Obama’s strategy on Pakistan and Afghanistan

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Chellaney

Success in Afghanistan lies through Pakistan

Brahma Chellaney

The Hindu newspaper, January 31, 2009

Barack Obama’s strategy on Pakistan and Afghanistan signals subtle shifts but no fundamental break with failed U.S. policies, thus raising the spectre of Indian security coming under greater pressure.

U.S. President Barack Obama has done well to appoint a special representative to the two interlinked countries that he says constitute “the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism” — Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pak-Afghan belt has turned into a festering threat to international peace and security, and Richard Holbrooke has described his role as a “very difficult assignment.”

Mr. Obama is right to emphasise an integrated U.S. strategy towards those two countries. But even as he has embarked on some major steps, his strategy has yet to signal a meaningful integration. While pursuing a “surge” of U.S. forces in Afghanistan without clarity on the precise nature and length of the military mission, Mr. Obama is seeking to do, albeit in more subtle ways, what U.S. policy has traditionally done — prop up the Pakistani state.

Mr. Obama’s priority is to prevent Pakistan’s financial collapse while getting the Pakistani military to stop aiding Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Toward that end, Mr. Obama is set to more than triple non-military aid to a near-bankrupt Pakistan, already one of the three largest recipients of U.S. assistance, but with the military aid currently being three times larger than the economic aid.

Sending 30,000 more U.S. forces into Afghanistan is a losing strategy. In fact, Taliban attacks escalated last year, even as the number of NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan nearly doubled in the first half of 2008. The Soviet Union, with 100,000 troops, couldn’t pacify a country that historically has been “the graveyard of empires.” Yet, Mr. Obama has embarked on a near-doubling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to raise the combined U.S., NATO and allied force level there to 100,000.

The latest surge, oddly, is intended for a non-military mission — to strike a political deal with the Taliban from a position of strength. That is why Defence Secretary Robert Gates, scaling down America’s “too broad” objectives, told Congress this week that there was not enough “time, patience or money” to pursue ambitious goals in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama, ironically, has set out to do in Afghanistan what his predecessor did in Iraq, where a surge was used largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni leaders and local chieftains. Payoffs won’t create a stable, more peaceful Afghanistan, a tribal society without the literacy level and middle class of Iraq.

Mr. Obama needs to face up to a stark truth: the war in Afghanistan can only be won in Pakistan, whose military establishment fathered the Taliban and still provides sanctuary, intelligence and material support to that Islamist militia. In fact, the Pakistani military, through its infamous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, has exploited Afghanistan’s special status as the global poppy hub to fashion the instrument of narco-terrorism. The proceeds from the $300-million-a-year drug trade, routed through Pakistani territory, fund the Taliban and several Pakistan-based terror groups, like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-i-Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Maktab al-Khidamat and Hizb ul-Tahrir.

Pakistan is also Al Qaeda’s world headquarters. But while Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Al Qaeda leaders operate out of mountain caves along Pakistan’s Afghan border, the presence of the Taliban and other Pakistani military-nurtured militants is more open on Pakistani soil. As Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry has put it bluntly, “a single country has become ground zero for the terrorist threat we face. The consensus among our intelligence agencies is that top Al Qaeda leaders are plotting their next attack from Pakistan, where the prevalence of religious extremists and nuclear weapons makes that country the central, crucial front in our struggle to protect America from terrorism.”

Narco to nuclear terrorism

Without its jihad culture being unravelled, there is a potent risk of Pakistan sliding from narco-terrorism to nuclear terrorism. Diminishing that risk demands that the Pakistani government be encouraged by the U.S. to assert civilian control over the military, intelligence and nuclear establishments. A.Q. Khan, who masterminded an international nuclear-smuggling ring for 16 long years with military connivance, including the provision of military transport aircraft, has still not been allowed to be questioned by international investigators.

To be sure, Mr. Obama identified Pakistan as the critical front 15 months ago when he advocated direct U.S. action there, including cross-border hot pursuit, if Pakistani security forces failed to play their role. But it will be difficult for him to reverse the long-standing U.S. policy of building up the Pakistani military as that country’s pivot. Since the time Pakistan was co-opted into the U.S.-led Cold War military alliances, successive U.S. administrations have valued the Pakistani military for promotion of regional interests, to the extent that the CIA helped train and fatten the ISI. The CIA-ISI ties remain cosy.

