About Chellaney

Professor, strategic thinker, author and commentator

BRIC reflects a wish to pluralize global order

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Chellaney

Can Brazil, Russia, India
and China
(BRIC) help change the world order?

Power shifts underscore BRIC’s potential

Brahma Chellaney
Professor, Centre for Policy Research

The Economic Times, June 19, 2009

The
BRIC concept, conceived in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist, was embraced by
the four countries themselves only last year when their foreign

ministers met on
the sidelines of the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral. The expansion of RIC
into BRIC through Brazil’s addition has created a potentially powerful
bloc, given the projections that the BRIC nations could surpass the present
leading economies by the middle of this century. Yet it is true that there is
little in common among the BRIC states, prompting cynics to call BRIC an
acronymic ingenuity with no substance.

But just because the BRIC
nations do not constitute a unified bloc at present cannot detract from
BRIC’s long-term potential at a time of tectonic power shifts in the
world. The qualitative reordering of power underway, symbolises the birth-pangs
of a new world order. The world clearly is at a defining moment in its history.
In that light, new forums like BRIC could evolve as important instruments to
bring about change in the global architecture. After all, the global
institutional structure has remained static since the mid-20th century even as
the world has changed fundamentally.

BRIC, by acting as a pressure
group, can be a catalyst to international reform, including an overhaul of the
Bretton Woods system and a supranational currency as the world’s reserve
currency. Rather than help recreate institutions for the changed times,
entrenched interests already are conjuring up short-term fixes for the multiple
crises the world confronts — from the global financial tumult to global
warming. To make such interests cede some power, emerging economies need to act
in concert.

BRIC, however, remains a nascent initiative, and its
recent fleeting first summit was piggybacked on the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO) meeting. Such piggybacking may have helped the SCO get more
publicity but left BRIC with little space to formulate a unified action plan.
Considering that it represents 25% of the earth’s landmass and 40% of its
population, BRIC needs to emerge as a real bloc.

Don’t bait the Russian bear

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Chellaney

Russia, the world’s critical "swing" state

Russia, while remaining central to Indian foreign-policy interests, faces a tough challenge to engage a sceptical West more deeply.

Brahma Chellaney The Hindu newspaper June 16, 2009

Even if it is to prescheduled Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit meetings, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is making the symbolically significant first foreign visit of his second term in office to Russia, which he had once called a “tried and tested friend” of India. Russia, with its vantage location in Eurasia and matching strategic concerns, is a natural ally of India. A robust relationship with Moscow will help New Delhi to leverage its ties with both Washington and Beijing.

Which is the only power India can tap for critical military technologies? Which country today is willing to make a nuclear-powered submarine for India? Which state is ready to sell India a large aircraft carrier, even if an old one? Which power sells New Delhi major weapons without offering similar systems to India’s adversaries? The answer to all these questions is Russia. Little surprise Dr. Singh admitted in early 2007: “Although there has been a sea-change in the international situation during the last decade, Russia remains indispensable to the core of India’s foreign-policy interests.”

Three facts about Russia

Three important facts about Russia stand out. One, Russia has gradually become a more assertive power after stemming its precipitous decline and drift of the 1990s. Two, it now plays the Great Game on energy. Competition over control of hydrocarbon resources was a defining feature of the Cold War and remains an important driver of contemporary geopolitics, as manifest from the American occupation of Iraq and U.S. military bases or strategic tie-ups stretching across the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia.

Three, Russian democracy has moved toward greater centralized control to bring order and direction to the state. During Vladimir Putin’s presidency, government control was extended to large swaths of the economy and the political opposition was systematically emasculated.

Such centralization, though, is no different than in, say, Singapore and Malaysia, including the domination of one political party, the absence of diversified media, limits on public demonstrations and the writ of security services. But in contrast to Russia, Singapore and Malaysia have insulated themselves from official U.S. criticism by willingly serving Western interests. When did you last hear American criticism of Singapore’s egregious political practices?

Yet Russia faces a rising tide of Western criticism for sliding toward autocracy. Indeed, ideological baggage, not dispassionate strategic deliberation, often colours U.S. and European discourse on Russia. Another reason is Russia’s geographical presence in Europe, the “mother” of both the Russian and U.S. civilizations. There is thus a greater propensity to hold Russia to European standards, unlike, say, China. Also, Russia was considered a more plausible candidate for democratic reform than China. Little surprise Russia’s greater centralization evokes fervent Western reaction.

Today’s Russia, however, bears little resemblance to the Soviet Union. Life for the average Russian is freer and there is no Soviet-style shortage of consumer goods. There are also no online censors regulating Internet content. But what now looks like a resurgent power faces major demographic and economic challenges to build and sustain great-power capacity over the long run.

Demographically, Russia is even in danger of losing its Slavic identity and becoming a Muslim-majority state in the decades ahead, unless government incentives succeed in encouraging Russian women to have more children. The average age of death of a Russian male has fallen to 58.9 years — nearly two decades below an American. Economically, the oil-price crash has come as a warning against being a largely petro-state.

In fact, Moscow’s economic fortunes for long have been tied too heavily to oil — a commodity with volatile prices. In 1980, the Soviet Union overtook Saudi Arabia as the biggest oil producer. But oil prices began to decline, plummeting to $9 a barrel in mid-1986. U.S. intelligence, failing to read the significance of this, continued to claim Moscow was engaged in massive military modernization. During the Putin presidency, rising oil prices played a key role in Russian economic revival. The higher the oil prices, the less the pressure there is on Russia to restructure and diversify its economy. The present low prices thus offer an opportunity to Moscow to reform.

Still, it should not be forgotten that Russia is the world’s wealthiest country in natural resources — from fertile farmlands and metals, to gold and timber. It sits on colossal hydrocarbon reserves. It also remains a nuclear and missile superpower. Indeed, to compensate for the erosion in its conventional-military capabilities, it has increasingly relied on its large nuclear arsenal, which it is ambitiously modernizing.

Right international approach

Whatever its future, the big question is: What is the right international approach toward a resurgent Russia? Here two aspects need to be borne in mind.

►First, Russia geopolitically is the most important “swing” state in the world today. Its geopolitical “swing” worth is greater than China’s or India’s. While China is inextricably tied to the U.S. economy, India’s geopolitical direction is clearly set — toward closer economic and political engagement with the West, even as New Delhi retains its strategic autonomy. But Russia is a wild card. A wrong policy course on Russia by the West would not only prove counterproductive to Western interests, but also affect international peace and security. It would push Moscow inexorably in the wrong direction, creating a new East-West divide.

