Can Pakistan escape this vicious cycle? An obvious solution would be to divert some military aid to civil society and to tie other aid to specific objectives such as counterterrorism. Yet this obviously is very unlikely to work. It would require the Pakistani Army to comply, and why should it? After all, the generals know that even if Washington cuts them off, China and Arab states will pick up the slack.

What, then, should Washington do? Given the deadly combination of nuclear weapons and rabid jihadist groups in Pakistan, the United States can’t simply stop supporting Musharraf and his generals. But backing them as the lesser of evils would also be a mistake. Unquestioning military aid has stunted the growth of civic institutions. Pakistan’s mullahs and its military are also more closely linked than is widely appreciated. The West’s top goal must thus be to get the military out of Pakistan’s politics and economy. This won’t be easy, and it won’t solve all the country’s problems. But it’s the best hope in a bad situation, and Pakistan’s only shot at real stability.

The article is co-authored with Arvind Subramanian. Kapur is director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. Subramanian is senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.