PAKISTAN SINKS deeper into political gridlock and Al Qaeda continues to operate unhindered in its territory, but the Pentagon gravy train bringing American weaponry for its armed forces races full speed ahead on autopilot. Over the past five decades, the United States has provided a staggering $19.5 billion in military grants, credits, and cash subsidies to Islamabad, and negotiations now in progress could add billions more.

The professed reasons for this buildup have been phony from the start. During the Cold War and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Pakistan was portrayed as a "front-line state" blocking the Red Army. Now the rationale is the "war on terror." But the US military hardware provided to Islamabad has not been suited to fighting Russians or jihadis on the Afghan border. Most of it has been used to strengthen Pakistan's conventional military posture for combat against India on the Punjab plains.

Successive US administrations have attempted to justify this deadly masquerade by pointing to the benefits of intelligence cooperation with Pakistan. These benefits were clear when Pakistan served as a base for electronic monitoring of Soviet missile sites, but their value now is increasingly doubtful.

Pakistani intelligence agencies riddled with Islamist sympathizers provide only marginal help in combating Al Qaeda. Evidence of their collusion with Taliban factions is growing. The time has come to end the masquerade and to make US military aid to Pakistan compatible with US strategic goals in India, which is eight times larger and a rising global power important to the United States militarily and economically.

Giving Pakistan artificially inflated military capabilities that it could not afford on its own poisons US relations with New Delhi. It emboldens Pakistani hawks to support anti-Indian militants in Kashmir, tribal insurgents in northeast India, and jihadi leaders who orchestrate terrorist attacks in India from bases in Bangladesh as well as Pakistan. In this atmosphere, the United States is blamed for Pakistan's sins. Anti-American sentiment is resurfacing in India, as opposition to a pending US-India civilian nuclear cooperation agreement has demonstrated.

The upsurge in India-focused Pakistani military capabilities since 2001 has been phenomenal. Before Sept. 11, 2001, the Pakistan Air Force had outdated F-16 aircraft with aging air-to-air missiles and lacked precision bombing kits. Now it has 36 late-model, nuclear-capable F-16 jets delivered or on the way, plus 32 refurbished older jets and 500 state-of-the-art AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. The Army has doubled its heavy artillery, self-propelled howitzers, and combat helicopters, and increased its armory of antitank missiles from 200 to 5,250.

Islamabad argues that it has used its own money to pay for most of its $8.4 billion in Pentagon-authorized weapons purchases since 2001. But these "Pakistani" funds have come from the United States and other aid donors. Pakistan was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2001 until a US-led consortium rescheduled $13.5 billion in debt.

More important, the Pentagon has given the armed forces $6.2 billion in unmonitored cash subsidies since 2001 that have been available for arms purchases. The nominal purpose of these "Coalition Support Funds" has been to reimburse Pakistan for fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But the General Accounting Office, prodded by Democratic Representative John Tierney of Massachusetts, reported that "neither the Defense Department nor we could determine how much of the costs reimbursed to Pakistan were actually incurred."

The advent of a civilian government in Islamabad makes this the appropriate time to shift to a new focus on economic aid. The Coalition Support Funds program should be phased out and military aid restricted to equipment relevant to combating Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The civilian nuclear agreement approved by Congress two years ago, now coming up for ratification, reflects long-overdue US recognition of a basic geopolitical imperative: a stable India is important as a counterweight to China, and to remain stable, India needs a massive expansion of its nuclear electricity program to keep pace with burgeoning energy needs. But the nuclear accord will not lead to the "strategic partnership" that the administration seeks unless the United States stops sending weapons to Islamabad that distort the South Asian balance of power and encourage a failing Pakistan to twist the tail of its larger neighbor.

Selig S. Harrison is director of the Asia program at the Center for International Policy.