►Second, there are some useful lessons applicable to Russia that the West can draw on how it has dealt with another rising power. China has come a long way since the 1989 Tiananmen Square episode. What it has achieved in the last generation in terms of economic modernization and the opening of minds is extraordinary. That owes a lot to the West’s decision not to sustain trade sanctions after Tiananmen Square but instead to integrate China into global institutions.

That the choice made was wise can be seen from the baneful impact of the opposite decision that was taken on Burma after 1988 — to pursue a punitive approach relying on sanctions. Had the Burma-type approach been applied against China, the result would not only have been a less-prosperous and less-open China, but also a more-paranoid and possibly destabilizing China. The lesson is that engagement and integration are better than sanctions and isolation.

Today, with a new chill setting in on relations between the West and Russia, that lesson is in danger of getting lost. Russia’s 16-year effort to join the World Trade Organization has still to bear fruit, even as Moscow is said to be in the last phase of negotiations, and the U.S.-Russian nuclear deal remains on hold in Washington.

Little thought is being given to how the West lost Russia, which during its period of decline eagerly sought to cosy up to the U.S. and Europe, only to get the cold shoulder from Washington. Also, turning a blind eye to the way NATO is being expanded right up to Russia’s front-yard and the U.S.-led action in engineering Kosovo’s February 2008 self-proclamation of independence, attention has focused since last August on Moscow’s misguided but short-lived military intervention in Georgia and its recognition of the self-declaration of independence by South Ossetia and Abkhazia — actions that some portrayed as the 21st century’s first forcible changing of borders.

But having sponsored Kosovo’s self-proclamation of independence, the U.S. and some of its allies awkwardly opposed the same right of self-determination for the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is as if the legitimacy of a self-declaration of independence depends on which great power sponsors that action.

The world cannot afford a new Cold War, which is what constant bear-baiting will bring. Fortunately, there are some positive signs. Nuclear arms control is back on the U.S.-Russian agenda, and U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to be in Moscow for a July 6-7 summit meeting. The U.S. is going slow on missile-defence deployments in Eastern Europe and there is a de facto postponement of NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia. As part of what Obama has called a “reset” of the bilateral relationship, a U.S.-Russia joint commission headed by the two presidents is to be established, along with several sub-commissions. This is an improvement on the 1993 commission established at the level of No. 2s, Vice President Al Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

The key issue is whether the U.S. and Russia will be able to seize the new opportunity to redefine their relationship before it becomes too late. For Russia, the challenge is to engage the West more deeply. It also needs to increase its economic footprint in Asia, where its presence is largely military. For the U.S., the challenge is to pursue new geopolitics of engagement with Moscow.

Brahma Chellaney is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

India’s increasingly combustible neighborhood

Posted on June 14, 2009 by Chellaney

The Tyranny of India’s Geography

Strategic
Imperative/Brahma Chellaney

Covert magazine,
June 1-14, 2009

The arc of failing or troubled states in which India is wedged is becoming more
combustible than ever. To India’s
west, the situation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt is getting from bad to
worse. Rapid Talibanization and spreading militancy threaten to devour Pakistan.
To compound matters, the political border between Afghanistan
and Pakistan
has now ceased to exist in practice. The so-called Durand Line, in any event,
was a British-colonial invention that left the large Pashtun community divided
into two. Today, that line exists only in maps. On the ground, it has little
political, ethnic and economic relevance. Its disappearance seems irreversible.
The international reluctance to come to terms with this reality is because of
the fundamental, far-reaching issues such action would throw open. It is
simpler to just keep up the pretense of wanting to stabilize Pakistan and Afghanistan within their existing
political frontiers.

To India’s east are the problem states of Burma and
Bangladesh — the first facing a humanitarian disaster in the face of widening
U.S.-led sanctions and the ruthlessness of its military regime, and the second
in danger of becoming another Pakistan owing to a rising tide of Islamic
fundamentalism there. Bangladesh is not a Brunei
or a Bhutan
but the world’s seventh most populous nation. In addition to the
millions of Bangladeshis that already have settled in India illegally, many Bangladeshis have moved
internally from rural areas to Dhaka as “climate refugees,” driven out by
floods, cyclones and saltwater incursion from the Bay of
Bengal. India
is likely to get not only more economic refugees from Bangladesh, but also an influx of
climate refugees due to global warming.

For India, the ethnic expansion of Bangladesh beyond its
political borders not only sets up enduring trans-border links but it also
makes New Delhi’s already-complex task of border management more onerous. As highlighted
by Indian census figures, Indian districts bordering Bangladesh have become
Bangladeshi-majority areas. It is perhaps the first time in modern history that
a country has expanded its ethnic frontiers without expanding its political
borders.

The troubled situation in Burma
has brought thousands of political and ethnic refugees to India, now an important hub of the
pro-democracy campaign by exiles. Even as the junta has scheduled national
elections in 2010, Burma
remains one of the world’s most isolated and sanctioned nations. The U.S.-led
sanctions approach is actually pushing Burma
into the strategic lap of China,
which values that country as an entryway to the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean. Having strategically penetrated
resource-rich Burma, Beijing is busy completing the Irrawaddy Corridor
involving road, river, rail and energy-transport links between its Yunnan province and Burmese
ports. For India,
such links constitute strategic pressure on the eastern flank.

To India’s
south, the Sri Lankan military’s bloody triumph over the Tamil Tigers has left
an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. Even amid military success, Colombo seems unable to
define peace or outline a political solution to the Tamils’ long-standing
cultural and political grievances. India can hardly overlook the fact
that what tilted the military balance in favour of Sri Lankan forces was the
infusion of Chinese weapon systems — from Jian-7 fighterjets to anti-aircraft
guns. For China, a major quid pro quo to such arms supplies has been the
contract for Hambantota, the billion-dollar port Chinese engineers are building
on Sri Lanka’s southeast. In fact, with Chinese encouragement, Pakistan — despite its own faltering economy —
has boosted its annual military assistance loans to Sri Lanka to nearly $100 million.

To India’s
north, Nepal
remains internally torn and, consequently, a happy hunting ground for Pakistani
and Chinese intelligence. Nepal
is not just another neighbour for India but a symbiotically linked
state with close cultural affinity and open borders that permit passport-free
passage. The Indo-Nepal equation is deeper than between any two European Union
members. Indeed, ever since the Chinese annexation of Tibet eliminated the outer buffer, Nepal has served as an inner buffer between India and China. The fall of the Maoist-led
government is just the latest chapter in a blemished and rocky experiment since
1990 to build democracy in Nepal.

