Pakistan: "if it ignites, it'll burn"

" ... Pakistan could very easily smash to bloody pieces in 2008.  If it does, nobody anywhere is gonna try and stitch Pakistan back together.  Pakistan has a bigger population than Russia.  It is just too big for any of the other power-players to handle.  So if it ignites, it'll burn.  So they'll just blow up the local missile sites (if they can), and then watch in grim disbelief.    Some people still think that there's an "Islamo-fascist tyranny" somewhere that hates our freedoms and can organize Islam-dom into a coherent fascist state...  There's just no way.  Al Qaeda and the Taliban aren't true "fascists." Fascists can at least make trains run on time.  Even Communists were better-organized. The mujihadeen have no organized army and no industrial policy and they don't know where to find any.  Because God was supposed to handle all that for them.  You're supposed to die nobly in a crowd of unwitting strangers, and then God's supposed to make that all better.  That's the big plan.  But when you blow up the china shop, God doesn't reassemble the plates for you.  Being faith-based doesn't trump reality. ... "

~ From Bruce Sterling: State of the World, 2008