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THE ‘ugly American’ is back. The phrase refers to a 1958 novel which critiqued US diplomacy in Southeast Asia during the Cold War by depicting US diplomats as insular, arrogant and transactional. The book advocated for greater understanding of foreign cultures. It was this perception of the US that then president John Kennedy sought to temper through the launch of USAID and, with it, US soft power. But with that agency’s attempted dismantling, the ugliness is apparent once again.
The USAID freeze came as a global shock, though it should not have. A federal judge’s ruling last week to resume USAID funding should not distract from the fact that, sadly, the ‘ugly American’ was due a comeback. The debacle is not an extreme manifestation of Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s crusade against ‘liberal lunacy’, it is a strategic repositioning of US priorities in a world at total war.
Former US assistant secretary of defence Mara Karlin’s testimony to the US House Armed Services Committee last week helps contextualise this shift. Karlin argued that “an age of comprehensive conflict has begun”, which she describes as “‘total war’, in which combatants draw on vast arrays of resources, mobilise their societies, attack a variety of targets, and reshape their economies to prioritise warfare over all other state activities.”
Karlin pointed to the collapse of the “continuum of conflict”. By this she means there are no longer neat divisions between insurgencies, armed conflict, and state-to-state conflagrations, including nuclear ones. In the world’s various ongoing conflicts, trenches, drones, robot dogs, naval ships and nukes are all martially simultaneous. No one military power can reign supreme for too long.
What should a state confronted by such conflict do?
She also pointed to the shifting demographics of conflict, which now involves state militaries, non-state actors, volunteer fighters, mercenaries, and civilians. Proxies and partnerships become more important in this fluid warscape, with conflicts increasingly defined by who comes to whose aid, how quickly and with what resources. Karlin emphasised the importance of traditional deterrence (denying an aggressor success or thwarting action through warning of severe consequences), but also of resilience.
Karlin’s analysis was US-centric, but it holds for all countries, including ours. Pakistan, too, is at total war, battling ethno-nationalist insurgencies in underserved provinces, cross-border militant threats from the TTP, and persistent state-level concerns, as reiterated in the recent US-India joint statement and Washington’s increased defence support for New Delhi.
In an era of conflict and neo-imperialism, Pakistan’s greatest challenge will be navigating large power machinations. Its role will be as a cog in greater powers’ wheels, the partner or proxy ready — and grateful — to receive instruction, assistance, and, if we’re lucky, some critical technology. This is familiar terrain for country that has long fed others’ resilience needs (China’s regional counterweight to India, America’s front line against the global extremist threat in Afghanistan, etc).
Here’s our problem: ‘comprehensive conflict’, as defined by Karlin, is not the sum of all threats to our country and its people. Total war does not subsume or displace other material threats such as food and water scarcity, climate disasters, and socioeconomic challenges presented by a burgeoning and underemployed young workforce. While Western countries fretted about boosting defence budgets, only 12 out of 195 countries that are Paris Agreement signatories met the deadline to submit emissions reduction targets for 2035. The ‘total war’ is also being waged against the planet.
What should a state confronted by such conflict do? For most the answer is clear — boost defence spending with a focus on readiness and deterrence. But also don’t prioritise one kind of threat over all others.
This is a timely reminder for our own country, where the establishment is distracted by state capture aims and quashing dissent, and where civilian institutions have been completely degraded. The democratic framework in recent years has been diminished in the name of national security; in fact, this has left the country more insecure than ever.
Sound risk management and resilience — for individuals, corporate boards, and states alike — require reliable information, trusted partnerships, insightful forecasting, expertise and adequate resources. And risk prioritisation requires debate and learning from past mistakes. These are the tenets of democracies, where institutions consider and balance risks and check and chal-
lenge policy positions, while militaries focus on security concerns without distraction. We can only endure an era of comprehensive conflict by repositioning our politics.
The writer is a political and integrity risk analyst.
X: @humayusuf
Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2025