Given such a troubled neighborhood, it is hardly a surprise
that India’s
internal security is coming under growing pressure.

Obama wages the wrong war

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Chellaney

EE.UU. libra la guerra equivocada

BRAHMA CHELLANEY*
LA VANGUARDIA June 1, 2009

El Pakistán más profundo se ha autorrecluido en una mazmorra yihadista
durante los últimos diez años, con mayor intensidad a medida que
Estados Unidos se involucraba más intensamente en la marcha de este
país, apuntalando su vacilante economía merced a una generosa ayuda
bilateral e internacional, orquestando las líneas generales de la
política pakistaní y mimando al establishment militar bien conocido por
su afición a inmiscuirse en la dirección de los asuntos del Estado. Tal
enfoque político contrasta claramente con un redoblado enfoque militar
en Afganistán, donde Estados Unidos se centra actualmente en la
cuestión del refuerzo de tropas y la creación de milicias civiles a
escala local.

La verdad pura y simple es que Estados Unidos está librando la guerra
equivocada. Como consecuencia, corre el riesgo de perder la batalla
contra los islamistas y los terroristas internacionales. La auténtica
guerra debe librarse en Pakistán en defensa de la paz y la seguridad
internacionales.

El objetivo de la intervención militar estadounidense en Afganistán en
el 2001 era impedir que las distintas áreas sin ley y sin acceso al mar
del país sirvieran de base a Al Qaeda y otros terroristas
internacionales.

En gran medida tal objetivo ha sido alcanzado pese a la amenaza de un
rebrote talibán. En la actualidad, la base principal del terrorismo
internacional no es Afganistán, sino Pakistán. El respaldo y el apoyo a
la militancia afgana provienen también del interior de Pakistán. Según
Bruce Riedel, coautor de la revisión de la estrategia sobre Afganistán
y Pakistán a cargo del presidente Obama, Pakistán "tiene más
terroristas por kilómetro cuadrado que cualquier otro lugar de la
tierra y posee un programa de armamento nuclear que avanza más de prisa
que cualquier otro del planeta".

Sin embargo, y mientras libra la guerra en Afganistán, Estados Unidos
impulsa una discutible estrategia política con relación a un Pakistán
crecientemente radicalizado, bien patente en la entrega de un nuevo
paquete de ayuda estadounidense por valor de 7.500 millones de dólares
a fin de ganarse simpatías en un país que parece ahora un cóctel
molotov en espera de la cerilla que lo encienda. Por más que Estados
Unidos intenta sobornar al ejército pakistaní para impedir que
suministre ayuda y refugio a los militantes a lo largo de la frontera
afgana, los principales refugios terroristas se hallan en el Pakistán
profundo, no en sus zonas fronterizas. El azote del terrorismo
pakistaní procede no tanto de los mulás islamistas cuanto de los
generales del ejército que alentaron las fuerzas de la yihad.

El éxito de la inyección de 21.000 efectivos estadounidenses más en
Afganistán dependerá de la situación del campo de batalla en otro país,
un campo de batalla donde el papel de Estados Unidos es, sobre todo,
político. Es evidente, asimismo, que las fuerzas armadas
estadounidenses no pueden garantizar la expedición de un billete de
vuelta de Afganistán sin antes desmantelar los refugios y las
infraestructura de los talibanes y otros militantes afganos en
Pakistán. Gracias a sus resguardados refugios, los militantes afganos
cuentan con mayor margen de maniobra que sus homólogos iraquíes y, en
consecuencia, no es probable que el refuerzo de tropas estadounidenses
en Afganistán al estilo de Iraq vaya a dar paso a una disminución de
violencia también de estilo iraquí. Como señaló Stephen Hadley justo
antes de abandonar su cargo de consejero de seguridad nacional
estadounidense a principios de año, "no cabe solucionar realmente el
problema de Afganistán sin solucionar el de Pakistán".

Sin embargo, Obama no cuenta con más verdadera estrategia para liquidar
la infraestructura terrorista en Pakistán, alentada en su día por los
militares, que la de tentar a las fuerzas armadas y los servicios de
inteligencia pakistaníes con más dinero y armas, estímulos de los que
de buena gana sacarán tajada… para seguir ayudando a los elementos
extremistas. La estrategia de Obama con relación a Pakistán puede
sintetizarse en realidad en sólo cuatro palabras: más de lo mismo. De
hecho, supera incluso lo que no ha funcionado con anterioridad, pues
las políticas estadounidenses fracasadas durante años no han hecho más
que agravar el caos aterrador que aflige a Pakistán.

Aun así, Obama intenta reproducir en sus mismos términos tal enfoque
fracasado a escala mucho mayor, como muestra su plan para convertir a
Pakistán en el mayor destinatario de ayuda estadounidense del mundo sin
puntos de referencia claros para evaluar el progreso realizado. De
hecho, su Administración ha logrado disuadir hasta ahora al Congreso de
la imposición de todo requisito riguroso o estricto concerniente a la
ayuda destinada a Pakistán, cuya primera partida por valor de 2.000
millones de dólares ha obtenido ya luz verde para su entrega inmediata.

La generosa ayuda estadounidense permite de hecho a Pakistán invertir
una parte mayor de sus recursos en armas de destrucción masiva, como
cabe constatar a la vista de los dos reactores de producción de
plutonio actualmente en construcción en Khushab. La actual existencia
de armas de destrucción masiva en un país en combinación con yihadistas
dentro y fuera del sistema es causa de honda preocupación mundial; tal
arsenal en expansión añade a este panorama tintes de pesadilla.

Meter más dinero en Islamabad mimando a quien lleva las riendas del
verdadero poder – los militares-y segar la hierba bajo los pies de los
líderes electos (cosa que se advierte, por ejemplo, cuando Obama
vilipendia públicamente al Gobierno en ciernes del presidente Asif Ali
Zardari tachándolo de "muy débil, ineficaz e incapaz de ganarse el
respaldo y lealtad del pueblo pakistaní" son ejemplos que explican por
qué la nueva Administración ofrece más de lo mismo en lo relativo a la
política estadounidense en esta cuestión. Para disuadir a los militares
pakistaníes de ayudar a los talibanes y a otros militantes, Washington
paga miles de millones de dólares por el rescate de rehenes, sin tener
además garantía alguna de que tales compensaciones modifiquen la
situación.

