Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her aides have reportedly urged him to pursue secret negotiations with Bhutto to schedule elections and share power with her. But if restoring Bhutto to power is part of the solution, the problem may well be insoluble. That ploy is a return to the broken record of the past, a triumph of desperation over experience.

Hitting dead end in Pakistan did not just happen. It is the result of consistent U.S. decisions to apply short-term solutions to one of the world’s most serious long-term problems. To curry favor with China, to spite India’s notoriously prickly leaders, to bleed Soviet forces in Afghanistan or for many other immediate purposes, Washington has alternately indulged, bribed or ignored Pakistan’s leaders and their society’s deep-rooted problems.

The new US relationship with India offers much for the future — including a model for dealing with a South Asian nation just turning 60 by seeking imaginative long-term change instead of pursuing traditional stopgaps to get through the latest crisis.