Nick Turse: "...there may, in fact, not be a single nation within the arc of instability, however defined, in which the United States is without a base or military or intelligence personnel, or where it is not running agents, sending weapons, conducting covert operations—or at war." A decade’s evidence has made it clear that US operations in the arc of instability are destabilizing. For years, to take one example, Washington has wielded military aid, military actions and diplomatic pressure in such a way as to undermine the government of Pakistan, promote factionalism within its military and intelligence services, and stoke anti-American sentiment to remarkable levels among the country’s population. (According to a recent survey, just 12 percent of Pakistanis have a positive view of the United States.) A semi-secret drone war in that nation’s tribal borderlands, involving hundreds of missile strikes and significant, if unknown levels, of civilian casualties, has been only the most polarizing of Washington’s many ham-handed efforts. When it comes to that CIA-run effort, a recent Pew survey of Pakistanis found that 97 percent of respondents viewed it negatively, a figure almost impossible to achieve in any sort of polling."