¿Cómo puede Pakistán convertirse en un país normal si la política
estadounidense no procura que sus respectivos establishments militar,
de inteligencia y nuclear hayan de responder ante el gobierno electo?
De hecho, mientras el poder de decisión siga en manos de los militares
y los servicios de inteligencia (ISI) procedan por su cuenta y riesgo
como "un Estado dentro del Estado", seguramente Pakistán seguirá
constituyendo un rasgo común apreciable en las investigaciones sobre la
mayoría de los actos de terrorismo internacional. No obstante, la
estrategia de Obama confía precisamente en esas instituciones para
lograr victorias en el campo de batalla afgano. Al manifestar
públicamente que quiere salir de Afganistán, Obama, sin embargo, ha
certificado en cierto modo que las fuerzas estadounidenses no puedan
recabar real y auténtica cooperación de parte de las fuerzas armadas y
los servicios de inteligencia pakistaníes. En la actualidad, estas dos
instituciones y su descendencia, los talibanes, preferirán esperar
indefinidamente a que los estadounidenses recuperen el control de
Afganistán.

Washington empezó hace tiempo a presionar al establishment militar
pakistaní y a respaldar a los líderes electos para que pudieran asumir
plenos poderes frente a las políticas y la mentalidad impuestas por
dirigentes militares. El Gobierno civil actual asume toda la
responsabilidad, pero carece de los recursos necesarios para estar a la
altura. La salida a escena de un gobierno civil con plenas facultades y
de una sociedad civil sólida habrá de propiciar la democracia, marginar
a los elementos radicales y apartar a Pakistán del borde del abismo.

*B. CHELLANEY, profesor de Estudios Estratégicos del Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Política de Nueva Delhi.
Traducción: José María Puig de la Bellacasa

Russia’s Resurgence and the Start of a New Cold War?

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Chellaney

Tuesday, 09 June 2009

World Congress Journal

News from the IPI World Congress and 58th General Assembly at Helsinki

Brahma Chellaney (above) addresses IPI World Congress (Lehtikuva photo)

Russia: A bear at the doorstep?

Colin Peters

Last
year’s short war in Georgia, followed by this winter’s shutdown of
Europe’s gas supply through Ukraine, have left many asking: is Russia’s
recent assertiveness a sign of worse to come?

Three experts representing a spectrum of opinions tackled this question – the Economist’s
Edward Lucas; Brahma Chellaney, a professor at the New Delhi Centre for
Policy Research; and Anatoly Adamishin, a former Russian ambassador to
Britain. Lending a sense of cable news energy and immediacy was
moderator, CNN anchor Jim Clancy. They spoke on 7 June at the IPI World
Congress and 58th General Assembly in Helsinki, in the session “The
Bear at the Doorstep – Russia’s Resurgence and the Start of a New Cold
War? ”

“Who’s in charge of Russia?” fired Clancy at Adamishin
with his first question- the former diplomat responding to dispel the
idea that Russian democracy extends no further than the Kremlin’s top
seat.

A burgeoning and corrupt bureaucracy, coupled with
national apathy, lie at the heart of the problem, Adamishin said.
“Russia is a democratic country without democracy.”

“Please relax,” he said. “The bear is less belligerent than one may judge from its growling.”

Lucas,
on the other hand, fears that a new form of Cold War has already begun,
with Chellaney tempering the debate by saying that a return to past
tensions is still avoidable.

Comments and questions from the
journalists in Finlandia Hall broached tinderbox topics such as the
South Caucasus, Kremlin-backed moves to form an international natural
gas cartel similar to OPEC, and press freedom.

All the panelists
agreed that Russian press freedom has regressed sharply since the
1990s, with Adamishin pointing to Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief Dmitry
Muratov’s acceptance speech of the IPI Free Media Pioneer Award as all
the indication anyone needs as to the state of media freedom in Russia.

“Some of my friends are dead because they pushed too hard for press freedom [in Russia],” added Lucas.

Sri Lanka: Another case in China’s blood-soaked diplomacy

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Chellaney

China aided Sri Lanka bloodbath

The brutal military campaign by Sri Lanka’s mono-ethnic security forces may have wiped out the Tamil Tigers but it has left troubling questions about China’s role, as in Darfur, in aiding atrocities, writes Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times, June 8, 2009

Like in the case of the Darfur genocide in Sudan, Chinese weapons and aid to Sri Lanka facilitated the bloodbath on that tiny island-nation that left thousands of trapped civilians dead this year as government forces decimated the Tamil Tiger guerrillas in a brutal military campaign. More people have been killed in Sri Lanka this year than in Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza combined, according to the United Nations.

Sri Lanka is just the latest case demonstrating China’s blindness to the consequences of its aggressive pursuit of strategic interests. Beijing was attracted to Sri Lanka by its vantage location in the centre of the Indian Ocean, now the world’s pre-eminent energy and trade sea-way. Rather than compete with the US in the Pacific, China is seeking to expand its presence in the Indian Ocean, using its rising energy imports as justification to vie with India for supremacy in this region

Chinese Jian-7 fighter-jets, anti-aircraft guns, JY-11 3D air surveillance radars and other supplied weapons played a key role in the Sri Lankan military successes against the Tamil Tigers. After a daring 2007 raid by the Tigers’ air wing wrecked 10 government military aircraft, Beijing was quick to supply six warplanes on long-term credit. Such weapon supplies, along with $1 billion in aid to the tottering Sri Lankan economy last year alone, helped tilt the military balance in favour of government forces.

India’s consistent refusal to sell offensive weapons, coupled with the US action last year in ending direct military aid in response to Sri Lanka’s deteriorating human-rights record, created a void that China was only too happy to fill at a time when President Mahinda Rajapaksa was desperately shopping for arms. Besides increasing its bilateral aid five-fold between 2007 and 2008 alone, Beijing sold heavy weapons, many of them through Lanka Logistics & Technologies, a firm jointly owned by the President’s brother, defence minister Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, a naturalised US citizen. That opened the path to atrocities in the offensive led by a US green card holder, army chief Sarath Fonseka.

As in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uzbekistan, North Korea, Burma and elsewhere, Chinese military and financial support directly contributed to government excesses in Sri Lanka. Now there are growing international calls, including by states that had designated the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organisation, for an international commission of inquiry into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

International aid groups and independent journalists were banned from the war zone, and even today nearly 300,000 Tamils are being held against their will in displacement camps, labelled “internment centres” by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

In all the countries where China stands accused of being an enabler of repression, its military aid has been motivated by one of three considerations: to gain access to oil and mineral resources; to market its goods and services; or to find avenues to make strategic inroads. In Sri Lanka, Beijing has calculatedly sought to advance its wider strategic interests in the Indian Ocean region.

