Pakistan's crisis is world's crisis
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is perhaps the most important man in the world today. As both the military and political leader of Pakistan, he has assumed sole responsibility for keeping the spark of Islamic fundamentalism away from the powderkeg of nuclear war.
Pakistan has been a nuclear power for at least a decade, probably more, and at the same time it is the world's breeding ground of Islamic terrorism. Osama bin Laden is assumed to reside in the country's notorious Waziristan province adjacent to Afghanistan, and many of the terrorists arrested or killed in suicide missions each year in Europe and elsewhere were trained in Pakistan's madrassas and terror camps.
Indeed, make no mistake: The current political crisis in Pakistan is a military crisis for the rest of the world. Like it or not, the war for Islamic power is being fought from Pakistan more than from Iraq, Afghanistan or even Iran. And though the various elements of Islamic jihad - the Taliban, al-Qaida, Pakistani nationalists - remain largely out of sight to Western eyes, their influence is indisputable.
That's why President Musharraf's recent decision to suspend the Constitution and maintain power through the imposition of martial law has consequences that go way beyond the future of democracy in Pakistan. What is at stake is the very thin line between a somewhat unreliable ally and total chaos.
Yes, spreading democracy has been a noble goal of the Bush administration, and no one can condone the arrests of lawyers, human rights activists and opposition-party supporters in Pakistan or anywhere else.
But the fact of the matter is that Pakistan is where Bush's democratization strategy runs up against the reality of Islamic jihad. It is entirely possible that the people of Pakistan would not knowingly and willingly elect a moderate such as Musharraf to the presidency, but would instead prefer an Islamist who would turn away from the West and toward Mecca.
Then, it would be an open question what would happen to the nuclear arsenal in the hands of Pakistan. First, there would be the possibility of war against their Hindu rivals in India. Secondly, there would be the even more immediate likelihood of nuclear material being quietly transferred to Osama bin Laden's soldiers for eventual use against either Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United States or Europe.
No one who desires stability and sanity in the world can hope to achieve those goals by rebuking Musharraf and demanding that he turn over power to whatever might succeed him. Benazir Bhutto has promise as a unifying leader, but she has already been the target of one assassination attempt, and would not enjoy the strong support of the military that Musharraf has.
That doesn't leave the United States with any pleasant alternative. We need Musharraf as long as he can restrain al-Qaida from lighting the match that will set off the powderkeg, no matter how much we might not like him.