Diana Bolsinger, a former Brumley Next Generation Graduate Fellow, recently published an essay in the Texas National Security Review titled Not at Any Price: LBJ, Pakistan, and Bargaining in an Asymmetric Intelligence Relationship. Bolsinger’s article received the Bobby R. Inman Award from the Intelligence Studies Project in 2020.  She began her research into the theoretical questions discussed in the article as a Brumley Next Generation Scholar. In the article, Bolsinger explores the history of U.S.-Pakistani collaboration in the early years of the Cold War, focusing on the shortcomings of their secret intelligence endeavor. Bolsinger began her article by explaining the basic tenets of alliance theory, which provides “that bargaining power is a function of dependence and having alternatives, rather than of raw power.” Noting that literature on alliance theory typically focuses on publicly acknowledged alliance agreements, Bolsinger highlights the lack of literature on “the secret national security agreements that underpin clandestine intelligence operations abroad.” 

She then presents her primary argument: that “the secret and informal nature of these agreements lends itself to a more volatile relationship overall.” To flesh out this argument, Bolsinger turns to her case study: the aforementioned set of secret U.S.-Pakistani agreements on clandestine security relationships. In the first section of her article, Bolsinger outlines how the secret clandestine pacts empower small states to exercise greater leverage. She notes that liaison program generally “increase Washington’s stake in its clandestine ally, creating an incentive to give more to preserve the relationship.” Bolsinger then turns to discuss the origins of this secret intelligence collaboration. In her historical account of this relationship, she underscores that Pakistan’s strategic value to the U.S. laid in part in its ability to provide information on the Soviet Union and China.  In the third section of the article, Bolsinger details how both parties’ efforts to gain leverage bred mutual distrust. In this portion, she discusses how asymmetrical liaison relationships enable the less dependent partner (in this case, Pakistan) to engage in blackmail. In the fourth and final section, she provides some lessons learned from the collapse of the U.S.-Pakistani collaboration. She emphasizes the need to investigate negotiations on other informal alliance arrangements as they can provide insight into how states “update their assessments of their bargaining positions.” Read the full article here.