Hambantota — the billion-dollar port that Chinese engineers are building on Sri Lanka’s southeast — is the latest ‘pearl’ in China’s strategy to control vital sea-lanes of communication in the Indian Ocean by assembling a “string of pearls” in the form of listening posts, special naval arrangements and access to ports.

In this decade, Beijing has moved aggressively to secure contracts to build ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Sri Lanka. Initially, the projects are commercial in nature. But in the subsequent phase, as exemplified by the current expansion of Pakistan’s Chinese-built Gwadar port into a naval base, Beijing’s strategic interests openly come into play.

Gwadar, overlooking the Strait of Hormuz through which 40% of the world’s oil supply passes, epitomises how an increasingly ambitious Beijing, brimming with hard cash from a blazing economic growth, is building new links in the Indian Ocean. In addition to eyeing Gwadar as an anchor for its rapidly modernising navy, Beijing has sought naval and commercial links with four other Indian Ocean nations — the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar.

However, none of the projects China has bagged in recent years can match the strategic value of Hambantota, which sits astride the great trade arteries. Beijing hopes to eventually access Hambantota as a refuelling and docking station for its navy. In fact, it probably won the March 2007 Hambantota commercial contract as a quid pro quo for agreeing to supply major weapons to Colombo. As Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has put it bluntly, “China is fishing in troubled waters”.

Such is China’s emphasis on projecting power in the Indian Ocean that a May 2008 paper published by the military-run Chinese Institute for International Strategic Studies pointed to the inevitability of Beijing setting up naval bases in the Indian Ocean rim and elsewhere. An earlier article in the Liberation Army Daily had asserted that the contiguous corridor stretching from the Taiwan Straits to the Indian Ocean’s western rim constituted China’s legitimate offshore-defence perimeter.

Against this background, the Indian Ocean region is likely to determine whether a multipolar Asia or a Sino-centric Asia will emerge. That issue will be decided in this region, not in East Asia, where the power balance is more or less clear.

What is troubling, though, is that China — with its ability to provide political protection through its UN Security Council veto power — has signed tens of billions of dollars worth of energy and arms contracts in recent years with a host of problem states — from Burma and Iran to Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

Indeed, from helping Sudan’s government militarily in Darfur to aiding a bloody end to Sri Lanka’s civil war in a way that potentially sows the seeds of new unrest, Beijing has contributed to violence and repression in internally torn states.

Now saddled with a large Chinese-aided war machine, which set in motion the relentless militarisation of society and muzzling of the media, Sri Lanka is likely to discover that it was easier to wage war than to make peace.

(The writer is professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.)

North Korea and Pakistan: Nuclear Rogue Mates

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Chellaney

The nuclear nightmare

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times, June 3, 2009

North Korea and Pakistan present unique nuclear-proliferation risks because they challenge the very premise on which the international anti-proliferation measures have been built.

While North Korea is often compared with Iran, the challenge it poses is more akin to Pakistan’s. Both Pakistan and North Korea are actual proliferation threats as opposed to Iran’s potential proliferation challenge. But while North Korea is a growing regional threat, Pakistan — with its expanding nuclear armory, terrorists and jihadist-infiltrated military and nuclear establishments — presents itself as an international nightmare.

In the past, these two countries have clandestinely bartered Pakistani uranium-enrichment knowhow for North Korean missile technology. Today, they are showing that the nuclear abolition debate is not germane to the key proliferation challenges in Asia, even if movement on the stalled disarmament process helps reduce incentives to proliferation in some other cases.

The present global anti-proliferation measures are tied to three key elements: The continued stability and credibility of the nonproliferation regime; the exercise of punitive power, when necessary, to enforce observance of global norms and rules; and the raising of costs for proliferators.

The outlook of North Korea and Pakistan, however, is founded on a fundamentally antithetical premise, which can be summed up as: Threaten to fail, then reap rewards.

For these two dissimilar nations, potential state failure actually serves as an incentive to extort ransom money internationally. Both have assiduously sought to leverage their weakness into strength diplomatically, with Pakistan more successful than North Korea. "We’ll fail if you don’t come to our support" is their refrain. That is another way of saying: "Pay up or face the consequences."

In that light, it is proving very difficult to hold them to any international standards.

In fact, Pakistan’s success in extracting ever-more international aid has only emboldened North Korea to follow suit. Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test — its second in less than three years — is a desperate move to garner international aid.

If Islamabad can play nuclear poker to shield its export of terrorism and still get rewarded with $23.6 billion in international aid commitments just in the last six months ($5.5 billion of which came at the April donors conference in Tokyo), Pyongyang reckoned it could stage its own nuclear-and-missile show to draw the world’s attention.

While vowing to "take action" against North Korea over its test, U.S. President Barack Obama has set out to make Pakistan the single largest recipient of U.S. assistance in the world, leaving Israel and Egypt behind in the aid sweepstakes.

When Pakistan rakes in a windfall, North Korea can hardly be faulted for using the possibility of becoming a failed state as a means to collect some small change.

If Obama thought that succumbing to Pakistani demand would set no international precedent, North Korea’s ailing "dear leader" has made sure the chickens will come home to roost in Washington.

Even as America worries about Iran’s potential nuclear-weapons capability, its handling of the actual problem thrown up by Pakistan’s military-controlled weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and military-nurtured terrorists threatens to send the wrong signal to Tehran. According to a just-released Congressional Research Service report, Pakistan has approximately 60 nuclear warheads. It also has biological weapons, including pathogens no less dangerous than the H1N1 virus

Bountiful U.S. aid, in fact, is allowing Pakistan to divert more of its scarce resources to expand WMD capability, as illustrated by the two new plutonium-production reactors now under construction in Khushab with Chinese assistance. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chie’s of Staff, has been constrained to acknowledge at a May 14 congressional hearing that there is evidence showing Pakistan is expanding its nuclear arsenal.

Existing WMD in a country with jihadists are a matter of deep global concern; an expanding arsenal makes the scenario terrifying.

America has little incentive to start the flow of major international aid to North Korea, which, as U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted recently at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, poses no direct military threat to the U.S. at present. Strategically, North Korea is of little positive value to U.S. policy.

By contrast, China over the decades has maintained close ties with Pyongyang and Islamabad and, besides providing direct WMD aid to both, may have even encouraged North Korean-Pakistani technology exchanges. But Beijing lacks the leverage to control their steps and gets surprised now and then by their actions, as exemplified by the latest North Korean nuclear and missile testing.

More broadly, the traditional carrots-and-sticks approach of the nonproliferation regime has been derailed by the North Korea and Pakistan cases. The derailment happened because the punitive component was rendered blunt by the continuing intent of the major geopolitical players not to let North Korea or Pakistan become a failed state.