Tellingly, when the Pakistani government attempted last July to bring the ISI under civilian oversight, Washington did not come to its support, thus allowing the army to frustrate that move almost overnight. Instead, the U.S. has conveyed that the ISI is in the midst of being revamped, with its ranks being purged of jihadists — a story Washington has repeated almost every year or two in this decade. Similarly, Washington seems to prefer continued military control over the Pakistani nuclear arsenal through the National Command Authority (NCA) because the general who heads it is vetted by the Pentagon and the CIA.

Still, some delicate shifts in U.S. policy are now under way. For one, the new administration, in keeping with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge during her Senate confirmation hearing, has set out to “condition” future U.S. military aid to concrete Pakistani steps to evict foreign fighters and shut down Al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries. For another, the U.S. is to unveil a huge jump in non-military aid to Pakistan.

The administration is pushing for the early passage of the pending bill, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, which Mr. Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton had co-sponsored last July 2008 with eight other senators. The legislation is not a punitive but partnership-boosting measure to channel greater U.S. aid for Pakistan’s humanitarian and development needs. It also seeks to tie future U.S. military aid to a certification by the secretary of state to Congress that the Pakistani military was making “concerted efforts” to undermine Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But given the troop surge, the new land-transit deals with Russia and Central Asian states will not significantly cut America’s logistics dependence on Pakistan, which also provides intelligence to the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Therefore, Pakistani generals haughtily believe the U.S. needs them more than Pakistan needs America.

Indeed, it will be naïve to expect the Pakistani army and ISI to be brought to heel through a mere restructuring of the U.S. aid programme. For the Pakistani military, the Taliban and other militant groups remain not just useful surrogates, but force multipliers. Also, the U.S. conditions being introduced relate principally to Pakistani cooperation on the western frontier. That could leave the Pakistani military to continue its long-running asymmetric warfare against India through terror groups.

The key point is that there is no indication that Mr. Obama intends to abandon the long-standing U.S. pampering of the Pakistani military. While championing a huge increase in non-military assistance to Pakistan, he has signalled no intent to slash the generous military-aid flow other than to tie it to specific goals or better accountability. Put simply, greater U.S. largesse to help stabilise Pakistan is to run parallel to the surge-and-bribe endeavour in Afghanistan, with greenbacks the common lubricant.

Biden doubly wrong

Also, the new administration seems confused over whether Afghanistan or Pakistan ought to be its priority No. 1. Mr. Biden, an early supporter of the surge, has contended that the U.S. must focus on securing Afghanistan because “if Afghanistan fails, Pakistan could follow.” He is doubly wrong. With the war now seven years old, the time when a surge could work has already passed. The U.S. can never win in Afghanistan without dismantling the Pakistani military’s sanctuaries and sustenance infrastructure for the Taliban. Indeed, the real problem is not at the Pakistani frontiers with Afghanistan (and India). Rather it is the sanctuaries deep inside Pakistan that continue to breed and export terrorism.

The U.S. military cannot directly achieve in Afghanistan what high-pressure American diplomacy can deliver on that front through Pakistan. As previous U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley pointed out days before Mr. Obama assumed the presidency, “You can’t really solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan.”

At a time when Pakistan’s solvency depends on continued U.S. aid flow and American-backed multilateral credit line, Washington has greater leverage than ever before. Without a fundamental shift in U.S. policy on Pakistan and recognition that the path to success in Afghanistan lies through Pakistan, Holbrooke’s “very difficult assignment” will end in failure, even as the surge deepens the military quagmire in Afghanistan.

(Brahma Chellaney is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.)

The Bush wreckage

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Chellaney

LEADERSHIP AND LEGITIMACY

Foreign voices on Washington’s performance, past and future

How did the Bush administration affect them and their countries? And what are their hopes for the new administration?

Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2009

Last week, a Times editorial series explored the extent to which U.S. leadership in the world suffered during the last eight years and what steps a new president should take to repair it. In conjunction with those editorials, The Times asked a variety of people around the world to answer two questions: How did the foreign policy of the Bush administration affect them and their countries? And what are their hopes for the new administration? What follows are edited transcripts of their answers.

