Pakistan could become a failed state: Romney
Washington: Hardening stance on Pakistan, leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said the country is in danger of becoming a failed State.
"You're dealing with a nation like Pakistan, with a hundred-plus missiles, which is a fragile state, and could be become a failed state," Romney said.
In his speech at Nashua, New Hampshire, Romney said the world has become more dangerous.
"It's become more dangerous, and you recognise that. North Korea, over the last several years, has tested a nuclear device, has tested long-range missiles. Iran is, of course, arming Hezbollah, Hamas," he said.
"To a degree, Taliban, as well, has pursued their nuclear ambitions. Russia is acting in a more belligerent way with their neighbours and former satellites. China makes friends with some of the most unsavoury characters in the world. Whether in Burma/Myanmar, whether in Sudan, North Korea, China seems to be gathering a union of totalitarian states of some kind. The world is dangerous," Romney said.
"Our friends are in fragile settings, Israel in particular. With the development of the Arab Spring, that could be either some of the best news we've had in half a century or some of the worst, depending on how it turns out," he said.
"In a setting like this, this is no time for the United States of America to withdraw its commitment to a powerful and strong military. And a doomsday scenario for our military is not the right course, given where the world is headed," he said.
Romney said he actually thinks that there is a battle going on among the various players on the world stage to reshape the planet in their own way and their own liking.
"We, of course, want to see the expansion of freedom, free enterprise, across the globe. Yet, there are other models. There are a number of players who want to see an expansion of totalitarianism and are building a network of totalitarian states," he said.
"Having thrown aside, to a degree, communism or socialism as economic principles, they've grabbed onto a form of free enterprise, and by virtue of the power, economic power, of free enterprise, they have greater funding than they've had before and greater prosperity, and they're using that to build extraordinary military might," Romney said.
"Now, there's of course a third competitor, and the third competitor is the jihadist competitor... In a setting like this, the idea that we're going to devastate our military is simply unacceptable. I would call on the President to immediately introduce legislation which says we will not have a USD 600 billion cut to America's military," he said.
"When he was here four years ago, he spoke about bringing in a new era to the nation and getting our economy going," he said.
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Pakistan ranks 12th on failed states index: Report
Pakistan ranked number 12 on a list of the “most failed states”, according to an annual report published in the Foreign Policy* magazine on Tuesday.
The report titled “The Failed States Index 2011” compiles a list of countries in terms of vulnerability. From refugee flows to poverty, public services to security threats, the list takes together a country’s performance on this battery of indicators to reflect its stability.
In both 2009 and 2010, Pakistan took the number 10 spot on this index, whereas in 2008 it was ranked number nine.
Amongst Pakistan’s neighbouring states, Afghanistan ranks 7 while Iran ranks 35. FP magazine states that these countries are on ‘alert’.
Bangladesh ranks 25, and Sri Lanka is 29 on this list.
China ranks 72, whereas India ranks 76 on the list. These countries are considered to be in the ‘moderate’ zone for vulnerability.
The US ranks 158, while the UK ranks 159.
The 2011 report states that Pakistan has long been dubbed the “world’s most dangerous country” in Washington policy circles. The report states:
Tick off any checklist of US national security concerns, and Pakistan has them all: nuclear weapons, terrorist and insurgent groups galore, and rampant anti-American sentiment. Add to all this a volatile political system, and it’s no wonder that Pakistan preoccupies so many Western security analysts.
The report adds that Pakistan is not just dangerous for the West – it’s often a danger to its own people.
It also states that the cultivation of militant groups by the Pakistani military and intelligence services – which the report states is a counterweight to India and a source of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan – has turned Pakistan into a “cockpit of terrorist violence”.
It adds that the country’s military leaders have made a “strategic” decision to allow the Pahstuns to govern themselves in what the report calls “ungoverned spaces” in the Pahstun-dominated badlands along the Afghanistan border.
The report cites terrorism and civilian deaths as one major reason for Pakistan’s position, adding that the 2010 floods displaced millions of people, adding to the instability of the country.
The top 20 failed states on this index are:
Somalia
Chad
Sudan
Congo
Haiti
Zimbabwe
Afghanistan
Central African Republic
Iraq
Ivory Coast
Guinea
Pakistan
Yemen
Nigeria
Niger
Kenya
Burundi
Burma
Guinea-Bissau
Ethiopia
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Pakistan ranks 12th on failed states index: Report – The Express Tribune
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And India is a loner on the world stage.