So, the more North Korea and Pakistan appear likely to become failed states, the more it becomes evident that the international response is constrained by the objective not to let them fail. The international approach toward them thus is to bark but not to bite.

In dealing with North Korea, China, Russia, the United States and Japan do not want to go so far as to cause the collapse of the regime. Although not necessarily motivated by the same interest, these powers are not geopolitically ready for Korean reunification, which will be a logical corollary to the regime collapse in Pyongyang. South Korea, too, is not prepared for that development because it would unleash a torrent of refugees and saddle Seoul with colossal reunification costs, as the continuing domestic costs of German reunification attest. So, not wanting the Stalinist North Korean state to unravel, the external players do little more than pass tough resolutions or statements.

Pakistan, for its part, has for long served as a useful pawn in Chinese and American policies. It remains Beijing’s "all-weather ally," although its utility to U.S. policy has eroded to the extent that today it appears more of a strategic liability than an asset. Yet the old mind-set in Washington has not sufficiently changed. As a result, the deeper Pakistan has dug itself into a jihadist dungeon, the more the U.S. has gotten involved in that country. Such growing involvement, far from serving U.S. interests, has fueled an Islamist backlash in Pakistan, where anti-American sentiment is among the strongest in the world and where America is unfairly blamed for everything.

Washington also does not face up to another reality: Pakistan’s political border with Afghanistan has ceased to exist in practice. The so-called Durand Line — a British-colonial invention that left the large Pashtun community divided into two — now exists only in maps. Its disappearance is irreversible. Given that reality, how can U.S. policy expect to prop up the Pakistani state within political frontiers that, in part, no longer exist?

It is sad but true: The only way the international community can regain leverage against North Korea and Pakistan is to unflinchingly pursue a forward-thinking nonproliferation course that is not constrained by the specter of state collapse. That means standing up to them to disable their nuclear terror.

Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan" (HarperCollins).

The Japan Times: Wednesday, June 3, 2009

How U.S. policy on Pakistan has encouraged North Korea

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Chellaney

More terrorists per square mile

Pakistan’s success in employing nuclear blackmail to extort growing international aid has only emboldened North Korea

Brahma Chellaney

Hindustan Times, May 27, 2009

The deeper Pakistan has dug itself into a jihadist dungeon over the past decade and more, the more the US has gotten involved in that country, including in propping up its tottering economy through generous aid, macro-managing Pakistani politics and mollycoddling the powerful military. This political approach contrasts starkly with the current stepped-up US military approach in Afghanistan, exemplified by a troop “surge”.

By fighting the wrong war, the US risks losing the battle against Islamists and transnational terrorists. The real war needs to be fought in Pakistan.

The 2001 U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan was intended to deny that landlocked country’s lawless regions as a base for transnational terrorists. To a large extent, that goal has been realized, despite the threat from a resurgent Taliban. Today, the main global-terrorist base is not Afghanistan but Pakistan. Support and sustenance for Afghan militants also comes from inside Pakistan, which — according to the co-author of President Barack Obama’s “Afpak” strategy review, Bruce Riedel — “has more terrorists per square mile than anyplace else on earth” and a nuclear armoury “growing faster than anyplace else on earth.”

Still, while revving up its war machine in Afghanistan, America pursues a dubious political strategy in Pakistan, best illustrated by its new $7.5 billion aid package to win hearts and minds in a country that resembles a Molotov cocktail waiting for a match. Even as the US seeks to bribe the Pakistani military to stop providing succour and sanctuary to militants along the Afghan frontier, the major terrorist safe havens remain deep inside Pakistan, not at its borders. And while it frets over the Pakistani Taliban, the scourge of Pakistani terrorism still emanates from military generals who reared the forces of jihad.

Pakistan’s success in employing blackmail to extort ever-more ransom money has only emboldened North Korea to follow suit. Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test is a desperate move to garner international aid. If Islamabad can play nuclear poker to shield its export of terrorism and still get rewarded with $23.6 billion in international aid commitments over the past six months, Pyongyang reckoned it could stage its own nuclear show to draw the world’s attention. When Pakistan’s threat to become a failed state rakes in a windfall, North Korea can hardly be faulted for using the same menace to collect some small change.

If Obama thought that succumbing to Pakistani blackmail would set no international precedent, North Korea’s ailing “dear leader” has made sure the chickens will come home to roost in Washington. And even as America worries about the potential proliferation problem posed by Iran, its handling of the actual problem thrown up by Pakistan’s military-controlled weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and military-nurtured terrorists threatens to send the wrong signal to Tehran. Munificent US aid, in fact, is allowing Pakistan to divert more of its scarce resources to expand WMD capability.

Today, no country challenges international security like Pakistan. Obama cannot hope to secure a US ticket out of Afghanistan without dismantling the Pakistani military’s sanctuaries and sustenance infrastructure for Afghan militants. As Stephen Hadley pointed out just before leaving office as the US national security adviser, “You can’t really solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan”. Yet Obama has no real strategy to uproot Pakistan’s terror complex other than to entice the Pakistani military establishment with larger funds and more weapon transfers — inducements that it will gladly grasp, only to continue aiding extremists. Obama’s Pakistan strategy indeed can be summed up in just four words: More of the same.

Actually, it is more of what hasn’t worked in the past. In making Pakistan the largest recipient of US aid in the world, Obama has set out to replicate the past failed approach on a bigger scale. His administration has even managed to dissuade Congress thus far from imposing any rigid condition on the unprecedented $10.5-billion aid for Pakistan — the first $2-billion tranche of which already has been cleared for release. Throwing more money at Islamabad, pampering the Pakistani army and intelligence, and undermining Pakistan’s elected leaders (with Obama publicly excoriating President Asif Ali Zardari’s fledgling government as “very fragile,” ineffectual and unable “to gain the support and loyalty” of the Pakistani people) are examples of more of the same in US policy.

How can Pakistan become a “normal” state if US policy encourages its military, intelligence and nuclear establishments to stay not accountable to the elected government? As long as the army continues to hold the real power and the rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) remains unreformed, Pakistan is likely to stay a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terrorism. Yet the Obama strategy relies on these very institutions for gains on the Afghan battlefield. By publicizing his intent to exit Afghanistan, Obama, however, has undercut his own objective. Now the Pakistani military and its progeny, the Taliban, will prefer to just wait out the Americans to reclaim Afghanistan.

