New
Delhi, 24 March 2005
Like
Robert Blackwill, another committed friend of India
in the US establishment, with a no-holds-barred
approach to pointing out the ‘double-speak’ of
US foreign policy for our part of the world, is
Larry Pressler, a
former Republican senator from South Dakota.
We reproduce below an article by him
published in NY Times on 21 March 2005, that places
the sale of F-16s and other modern weaponry to India
and Pakistan in a perspective that is intended to
better serve the USA’s long term interests in
Asia. He has suggested a 'fundamental policy shift
for the sub continent' by the USA.
‘Dissing
Democracy in Asia’
By Larry Pressler
NYT, 21 March 2005
ONE
big story from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
trip to South Asia was that once again Washington's
policymakers are trying to send F-16 jet fighters to
Pakistan. This is like a broken record –– the
argument has come up repeatedly since 1990, when an
amendment I wrote quashed a deal involving 28 of the
planes –– but unfortunately this time the sale
may well happen.
Pakistan
is a declared ally in the fight against terrorism,
and thus we give it huge amounts of military aid.
But F-16's have nothing to do with fighting Al Qaeda
and the Taliban. So what is really going on here?
The answer is entwined in two decades of misguided
United States policy toward India and Pakistan. The
truth is, we should have a robust pro-India stance.
India is a democracy with a free market and a highly
developed system of human rights. It could become
our major bulwark against China in East Asia. It
also has a large Muslim minority and, generally
speaking, is an example of tolerance. And we have a
mutually beneficial trade relationship with India
that is helping us keep our technological edge.
(Disclosure: I am on the board of Infosys
Technologies, an Indian software company)
Pakistan,
on the other hand, is a corrupt, absolute
dictatorship. It has a horrendous record on human
rights and religious tolerance, and it has been
found again and again to be selling nuclear
materials to our worst enemies. It claims to be
helping us to fight terrorism, although many
intelligence experts have suggested that most of our
money actually goes to strengthening the rule of
Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Yes, during the cold war
India often sided with the Soviet Union while
Pakistan went with the United States. Some old hands
at the Pentagon still seem to think we should be
rewarding Pakistan for that. But the cold war is
long over. We have given the Pakistanis their due
many times over.
From
the late 1970's to the mid-1990's, as a member of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I repeatedly
warned that Pakistan was selling nuclear materials
to other nations. Administrations, both Democratic
and Republican, turned a blind eye; they even got
leaders of our intelligence community to say that I
didn't know what I was talking about. Well,
everything I said has been proved absolutely true -
to an even more worrisome degree than I had
described. Our military-industrial complex, which I
believe dominates our foreign policy, favors
Pakistan not only because we can sell it arms, but
also because the Pentagon would often rather deal
with dictatorships than democracies. When a top
Pentagon official goes to Pakistan, he can meet with
one general and get everything settled. On the other
hand, if he goes to India, he has to talk to the
prime minister, the Parliament, the courts and, God
forbid, the free press.
Meeting
with Pakistani leaders last week, Secretary Rice did
say she looked forward to "the evolution of a
democratic path toward elections in 2007." But
she neither asked for nor received any sort of
guarantees about elections, human rights or freedom
of the press. She did bring up nuclear
proliferation, but only in a perfunctory way.
Likewise, President Bush had General Musharraf as a
guest at Camp David in 2003, apparently without ever
mentioning the administration's democracy program.
This all makes a mockery of President Bush's
inaugural speech in January, and is a prime example
of the sort of dictator-coddling that, eventually,
always comes back to haunt us.
We
need a fundamental policy shift for the
subcontinent. First, we should enthusiastically
improve our treatment of India. We should not reject
Pakistan entirely - we need it as an ally - but to
treat India and Pakistan the same is a great
mistake. Instead, we need to speak frankly in public
about Pakistan's democratic and human-rights
failures, as well as acknowledge that we can achieve
our objectives in Pakistan with a much lower level
of aid and a closer eye to ensuring that it goes
toward the fight against terrorists. And we should
not sell it any F-16's. We should also make it clear
that we will favor India in all major regional
disputes. Without American support, Pakistan would
be forced to drop its claims to the disputed region
of Kashmir, as well as end its support of the
region's Muslim militants (whom many in our
intelligence services feel have ties to Al Qaeda).
Freeing
ourselves from our profitless Pakistan policy would
allow us to look clearly at the biggest problem in
the region: China. We should tell Beijing that we
will help India match China's arms buildup and that
we will work toward a modified free-trade agreement
with India to help it offset China's state-dominated
trade practices. The Bush administration is right to
put the expansion of liberty and democracy at the
center of its foreign policy. But as long as we
favor dictatorships like Pakistan over free
countries like India, the world will be right not to
take our words seriously.
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