Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding

The relationship between America and Pakistan is based on mutual incomprehension and always has been. Pakistanto American eyeshas gone from being a quirky irrelevance, to a stabilizing friend, to an essential military ally, to a seedbed of terror. Americato Pakistani eyeshas been a guarantee of security, a coldly distant scold, an enthusiastic military enabler, and is now a threat to national security and a source of humiliation.The countries are not merely at odds. Each believes it can play the otherwith sometimes absurd, sometimes tragic, results. The conventional narrative about the war in Afghanistan, for instance, has revolved around the Soviet invasion in 1979. But President Jimmy Carter signed the first authorization to help the Pakistani-backed mujahedeen covertly on July 3almost six months before the Soviets invaded. Americans were told, and like to believe, that what followed was Charlie Wilsons war of Afghani liberation, with which they remain embroiled to this day. It was not. It was General Zia-ul-Haqs vicious regional power play.Husain Haqqani has a unique insight into Pakistan, his homeland, and America, where he was ambassador and is now a professor at Boston University. His life has mapped the relationship of the two countries and he has found himself often close to the heart of it, sometimes in very confrontational circumstances, and this has allowed him to write the story of a misbegotten diplomatic love affair, here memorably laid bare.