The choice before Washington is to stop treating Pakistan as its favoured pawn or risk letting its egregious policy egg on other renegade nations. The right course is to cut the Pakistani military establishment down to size by actively assisting the country’s elected leaders to undo policies and mindsets implanted by a succession of army rulers. The civilians in office today take all the blame but do not have the power to deliver. The emergence of a fully empowered civilian government and robust civil society will foster democracy, marginalize radicals and bring Pakistan back from the brink.

Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

Safeguarding Pakistan’s WMD from jihadists within

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Chellaney

Insider threat to Pakistan’s ‘crown jewels’

Brahma Chellaney

The Hindu newspaper, May 25, 2009

The real threat of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan’s weapons of mass destruction comes from jihadists within the military, intelligence and nuclear establishments, not from the Taliban.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently warned of the “unthinkable” in Pakistan: Islamists getting “the keys to the nuclear arsenal.” So, does the United States have a contingency plan to forestall that and, if so, can the plan work, given the record of American policy on Pakistan thus far?

Pakistan’s nuclear-stockpile security is handled by the so-called Strategic Plans Division, with a special, 1,000-troop unit. But as Ms Clinton acknowledged, the Pakistani nukes are “widely dispersed,” with the storage sites extending beyond the Punjab heartland to the Sind and Baluchistan provinces. Add to that America’s admittedly limited knowledge on the location of these sites. The U.S. may thus have few good options to pre-emptively seize the nuclear arms before an Islamist takeover of Pakistan.

To be sure, the Strategic Plans Division — the keeper of the country’s nuclear secrets — is headed by a U.S.-backed general, Khalid Kidwai, who was held in India as a prisoner of the 1971 war and released following the 1972 Shimla Agreement. Mr. Kidwai has headed the SPD ever since it was created after the 1998 nuclear tests.

It was on Mr. Kidwai’s watch that the infamous A.Q. Khan-led nuclear-smuggling ring remained in operation. How reassuring is that fact? Indeed, it was Mr. Kidwai whom military ruler Pervez Musharraf used to extract a tutored confession from Khan so that the entire blame for the illicit nuclear ring could fall on a single individual, sparing the military establishment — a charade the Bush administration readily went along with.

To tamp down growing international concerns over the safety of Pakistan’s “crown jewels” and to win congressional passage of his record-level aid package for Pakistan, U.S. President Barack Obama said on April 29: “I’m confident we can make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure, primarily, initially, because the Pakistani army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.” Mr. Obama’s confidence is rooted unbelievably in his belief that the jihadist-penetrated Pakistani army is taking cognizance of such perils. In fact, he suggested Washington still trusts the Pakistani army with custodial control of nuclear assets, thereby compounding the simultaneous insult he hurled at President Asif Ali Zardari’s elected government in calling it “very fragile,” ineffectual and unable “to gain the support and loyalty” of the Pakistani people.

Mr. Obama’s comments, made just before he received Mr. Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai for a trilateral meeting, drew attention to the long-standing U.S. policy partiality for Pakistani generals at a time when the real Islamist-takeover threat comes from jihadists within the increasingly radicalized Pakistani military. Rather than help build robust civilian institutions, Washington for five decades propped up military rulers and still continues to pamper the Pakistani military establishment, best illustrated by the fresh $3-billion military aid package and new joint cooperation between the CIA and the rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

Pakistan’s descent into a jihadist dungeon tellingly occurred not under civilian rule but under military rule. Also, before Musharraf’s nearly nine-year dictatorship, few in the world looked at Pakistan as a failing state.

Today, how can Pakistan become a “normal” state if its military, intelligence and nuclear establishments remain outside civilian oversight, with the decisive power still with the army? Yet when the new civilian government ordered the ISI last July to report to the Interior Ministry, it did not receive support from Washington, allowing the army to quickly frustrate the move. The command and control over Pakistan’s nuclear assets vests with the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, with Mr. Zardari just the titular chair of the National Command Authority, dominated by military and intelligence leaders.

In such an aberrant setting, can the U.S. really hope to prevent jihadist control of Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear and biological weapons, including pathogens no less dangerous than (as Senator Richard Lugar pointed out) the H1N1 virus? Bountiful U.S. aid indeed permits Pakistan to plough more of its domestic resources into weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as exemplified by the two new plutonium-production reactors under construction at Khushab. Existing WMD in a country teaming with jihadists are a matter of deep global concern; an expanding arsenal makes the scenario nightmarish.

Let’s just say it: The U.S. first allowed Pakistan to acquire the nuclear bomb by turning a blind eye to its illicit procurement of blueprints and items during the 1970s and 1980s. Then, when the clandestine nuclear importers morphed into covert nuclear exporters, the U.S. admittedly failed to detect their proliferation activities for 16 long years. Worse still, as shown by A.Q. Khan’s release from house arrest and the collapse of international investigations, Washington has not been interested in fully investigating that ring or in bringing its ringleaders to justice.

Khan’s discharge followed Switzerland’s release of the two Tinner brothers who, along with their father, were important conduits in the Pakistani ring. One of the brothers, Urs Tinner, has acknowledged working undercover for the CIA. In fact, the CIA shielded A.Q. Khan for long. As the former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers has revealed, the CIA protected Khan from arrest and prosecution in Europe in 1975 and 1986.

Today, with Pakistani officials doggedly deflecting U.S. requests for details, CIA director Leon Panetta has acknowledged that America lacks “the intelligence to know” where all of Pakistan’s nuclear-storage sites are located. Although the U.S. has provided some $100 million worth of technical assistance to Islamabad under its International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation programme, American personnel have been denied access to most Pakistani nuclear sites.

Although it has refused to sell “Permissive Action Links” (PALs) — primary electronic locks embedded in weapon design — America has helped Pakistan design a system of controls, barriers and sensors, including improvised secondary-locking devices added to already-built weapons. But rather than let Americans enter its sites, Pakistan sent its personnel for on-site training in America. Put simply, the U.S. has not been allowed to see how its money has been used in practice.

Modern security and accounting systems, in any event, can be of little value in the face of insider threats. The real threat of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan’s WMD comes not from jihadists outside, but from jihadists within the system — specifically, from the jihadist-infiltrated military, intelligence and nuclear establishments. Yet, with the Obama administration hyping the Pakistani Taliban threat to win early congressional passage of record-level aid for Islamabad, international concerns have centred on outsider threats. The Taliban, either in Pakistan or Afghanistan, has not been active outside the Pashtun regions, and there is no evidence of any nuclear assets being present in the troubled Pakistani Pashtun areas.

