6 , 2011