Brahma Chellaney
New Delhi

The public perception in India is that Bush has had a real positive impact in the transformation of U.S.-India relations, which is true. But he leaves wreckage stretching from Iran to Pakistan to Afghanistan that will cost India dearly. The entire region, because of the Bush doctrine, is now a contiguous arc of volatility. This will exact a heavy cost regionally and internally. The attack on Mumbai that India suffered is one such follow-up cost from the mess Bush leaves. Personally, I feel great relief at his departure. He has caused such damage to U.S. interests, it will take a long time to recover. Taking over will not be easy. The economy is in shambles; you have two raging wars. I wish Obama all the luck.

The new president needs to have more engagement with Iran. He needs to bear in mind that the surge he has planned for Afghanistan comes too late in the day. Seven years of military intervention has created a Pashtun backlash. The U.S.-India relationship is set to grow closer no matter who’s in the White House; the problem is with the countries around India. In addition to Pakistan, you see the isolation of Burma [Myanmar]. Laura Bush’s obsession has only pushed Burma into China’s lap. I hope Obama’s foreign policy on China doesn’t brush human rights under the rug, as Bush did. Bush showed up at the Beijing Olympics as though nothing had happened. I hope Obama’s stance is more principled. A principled stand sets a standard for everyone.

— Chellaney is a strategic affairs specialist at the Center for Policy Research.

Se acabaron los tiempos en que Estados Unidos podía fijar la agenda internacional

Posted on January 17, 2009 by Chellaney

Nueva era en la Casa Blanca Opinión

El cambio que necesitamos

Brahma Chellaney – 17/01/2009 La Vanguardia

Los actuales desafíos y cambios de poder globales simbolizan el difícil alumbramiento de un nuevo orden mundial: es ineludible impulsar reformas institucionales de gran alcance. El cataclismo financiero global provocado por Estados Unidos es sólo la última señal visible de que el mundo se halla en un momento decisivo de su historia, rodeado de retos multifacéticos y cambios sustanciales que personifican el alumbramiento de un nuevo orden global. El mundo ha cambiado esencialmente en los dos últimos decenios. Dado el ritmo de cambio político, económico y tecnológico, los próximos veinte años aportarán posiblemente cambios de envergadura igualmente espectacular. Sin embargo, las estructuras institucionales de alcance global han permanecido prácticamente inmutables desde mediados del siglo XX.

El mundo no puede seguir agobiado bajo el fardo de instituciones obsoletas e ineficaces, circunstancia que a su vez demanda reformas institucionales de gran alcance en lugar de las iniciativas tímidas y esporádicas que hemos visto hasta ahora, dirigidas casi siempre a articular fórmulas para improvisar y tratar de ganar tiempo y posponer auténticas reformas.

Un ejemplo clásico al respecto es la iniciativa del G-8 relativa a países emergentes, más bien un gesto de cara a la galería. Peor ha sido la cumbre del grupo de los 20 (de magras reformas), cuyo anfitrión, un presidente fracasado, será recordado por haber tornado el mundo más inestable, inseguro y dividido merced a una doctrina que ha defendido la actuación preventiva ante la diplomacia, en un intento de dar validez a la tesis de Otto von Bismarck de que "las grandes cuestiones de nuestro tiempo no se deciden mediante discursos y acuerdos por mayoría, sino a sangre y hierro". Los errores de George W. Bush acabaron por provocar la caída del poder blando y desencadenar una fuerte reacción interna que ha impelido la elección del primer presidente afroamericano.

Pero al tiempo que Barack Obama es símbolo de esperanza para muchas personas en el mundo, también hereda problemas de proporciones históricas en un momento en que Estados Unidos – atascado en dos guerras y zarandeado en medio de una crisis financiera que acusa los efectos de la mayor debilidad económica de Estados Unidos en 25 años y un déficit federal que se aproxima a un billón de dólares-ya no puede influir por su cuenta en el curso global de los acontecimientos. Obama, en una palabra, no puede satisfacer todas las elevadas expectativas que el mundo tiene depositadas en él. Al fin y al cabo, no está en las manos de un nuevo presidente detener el ritmo y avance de los cambios de poder a escala global. Se acabaron los tiempos en que Estados Unidos podía fijar la agenda internacional con o sin sus aliados tradicionales.