Actually, Pakistan has emulated India’s example in storing nukes in disassembled form, with the warheads and delivery vehicles stowed in separate facilities. For outsiders to acquire even one complete bomb, capture of at least two facilities would be necessary, along with the expertise to mate the fissile “core” and trigger with the delivery vehicle. This is unlikely to happen without military generals and other senior insiders actively colluding with the outsiders.

Insider threats indeed have repeatedly been exposed — from the ring that sold centrifuge technology and bomb designs to the jihadist charity set up by two senior nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed. Mahmood, who once served as A.Q. Khan’s boss and designed the first Khushab reactor, advocated that the Pakistani nukes were the property of the whole ummah and, therefore, Pakistan had a duty to share nuclear technology with other Muslim states. Weeks before 9/11, “Mahmood and Majeed met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan,” then CIA chief George Tenet writes in his memoirs, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA. “There, around a campfire, they discussed how Al-Qaeda should go about building a nuclear device.”

Pakistan serves as a reminder that programmes to screen and monitor personnel can mean little when jihad-spouting personnel abound in the military and nuclear establishments. Such personnel are potential sleepers for extremist groups.

Safeguarding WMD demands a stable, moderate Pakistan. That, in turn, calls for sustained international political investment in building and strengthening civilian institutions. But is that possible without a clear break from politically expedient U.S. policies that continue to prop up a meddling army, fatten the ISI and encourage the military, intelligence and nuclear establishments to stay not accountable to the elected government? Even Secretary Clinton was constrained to admit that “our policy toward Pakistan over the last 30 years has been incoherent.” The most likely scenario of Pakistani WMD falling into Islamist hands is an intra-military struggle in which the jihadists gain ascendancy.

The real war needs to be fought in Pakistan, not Afghanistan

Posted on May 24, 2009 by Chellaney

U.S. fighting the wrong war

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

The Japan Times

The deeper Pakistan has dug itself into a jihadist dungeon over the past decade and more, the more the United States has gotten involved in that country, including in propping up its tottering economy through generous bilateral and international aid, macro-managing Pakistani politics and pampering the powerful, meddling military establishment.

This political approach contrasts starkly with a stepped-up military approach in Afghanistan, where currently the U.S. focus is on a troop "surge" and the establishment of local-level civil militias.

The blunt truth is that the U.S. is fighting the wrong war. As a result, it is in danger of losing the fight against Islamists and transnational terrorists. The real war needs to be fought in Pakistan, in defense of international peace and security.

The 2001 U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan was intended to deny use of that landlocked country’s lawless regions as a base by al-Qaida and other transnational terrorists. To a large extent, that goal has been realized, despite the threat from a resurgent Taliban.

Today, the main base of international terrorists is not Afghanistan, but Pakistan. Support and sustenance for Afghan militants also comes from inside Pakistan. According to Bruce Riedel, the coauthor of U.S. President Barack Obama’s review of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, Pakistan "has more terrorists per square mile than any place else on Earth, and it has a nuclear-weapons program that is growing faster than anyplace else on Earth."

Yet, while waging war in Afghanistan, the U.S. pursues a dubious political strategy in an increasingly radicalized Pakistan, best illustrated by the new American $7.5 billion aid package to win hearts and minds in a country that now looks like a Molotov cocktail waiting for a match. Even as the U.S. seeks to bribe the Pakistani military to stop providing succor and sanctuary to militants along the Afghan frontier, the major terrorist safe havens remain deep inside Pakistan, not at its borders. The scourge of Pakistani terrorism still emanates not so much from the Islamist mullahs as from military generals who reared the forces of jihad.

The success of the ongoing induction of 21,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan will depend on the battlefield in another country — a battlefield where America’s role is largely political.

It is also apparent that the U.S. military cannot secure a ticket out of Afghanistan without first dismantling the Pakistani military’s sanctuaries and sustenance infrastructure for the Taliban and other Afghan militants.

Yet, Obama has no real strategy to uproot Pakistan’s military-reared terror infrastructure other than to entice the Pakistani Army and intelligence with larger funds and more weapon transfers — inducements that they will gladly grasp, only to continue aiding extremists.

Obama’s Pakistan strategy indeed can be summed up in just four words: More of the same. Actually, it is more of what hasn’t worked in the past. Unsuccessful U.S. policies over the years have helped produce a terrifying mess in Pakistan.

Even U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was constrained to admit on May 19 that "our policy toward Pakistan over the last 30 years has been incoherent. I don’t know any other word to use."

Still, Obama is seeking to replicate the failed approach of the past on a much-bigger scale, as exemplified by his plan to make Pakistan the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world without setting clear benchmarks for judging progress. In fact, his administration has been successful in dissuading Congress thus far from imposing any rigid condition on the new record-level aid for Pakistan, the first $ 2 billion tranche of which already has been cleared for release.

Bountiful U.S. aid indeed permits Pakistan to plow more of its domestic resources into weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as exemplified by the two plutonium-production reactors now under construction at Khushab. Existing WMD in a country teeming with jihadists within and outside the system are a matter of deep global concern; an expanding Pakistani arsenal makes the scenario nightmarish.

Throwing more money at Islamabad, pampering the wielder of real power — the military — and undermining Pakistan’s elected leaders (with Obama publicly excoriating President Asif Ali Zardari’s fledgling government as "very fragile," ineffectual and unable "to gain the support and loyalty" of the Pakistani people) are examples of why the new administration is offering more of the same in U.S. policy. To persuade the Pakistani military against helping the Taliban and other militants, Washington is paying billions of dollars in additional ransom money, with no assurance that such payouts will make any difference.

How can Pakistan become a "normal" state if U.S. policy does not seek to make its military, intelligence and nuclear establishments accountable to the elected government? Indeed, as long as the decisive power continues with the military, and the rogue Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency remains "a state within the state," Pakistan is likely to stay a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terrorism.

Yet the Obama strategy relies on these very institutions for gains on the Afghan battlefield. By publicizing his intent to exit Afghanistan, Obama, however, has ensured that U.S. forces will get no genuine cooperation from the Pakistani Army and ISI. Now these two institutions and their progeny, the Taliban, will prefer to just wait out the Americans to reclaim Afghanistan.

It is past time Washington began squeezing the Pakistani military establishment and actively assisting the country’s elected leaders to assume full powers and undo policies and mind-sets deeply implanted by a succession of military rulers. The civilian government today takes all the blame but does not have the power to deliver.

The emergence of a fully empowered civilian government and a robust civil society will foster democracy, marginalize radicals and bring Pakistan back from the brink.

Brahma Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and author of "Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan."

The Japan Times: Saturday, May 23, 2009

Stagecraft and Statecraft

Author Archives: Chellaney