Hope, but carefully
Foreign policy is not made in a day. The smiles in Delhi when President Obama cautioned Pakistan that non-military aid would be cut if it did not curb domestic terrorism were premature. It is military aid to Islamabad which should be of concern to Delhi, but the government has become so dependent on the US that it gets pleased with very little. An inaugural speech can only have markers that will be fleshed into policy. But amateurs in Delhi have rushed to judgment where professionals fear to tread.
There was simulation in the bluster with which Pakistan reacted. The boys of Islamabad know a charade when they see it; they are experts in the game themselves, after all. They don’t need spectacles to read between the lines of Obama’s South Asia policy.
Obama has promised peace all over the world and war in one corner: Afghanistan. Pakistan is not very competent in the disbursement of peace. Its expertise lies in the dissemination of war on enemy territory or the land of friends. And now it is fighting more than one war on its own soil.
Pakistan knows that America cannot fight in Afghanistan without support provided by Pakistan. As long as this situation lasts, America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America. Pakistan wants to not merely extract a financial price, but also a political price.
London and Washington are preparing to pay the price in some form. Pakistan has an advantage over India in the Washington diplomatic game. It engaged with the Obama campaign and the transition team, while Indian diplomats concentrated on Bush and the Republicans.
This has been a failure of foreign policy for which we have begun to suffer. Pakistan has persuaded advisers of Obama that it cannot fight the Taliban as long as it has to defend its border with India. The Indian threat can only be lowered with a resolution of the Kashmir issue. Therefore, it is time America and Britain persuaded India to settle Kashmir.
In an extraordinary manoeuvre, Pakistan turned around the Mumbai terror attack, organised on its soil. From predator, it refashioned itself into a victim. It used the war rhetoric from India to warn the West that it would pull out of the war against the Taliban.
Delhi’s hot air did not frighten Pakistan one bit but scared Washington and London, who leaned on Delhi. Delhi succumbed. India has lost twice through Mumbai. It has become a laughing stock at security conferences. And it has allowed what could have been a diplomatic coup against Pakistan to become a diplomatic coup against India. This is incompetent governance, not just abysmal security.
David Miliband was audacious enough to contradict India’s prime minister on Indian soil, by saying that the terrorist attack was not sponsored by the Pakistan government, and that India had better do something about Kashmir. Instead of snubbing him, Rahul Gandhi took Miliband for some private tourism of poverty. British correspondents in Delhi have applauded Miliband for telling it like it is, saying that this is going to be Obama’s line as well.
Hillary Clinton has already enunciated the Obama doctrine at her confirmation hearings in the Senate. “Hard power” will be replaced by “smart power.” This has been defined as the application of a “full range of toolsdiplomatic, economic, military, political, legal and cultural” in the pursuit of American interests. Pentagon awe will be accompanied by nudge and arm-twist. By the time the twisting is over, Delhi might need a heavy bandage.
Obama’s policy towards South Asia will be controlled by the compulsions of a war he wants to win in a hurry. The battlefield will not be Afghanistan alone. American forces might soon have to fight in the western half of Pakistan, which is already being christened Talibanistan (the eastern half still remains Pakistan).
Muslims across the world are taking comfort in the semantics of Obama’s initial remarks. Some of them have taken partial ownership of his presidency because he used his middle name, Hussein, while taking the oath. But the issue is not what Obama says. It is what he does.
Will he be able to get a resolution to Palestine except on harsh Israeli terms? Even if we ignore his campaign rhetoric, there are powerful interests protecting the expansionist reach of Israel. At all events, it will not be easy. Neither will be a victory in Afghanistan. As pressure mounts on him, he will be tempted to mount pressure on India through Kashmir.
It is going to be a complicated game, which might drift to a point where every side looks like a loser. Hope needs to be handled very carefully if it wants to remain audacious.
Source: The Daily Star
