US aid to Pakistan won’t work
Even the reasoning of a celebrated game theorist is fallacious.
One of the world’s most prominent applied game theorists, Bueno de Mesquita, has been regularly consulted by CIA — more than a thousand predictions with better strike rate than CIA’s own analysts — and big international corporates to “predict the outcome of any situation in which parties can be described as trying to persuade or coerce one another”. His very interesting story has been profiled recently in the New York Times magazine.
While his prognostications about Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon have been the talk of the town, one seemingly innocuous observation about Pakistan merits attention.
For example, with Pakistan, his model showed that if the U.S. merely doubled its annual aid from $700 million to $1.5 billion, America’s influence in the country would significantly jump, while the militants’ would drop drastically. Why? Because with that sort of financial flow, corrupt rural officials would suddenly profit more from helping the U.S. than from helping the Taliban.[NYT]
Well, the US influence might increase but it would do little to further its strategic goals in the country or the region. If easy money is available to corrupt officials, they would not want to close the tap soon — preferably never. As the aid money can only flow if there is gross underdevelopment, it provides a perverse incentive to these officials to keep these areas in the abysmal state they are currently in. More importantly, the US interest in the region — and money via aid — will hold only if these areas continue to be a breeding ground for the jehadis. So, the corrupt local officials would want both the jehadis and the underdevelopment in the region to continue as hitherto.
As someone who started his career as an India expert, Mesquita and his computer might have got their first political prediction in 1979 on India right but this one on Pakistan doesn’t sound right at all. By the way, it seems that the prediction in 1979 was about Chaudhary Charan Singh becoming the Prime Minister of India!
“As the aid money can only flow if there is gross underdevelopment, it provides a perverse incentive to these officials to keep these areas in the abysmal state they are in.”
nail on the head sir. but same to same here. what to do.
agree…..may I know what prediction did he get right on India in 1979?
[...] Pragmatic links to a profile of a star game theorist, known for high quality predictions. There’s some interesting stuff there, including Indian PM predictions, and the potential for the US to buy off Pakistan. But there’s also an interesting bit on global coordination on climate change: Global warming is another area where politics are doomed to fail. World governments are set to meet this December in Copenhagen to commit to firm CO2-reduction levels — but when Bueno de Mesquita modeled the future of these targets, most countries renege on them. No democratic government will seriously limit CO2 if it will hurt its citizens economically. [...]
It is important to also note that all the three defence service chiefs have vehemently and repeatedly, verbally and in writing, individually and collectively, conveyed to New Delhi at the highest levels their strong and total opposition to India entering into an EUMA with the US because of its serious national security-compromising character. But the Cabinet Committee on Security, chaired by the Prime Minister, brushed aside these acute concerns and went ahead and approved the EUMA.
Prags—Can you guess how much money (in $)was paid by US & to who all to get this deal thru?