El verdadero desafío planteado a Obama se cifra en ayudar a liderar la transición estadounidense hacia el nuevo orden mundial, adhiriéndose en todo momento a la idea del cambio y el impulso a las reformas institucionales en el plano internacional.

La actual extensión global del contagio financiero habría podido contenerse en caso de haberse reparado el averiado sistema de Bretton Woods. Confiemos en que no precisemos que se produzca una importante crisis sostenida para que se trague una institución internacional antes de que haya podido reformarse. Algunas instituciones pueden haber sobrepasado el dintel de su posible reparación, de modo que su única opción viable sea su desaparición o sustitución. En todo caso, aun en medio de la peor crisis financiera desde la gran depresión de los años treinta, sólo se habla de reformas, pero no llega a apreciarse un auténtico impulso en favor de una nueva arquitectura financiera.

Las instituciones existentes brotaron de los conflictos y de la guerra, en onda con lo que Winston Churchill dijo una vez: "La historia de la raza humana se cifra en la guerra". No obstante, los cambios del poder son actualmente impulsados no por triunfos militares o realineamientos políticos, sino por un factor característico y peculiar del mundo contemporáneo, el rápido crecimiento económico.

Aunque el achacoso orden internacional emergió de las ruinas de una guerra mundial, su reemplazo debe construirse en el seno de una era de paz internacional y planificarse, por tanto, para reforzar esa paz. No es una tarea fácil, dada la escasa experiencia de la comunidad internacional en crear o rehacer las instituciones en tiempo de paz.

Las reformas se ven asimismo bloqueadas por intereses arraigados, poco dispuestos a ceder parte de su poder y prerrogativas. En lugar de ayudar a rehacer las instituciones a fin de prepararse para una nueva era, los intereses creados ya advierten contra una posible sobrerreacción y evocan medidas a corto plazo ante las múltiples crisis que afronta el mundo. Pero, sin contar con mayor grado de representación, aptitud y eficiencia, las instituciones existentes corren el riesgo de marchitarse en el pozo de lo intrascendente.

Es posible que algunas, como el Fondo Monetario Internacional, no puedan nunca recuperar su importancia, y además nunca se las eche de menos. Otras, incluidos el G-8 y el Organismo Internacional de la Energía Atómica, solicitan su ampliación, mientras que por ejemplo el Banco Mundial, en caso de refundarse y liberarse del poder de veto predominante de Estados Unidos, podría centrarse en el alivio de la pobreza, especialmente en África,la mayor parte de cuyos residentes viven al margen de la globalización. Dejando aparte los conocimientos geográficos verdaderos o falsos de Sarah Palin sobre Áfricacomo continente o país, lo cierto es que sería muy inapropiado que un presidente estadounidense siguiera la senda de la desatención internacional de África,desatención que China ha intentado alegremente explotar.

Sin embargo, otras instituciones, como las Naciones Unidas, pueden reanimarse mediante amplias reformas. Sus detractores retratan a las Naciones Unidas como un foro donde se habla mucho pero no se hace nada yen donde "ninguna cuestión es demasiado nimia como para no abordarla de forma inacabable". No obstante, sigue siendo la única institución verdaderamente representativa de todos los países del mundo. Su debilidad principal radica en una Asamblea General carente de poder efectivo y una camarilla todopoderosa de cinco miembros del Consejo de la Seguridad que intentan negociar en penumbra y no sin esfuerzo las cuestiones entre sí para aparecer a continuación irremediablemente divididos. Las Naciones Unidas deben cambiar para estar a la altura de la naturaleza internacional de los importantes desafíos actuales. Las reformas deben centrarse en una mayor transparencia y en la adopción democrática de las decisiones. El Consejo de Seguridad no puede ser una excepción. Para ayudar a arrancar su atascado proceso de reformas, sería bueno una abolición general del veto y que en su seno se alcance la adopción de decisiones mediante la mayoría simple de tres cuartos.

