New
Delhi, 30 March 2005
USA
took over from Britain the burden of the latter’s
empire as it disintegrated after WW II. Hence the US
policy towards India and Pakistan has been on the
lines what the British had conceived at the time of
granting independence to them –– namely to use
Pakistan as a counterweight to India. This
hyphenation of the two despite the imbalance in
their size and potential has been a fact of US
policy, which we in India should by now learn to
live with. After 9/11, Pakistan continues to have a
crucial importance for the US vis-à-vis India, due
its interest in the oil reserves of the Middle East
and Central Asia as also the need to have a picture
card for dealing with the Muslim world.
The
theory of India’s value as an emerging market and
a regional force to assist USA’s long term
interest for a possible counterweight to China and
maritime security in the Indian Ocean as propagated
by a section of Americans, is something that should
be kept engaged without affecting the immediate
requirement of the war on terror and consolidation
of US position in Middle East and Central Asia. So
for Pakistan, for some more time to come, at the
least till India attains its economic pre-eminence,
the US will continue to hold out carrots like F-16s
and fiscal sustenance –– a cause of irritation
to us notwithstanding.
Asked
what the Bush administration’s motivation could be
other than the popularly argued case that it was to
reward Pakistan for supporting its war on terror,
Larry Pressler has said: “The concept of rewarding
a country for what any country should do is wrong...
Pakistan has been rewarded enough. And in any case
what have F-16s got to do with fighting
terror?”…“I am not saying this because I want
a good press in India but I think we are dancing
with the devil,” he added. Further, senior US
officials in a background briefing stated that the
Bush administration had concluded that the future of
South Asia is "simply vital to the future of
the US" and that countries like India, Pakistan
and Afghanistan will play a pivotal role in
Washington's strategic perspective. “The strategic
dialogue with India would be on levels one would
discuss with a world power" and would include
regional security issues and "things like the
tsunami situation or Nepal. The United States is
seeking a decisively broad strategic relationship
with India, including in the military field,
"to help India become a major world
power". US will
"respond positively" to the Indian request
for information on next generation multi-role combat
aircraft and will work with American companies that
seek to sell this to India. "That's not just
F-16s. It could be F-18s. But beyond that, the US is
ready to discuss even more fundamental issues of
defence transformation with India, including
transformative systems in areas such as command and
control, early warning and missile defense.
Surely this is music to Indian ears!
While
we must sincerely take on the US establishment on
these offers and accept whatever is in our national
and mutual interest, we would also do well to keep
in mind Pakistan’s penchant for mischief whenever
US has given it enough military hardware potential
to threaten India. While in the case of Pakistan the
latest US offer is restoration of an earlier arms
supply relationship between Washington and
Islamabad, for India the twin offers of combat
aircraft and civilian nuclear reactors, prima facie,
do constitute an unprecedented breakthrough in
Indo–US relations. Hence we fully endorse Indian
defence minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement
–– India will “actively consider”
Washington’s offer. “This is the first time we
have received an offer of the kind from the US.
Naturally, when the offer is there, it will have to
be actively considered by the government keeping in
view the requirements of our armed forces. Though
earlier we used to have sometimes some equipment of
high technology, never before an offer of such
sophisticated equipment including planes and others
were made which have been made now”.
In
order to keep our engagement with US in perspective,
we reproduce below an article by Praveen Swami, a Jennings Randolph
Senior Fellow, United States Institute of Peace,
Washington, recently published in the South
Asia Intelligence Review,
that highlights the compulsions for US overtures
to Pakistan.
The
US Vision for Musharraf
By
Praveen Swami
South
Asia Intelligence Review
”[Turkey]
had lost her leadership of Islam and Islam might now
look to leadership to the Muslims of Russia. This
would be a most dangerous attraction. There was
therefore much to be said for the introduction of a
new Muslim power supported by the science of
Britain. It seemed to some of us very necessary to
place Islam between Russian communism and
Hindustan”. –– Sir Francis Tucker, General
Officer-Commanding of the British Indian Eastern
Command.
A
little over half a century on, driven by the forces
unleashed by the tragic events of September 11,
2001, imperial Britain's Pakistan project is being
reinvented. It is hard to imagine a more unlikely
caliph than Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf, but that is precisely what the United
States seems determined to anoint him. Pakistan,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Musharraf
at their recent meeting in Islamabad, is "a
model country for the Muslim world". Among
other things, she praised Pakistan's president and
chief of army staff, who came to power in a coup in
1999, for his "bold vision for South Asia and
initiatives to promote peace and stability in the
region".
Speaking
in New Delhi, she emphasized the need to help Nepal
–– where the monarch has seized power ––
"get back on a democratic path". But
evidently she felt no need to suggest something of
the kind might be desirable in Pakistan as well. If
the US felt any ire at Musharraf's inflammatory
proclamation on his official website that the Kargil
war of 1999 "proved a lesson to the
Indians", it was not mentioned, at least not in
public. All of which makes it necessary to ask the
question: just what is the United States' own vision
of stability in South Asia - and how precisely does
it mean to go about achieving it? Casual readers of
media reportage on Rice's recent visit to India,
Pakistan and Afghanistan might be forgiven for
thinking that the United States' principal interests
in the region are arms sales and Iran, in that
order. Much of the public discourse of Rice's visit
focused on the prospect of the possible sale of F-16
aircraft to Pakistan, and the Patriot II
anti-ballistic missile defense system to India.
