Big Brother's Friend

The Indian security mindset has been too Pak-centric — indeed, Kashmir-centric or, to be even more specific, Valley-centric — in its dealings for far too long. India has seemingly not treated J&K as a composite whole to be tackled simultaneously with China and Pakistan, both of which occupy parts of it. India’s dealings internationally have appeared defensive and reactive. India has tended to overlook that Pakistan has been piggybacking, rather effectively, on the ambitions and interests of the West, primarily the US, in the region. And that without this support, especially at vital times in its short history, Pakistan would not have been able to tie India’s economy and military down the way it has all these years.The lesson of recent weeks is really a reaffirmation of US policies over the years. India is a good friend, democratic secular, IT savvy, great scientific pool that can be drained, and so on. But for the US, Pakistan has always been, will always be, a strategic ally, a stalwart ally. Shahbaz Sharif, ex-PM Nawaz Sharif’s brother and a Pakistani citizen, who had been allowed by the Pak Supreme court to return home, but whose only fault is that he may be a remote threat to President Musharraf's political ambitions, was deported back to Saudi Arabia. Two weeks later, Pakistan is rewarded for this act, which was undemocratic and in violation of its own Supreme Court’s decision, with readmission into the Commonwealth. It is not important or strategically significant for the US and the West, primarily the UK in this case, that governments have changed in India. But such changes at the helm must not be allowed to take place in Pakistan. So long as the war on terror is to be fought by the US, Pakistan will continue to receive financial transfusions from the IMF, the World Bank and the US Treasury; its nuclear trespasses and clandestine retailing will be overlooked if not forgiven.Sections of the Taliban, including possibly Hekmetyar, will now be acceptable in Afghanistan as representatives of the Pushtoons in that country which is again a concession to the sensitivities of the Pakistani security establishment.Peace with neighbours is essential. It is a desirable and necessary objective if Indians are to get along with their lives, provide themselves with the kind of life that others in the affluent world have. But peace with Pakistan is possible only if there is change in the mind-set of the rulers there. It is possible only if the army, which controls Pakistan’s policy on India, Afghanistan and strategic assets, makes a determination that the peace dividend with India is larger than the conflict dividend. All indications are that this determination is to the contrary. The present phase may be a tactical manoeuvre to buy time and live to fight another day. Pakistan’s leaders have not been able to reconcile to the reality that theirs is a smaller country and has fewer resources than India. The old ambition — to right the wrong on getting a moth-eaten Pakistan and to create more caliphates in India — has not been given up, either by jehadis or by the Pak army.The Pakistani rulers will continue their animus towards India and periodically cite this Indian threat to extract more concessions both from an indulgent West and understanding from a China disdainful of its southern neighbour. They realise that the US will not pressurise them any more and India will not do any more either. Pakistan today is a nursery of terrorism and home to radical Islam. It is thus a vital component of the Islamic struggle against the Christian world. Yet it is also a stalwart ally in America’s war against terror. Simultaneously, Pakistan has an all-weather friendship with China. Managing relations with Pakistan also means managing relations with the US.In a world that has become much smaller through hi-tech info/comm. revolution and e-commerce, global terror, global markets, and so on, the US is in effect our neighbour. It has taken advantage of this so-called world war against terror to seek and acquire an increasing presence in our neigbhbourhood, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and central Asia and seeks to strengthen its presence elsewhere in the region. Essential to its policy is a commitment to maintaining a uni-polar world where the US has no peer competitor which includes China; further, post 9/11, the US fears that a group of terrorists, possibly aided by a rogue State, could launch a WMD attack or another catastrophic attack in the US or against US interests. Aware that these groups cannot be deterred or appeased, the Americans seek to eliminate them. The US wants to be prepared to intervene anywhere, any time to pre-empt this threat. The only problem is: how do you eliminate a person who is willing to die for his cause and at what stage do you declare war against terror as having been won? We certainly cannot say that this has happened in Afghanistan or in Iraq.9/11 was a wake up call for the US and for the rest of the world. Nothing else brought home the realisation that not even the mightiest power on earth with all the technology and the most sophisticated intelligence gathering system can prevent a catastrophic attack on its own soil and that too carried out by a militarily weak adversary. Later events and US unilateral actions were to prove that the US cannot go it alone. Unipolarity would have to be circumscribed by multilateral cooperation. The US cannot just continue to do the talking. It would have begin to do some listening also.In its essentials US policy has not changed much from what George Kennan, the American foreign policy expert and adviser, had to say in 1948 — “We have 50per cent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 per cent of the population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so we must dispense with all sentimentality… we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation.” This is what seems to have happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. One year after 9/11, the new Bush doctrine only reaffirmed that the US will do everything and anything to preserve its pre-eminent position: it will, if necessary, act pre-emptively against what it describes as rogue States and other threats to its interests and will prevent any other nation from dominating any region. Of course, some rogue nations will be exempt from punitive action.Yet, the world has to learn to live with this global hegemon. Many want to take the best from the US and there is a lot of that. India needs US technology, and US markets. Indians need to remember that the US in its pursuit of its own interest can hurt even friends inadvertently. It was Kissinger who said it was dangerous to be America’s enemy but it can be fatal to be America’s friend. From Diem to the Shah of Iran, to Anwar Sadat to countless dictators in Latin America and, less fatally, to the Spanish PM and what now looks increasingly likely, the British PM, seem to be paying a price.

To be continued

Source : hindustan Times 31st May 2004