On the eve of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the goals of U.S. politicians with regard to Pakistan are as follows: 1) the fragmentation of Pakistan with a view to weakening the strategic position of China in Southern Asia; 2) full control of the territory of the «narcotaliban», where about half of the world's hard drugs are produced; 3) neutralization of Pakistan's nuclear program, which is being implemented with the assistance of Chinese specialists (or on the contrary, if this is not successful, the removal of the psychological barrier to using atomic weapons)… 

American-Pakistani relations were irreparably damaged in September 2001, when Islamabad lost its status as Washington's privileged ally in the region. 

There are many proofs of this: Pakistan's recent closure of a «military corridor» to U.S. occupying forces in Afghanistan, Islamabad's refusal to allow the use of U.S. Special Forces in the tribal zone, official permission for the Pakistani military to fire at NATO troops, Pakistani air defense forces firing at U.S. Air Force helicopters, the participation of Pakistan's Border Corps in joint attacks with the Taliban against the Afghan army and the Western coalition, and Pakistan's provision of intelligence about the counterterrorism plans of NATO and the Afghan army to the Taliban. 

To this we may add U.S. Air Force strikes against Pakistani border posts; American maps of a dismembered Pakistan published in 2006, which reduce the largest state in the Islamic world to only two provinces (Punjab and Sindh), giving the remaining territory to Afghanistan and an independent Baluchistan; and the existence of a plan for American Special Forces to invade Pakistan and seize its nuclear arsenal under the pretext that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have come to power in Islamabad (developed by General S. McChrystal, Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command of the U.S. Army, made public in 2009). 

In photo 2 – fragment of an American map from Armed Forces Journal, showing the «just borders» of Pakistan and Iran 

The U.S. has an interest in the fragmentation of Pakistan as a potential «energy corridor» between Iran and China and the use of local extremists against the Iranians as part of the «controlled chaoticization» of the region. Washington is working to prevent an agreement between Pakistan and Iran on the construction of a South Pars-Multan gas pipeline. The project, estimated at 7.5 billion dollars, is not only a matter of infrastructure, but of geopolitics; one can judge how serious it is, for example, by the fact that India is prepared to join. The interest of China, which Islamabad has invited to join the project if Delhi declines, has prompted the U.S. to speed up the implementation of the project for building a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (as a counter to the Iran-Pakistan-India project).

The routes of both pipeline projects pass through the Pakistani port of Gwadar, located in Baluchistan province near the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. is trying with all its might to isolate this strategically important region, which occupies around 40% of the territory of Pakistan and controls the sea and land routes from the Persian Gulf and Iran, and place it under its control. Besides the port of Gwadar, a nuclear test site in Chagai, a large gold field in the Chaghi region, and natural gas fields which supply the central and southern (industrial) parts of Pakistan are also located here. 

There is no doubt of Washington's interest in creating an «instability arc» around China with Pakistan as the fuse. The goal is to place the transportation of hydrocarbons from the Persian Gulf to East Asia under its control and eliminate Chinese presence in the port of Gwadar, and if possible, to create a state of chaos in Xinjiang and Tibet. 

By getting a toehold in a strategically important spot like Gwadar, the Chinese have gained: a) convenient communications with Iran, as it is to this port that Iranian oil is to be transported, and then overland from there to Xinjiang in China, b) a potential base for its navy in the Arabian Sea, c) an economic gateway to Southern Asia and the Middle East, and d) shorter routes between the Middle East and the western part of China (previously they had to use ports in the southeast of the PRC). 

As early as 2011 Beijing officially stated that «any attack on Pakistan will be regarded as an attack on China». This severe statement was the first ultimatum Washington had received in the past half century – since the times of the Berlin and Caribbean crises. 

All of this is one of the greatest failures of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics in recent decades. Washington believes that the geopolitical position of China in the current circumstances can be weakened either by an Indo-Pakistani military conflict or by the disintegration of Pakistan into Baluchistan, Punjab, Pashtunistan and Sindh. Most likely, the Americans are not ruling out either scenario. To quote the former head of the Punjabi division of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Brigadier General Aslam Ghuman, «During my visit to the U.S., I learnt [that the] Israeli spy agency Mossad, in connivance with [the] Indian agency RAW, under the direct supervision of [the] CIA, planned to destabilise Pakistan at any cost».

As part of the implementation of the second scenario (the disintegration of Pakistan), for several years the CIA has been organizing drone attacks to destroy the civilian population and thus sow the seeds of civil war. Selig S. Harrison, Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy (USA) publicly raises the question of the «succession» of Baluchistan, whose «independence» and controllability, along with the transfer of the tribal zones to Afghanistan, could put an end to the existence of Pakistan and the Pakistani-Chinese Gwadar project. Not long ago, minister of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and determined opponent of the Taliban and «Free Baluchistan» Bashir Ahmad Bilour was killed in Pakistan. The day after his death, the revolutionary-minded Islamist theologian Tahir-ul-Qadri returned from North America to Islamabad with fanfare at the head of a so-called «million-man march»; from the very first weeks of his appearance in the country, his frenzied activity was assessed as the beginning of an «Arab Spring». Qadri's movement is financed from London, where former and future leaders of Pakistan like to sit things out; these include General Musharraf, who praised the actions of the new revolutionary highly. 

All of these primarily external destabilizing factors, according to the speculations of American strategists, could already become the detonator for «controlled chaos» in Pakistan in 2014.