The
United States' concerns about the construction of a
gas pipeline from Iran to India, passing through
Pakistan, ranked second in terms of the space it
occupied. Little was said, unless it figured behind
closed doors, about continued terrorism directed at
India, nuclear proliferation, the persistence of
jihadi infrastructure in Pakistan, and, yes,
democracy. F-16 aircraft and missile defense issues
are, of course, important, and have a vital bearing
on the security environment in South Asia. Neither,
however, is a cause of instability; both are,
rather, a consequence of a long-running disputation
between India and Pakistan. Historically, the US has
seen such sales, or their denial, as a way of
addressing the security anxieties of the antagonists
- principally, of Pakistan. It is quite obvious that
the strategy, if it can be called one, has failed.
The provision of weapons to Pakistan did not deter
it from initiating wars in 1965 and 1999; nor,
notably, have its nuclear weapons and missile
capabilities meant an end to its fears about India's
superior conventional capabilities. A few F-16s or a
missile defense system will change little.
What,
then, are we too make of Rice's pronouncements? Part
of the problem is the Washington policy
establishment's mode of understanding South Asia.
Pakistan is cast within the frame of what is called
"the Muslim World", and the United States'
relations with that country are seen as integral to
engagement with other countries where the bulk of
the population happens to be of Islamic persuasion.
Much policy production in the US rests on the a
priori assumption that an entity called
"the Muslim World" in fact exists, and
that the cooptation of elements of this
transnational entity is central to containing
terrorism. Among the key corollaries of this credo
is the notion that Islamist terrorism is the product
of a confrontation between two immutable
adversaries, "the West" and "the
Muslims". In this vision, Musharraf's perceived
"enlightened moderation" is the key not
just to securing a purely tactical set of interests
- in Afghanistan, for example - but to a far larger
ideological project. Perhaps as a consequence,
Musharraf has never been pressed to explain the
content of his "enlightened moderation":
the words themselves, evidently, are adequate.
In
the vision of the United States' policy
establishment, this enlightened moderation stands
opposed to the Islamist postures of al-Qaeda,
notwithstanding the considerable evidence that
exists of cooperation and accommodation between the
two. In essence, the US has thrown its weight behind
the fabrication of an ummah, or community of
believers, from a welter of peoples with different,
often adversarial, histories, cultures and
interests. It is a project that closely resembles
that of the Islamists, even if its projected outcome
is, of course, very different. Where might India fit
into this vision? Although Rice's area of scholarly
expertise is the former Eastern Bloc, she had
articulated at least the outlines of a position on
South Asia before her current assignment. Writing in
the journal Foreign Affairs in 2000, Rice suggested
that the US ought to "pay closer attention to
India's role in the regional balance".
"There is a strong tendency," she pointed
out, "conceptually to connect India with
Pakistan and to think only of Kashmir or the nuclear
competition between the two states. But India is
[also] an element in China's calculation, and it
should be in America's, too. India is not a great
power yet, but it has the potential to emerge as
one."
Put
simply, Rice and the policy establishment she
represents see India as a potential strategic
counterweight to China. Many in India, notably
former defense minister George Fernandes, have
characterized its relationship with the US in much
the same terms. This position, it needs to be noted,
is not new. Until the US began a cautious detente
with China in the 1970s, it underwrote Indian covert
and sub-conventional military activities targeting
Tibet. Among other things, the US supplied aircraft
and technological equipment to what became the
aviation research center of the Research and
Analysis Wing, and provided training and weapons to
the ethnic-Tibetan irregular force called
Establishment 22, which fought with great
distinction in the 1971 war. It is hard to miss the
limitations of an India-US relationship founded
mainly on a common set of concerns about China,
however. Speaking prior to her arrival in New Delhi,
Rice placed emphasis on "opportunities -
economic, in terms of security, in terms of energy
cooperation - that we can pursue with India".
The
United States' alarm at the prospect of an
Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline illustrates the
problems that arise from the fact that India must of
necessity look west and north, and not just to its
east. On the face of it, the sharing of assets
between the three countries would be a factor for
stability, something in which the US has a common
interest. Criticism of the pipeline project has
mainly emanated from a section of analysts in India,
where some see enriching a hostile Islamabad as an
exercise in folly, and not in the US. US reactions
to the proposed pipeline deal, however, show the
ways in which concerns about West Asia, in fact,
shape policy toward South Asia, just as they did a
half-century ago - and the problems that inevitably
arise. Almost unnoticed is the fact that Rice's
visit marks a step toward what critics in both India
and Pakistan have long demanded - the end of
hyphenation, or the removal of the implicit linkages
of policy on one country and policy toward the
other.
Yet
Pakistan is not just part of "the Muslim
World", whatever this might be, nor India
merely a piece of a non-Muslim Asia that has China
at its center. The destinies of both countries are
intimately linked. The future of their relationship
depends on Pakistan's ability to re-imagine itself
as a secular, progressive and democratic state, not
as a carriage-bearer for an Islamist ideological
enterprise. Should Pakistan be encouraged to move in
this direction, India will benefit - and so too
would the authoritarian states to its west. The
administration of President George W Bush has
repeatedly proclaimed its commitment to the
processes of democracy, and yet seems curiously
bereft of the conceptual wherewithal to bring this
about.
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