The Hindu : An interactive U.S. role

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 27, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

An interactive U.S. role

By P. S. Suryanarayana

America's diplomacy in regard to India and Pakistan is driven, in a limited but significant fashion, by the fears of a nuclear winter.

THE SUPER cop image of the U.S. is being accepted in some key sections of India and Pakistan in the context of Washington's new activism in South Asia. New Delhi has calculated that the U.S. is capable of being the guarantor of Pakistan's latest pledge to end forever all terrorist incursions into India. There is no evident hint, though, of how Washington might wish to interpose itself in the India-Pakistan equation over the time-horizon. The main issue is whether the U.S. has drawn up a definitive game plan to play a good cop or any other role in South Asia from the present moment. The answer to this question will fall short of an absolute `yes' because of two reasons — (1) the short attention-span that the U.S. is notorious for in world politics and (2) the fact that Washington, still worried about more terrorist attacks against it, has had little time to imagine the future.

For the present, therefore, America is busy playing an interactive role that might help promote its differing interests in respect of India and Pakistan at the same time. Several top U.S. interlocutors, who have visited New Delhi and Islamabad since the terrorist attack on Parliament House last December, have portrayed their efforts as those of a friend to both. Has the U.S. found it easy to be friendly with both India and Pakistan? Certainly not, although Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, is hinting that he has gradually recognised that he should trim his country's sails to ride the anti-terror winds from not only America but also India. In these circumstances, America's next big move in South Asia will depend on whether Gen. Musharraf is able to do this.

9/11 was to Washington what an extraterrestrial invasion might be to the other countries. As a consequence, the U.S. President, George W. Bush, has slowly but surely recognised that terrorism is not divisible into categories of a bad crime or a good cause. America's learning curve of this type, which seems to hold firm for the present, has much to do with the interconnectivity of the major terrorist networks. As part of this strategic analysis, the U.S. is beginning to address the globalised phenomenon of inter-state `jehadi' campaigns which many Islamic radicals are engaged in. The new political reality is that America finds itself caught in the vortex of `jehadi' terrorism which has a target-range that includes not only the U.S. but also Israel, India, Russia and China besides a few others.

If this companionship adds a new dimension to the U.S.-India interactions, the Bush administration is also keen to keep by its side some leaders of the Islamic countries, such as Gen. Musharraf, with the intention of deflecting suspicions that Washington is not above religious prejudices. From Mr. Bush's standpoint, the strategic value of such Muslim leaders will evaporate if they fail to promote America's anti-terror agenda in all its nuances. It is this sub-text that defines America's exchanges with Gen. Musharraf's Pakistan at this point. Immediately prior to Gen. Musharraf's latest pledge, Mr. Bush seemed to be extremely wary of any Pakistani tendency to portray terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir as an intrinsic aspect of a difficult separatist "struggle" by some co-religionists. The U.S. is eager at this juncture to douse the flames of terrorism that might be fuelled by passionate notions of religion as the defining factor of political affinity across inter-state frontiers. To be seen in this light is the observation by the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, about the existence of "indications", however "speculative", that some elements of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation might have recently shifted their operations to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir from Afghanistan. There has also been no dilution of America's concerns about Al-Qaeda, and about its links with some sections of Pakistan's secret services.

Yet, Pakistan has also succeeded in fulfilling its dream of "internationalising" the Kashmir dispute as never before. The downside of this dream is that it has not evolved on the lines imagined by Pakistan itself. Why? The ideology of treating religion as the basis of political identity in respect of any group of people is now clearly at a discount on the wider international stage. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is India and not Pakistan that has brought the U.S. to the South Asian scene at this time. New Delhi has calculated that this is the best time to "internationalise" India's concerns regarding the fissionable impact of external terrorism which draws sustenance from a religious core. India's sense of urgency in this regard is derived from a realisation that the gains of its catalytic role in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971 have remained illusory. If the myth of religion as the political bond between two or more diverse peoples had been exploded in the 1970s, the localised impact of that event has not at all brought India any positive dividend in regard to Kashmir. It is against this background that New Delhi has now virtually invited the U.S. to the South Asian scene.

The U.S., on its part, has found it easy to extend its "good offices" to India and Pakistan at this stage. America's move has been facilitated, too, by the manner in which India welcomed the Clinton administration's decisive intercession at the height of the Kargil crisis. Western diplomats believe that Pakistan's civilian political leadership sought America's help for an exit strategy even as Islamabad's military planners had found the going tough after surprising New Delhi at Kargil. The predicament of Pakistan's civilian leaders during the Kargil crisis was in some ways related to the substance of some media-leaks in America at present. Pakistan's military leaders, it is said, were willing to flex their `Fist of God' — Islamabad's nuclear arsenal — at one point during what was turning into a "fiasco" for them at Kargil.

America's diplomacy in regard to India and Pakistan is driven, in a limited but significant fashion, by the fears of a nuclear winter. Such fears are compounded by the argument that a political doomsday machine is already ticking in South Asia in view of Pakistan's refusal to reciprocate India's policy of not being the first to launch a nuclear strike against any country and any non-state actor. With India accusing Pakistan of resorting to "nuclear blackmail" and with Islamabad talking of immobilising New Delhi through "nuclear deterrence", America finds itself watching these exchanges very seriously. This does not necessarily mean that the U.S. has drawn up an endgame for peace in South Asia. Western diplomats draw attention to Winston Churchill (paraphrased) jibe that America would often get its act right after exhausting all other options.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

An Indian institution under threat

Europe's dilemma

Distanced from the people

An interactive U.S. role

India rediscovers Africa