B. CHELLANEY, profesor de Estudios Estratégicosdel Centro de Investigación Política de Nueva Delhi
Traducción: JoséMaría Puig de la Bellacasa

Obama’s “surge, bribe and run” strategy for Afghanistan

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Chellaney

An Afghanistan ‘Surge’ Is a Losing Battle

So why is Mr. Obama betting on it?

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY | From Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2009

Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s visit to Afghanistan this month — even before President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration — will underscore the new administration’s priority to ending the war there. But their planned "surge first, then negotiate" strategy isn’t likely to work.

The Obama-Biden team wants to weaken the Taliban militarily then strike a political deal with the enemy from a position of strength. This echoes what the Bush administration did in Iraq, where it used a surge largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni tribal leaders and other local chieftains. Current Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen has already announced a near-doubling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, to up to 63,000, by mid-2009.

Sending more forces into Afghanistan is a losing strategy. The Soviets couldn’t tame the country with more than 100,000 troops. With the backing of Robert Gates, whom Mr. Obama will keep on as defense secretary, Central Command Commander General David Petraeus is thus looking for ways to win over local commanders and warlords — the mainstay of the Taliban. General Petraeus wants to explore truces and alliances with local tribal chieftains and guerrilla leaders and set up lightly trained local militias in every provincial district.

This idea turns a blind eye to the danger that such militias could terrorize local populations. It is also naïve to expect an Iraq-style surge-and-bribe experiment to work in Afghanistan, whose mountainous terrain, myriad tribes, patterns of shifting tribal and ethnic loyalties, special status as the global hub of poppy trade and history of internecine conflict set it apart from any other Muslim country. In a land with a long tradition of humbling foreign armies, payoffs won’t buy peace.

Even if the Obama administration could tame the Taliban enough to get them to the bargaining table, inking a political deal would only strengthen their cause. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba now constitute a difficult-to-separate mix of jihad-spouting soulmates with safe havens in Pakistan. The only difference is that Al Qaeda operates out of mountain caves in the Pakistani-Afghan frontier region while the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba agitate more openly across the borders. A deal with any one such group will only strengthen the global jihadists’ cause.

Mr. Biden contends the U.S. must focus on securing Afghanistan because if it "fails, Pakistan could follow." This is exactly backward. The U.S. can never win in Afghanistan without first dismantling the Pakistani military’s sanctuaries and sustenance infrastructure for the Taliban. The proposed surge could help the already-entrenched Taliban sharpen its claws while strengthening U.S. logistics dependence on the Pakistani military, which fathered that Islamist militia and Lashkar-e-Taiba. As outgoing National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley has pointed out, "You can’t really solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan."

If America is to reclaim the global fight against terror, it must face up to the lessons from its past policies that gave rise to Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammed Omar and "the state within the Pakistani state" — the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, made powerful in the 1980s as a conduit of covert U.S. aid for anti-Soviet Afghan guerrillas. In other words, the U.S. needs to keep the focus on its long-term interests and not be carried away by political expediency. That means encouraging a truly democratic Pakistan that doesn’t support terror groups in any form.

In seeking short-term success, the Obama team is falling prey to a long-standing U.S. policy weakness: The pursuit of narrow objectives without much regard for the security of friends. Perhaps India, America’s strategic partner, could be of help. After all, as the recent Mumbai terrorist assaults show, it’s India that is bearing the brunt of the blowback from failed U.S. policies in the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt. Perhaps New Delhi should be on Mr. Biden’s next travel itinerary.

Mr. Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123143672297764875.html

Why not lend Pakistan a helping hand to self-destruct?

Posted on December 25, 2008 by Chellaney

Explore other options

Brahma Chellaney

DNA newspaper, December 25, 2008

Fundamentalism, extremism and militarism have eaten into the vitals of Pakistan to the extent that it has become a de facto failed nation by Westphalian standards, with the tail (the military establishment) wagging the dog (the state) and with military-reared terror groups and the Taliban operating with impunity. The country’s president, with no control over the national-security apparatus, may be excused for making conflicting and confusing statements since the 67-hour Mumbai terrorist assaults, for he is little more than the mayor of Islamabad, albeit with the pomp and pageantry befitting a head of state. But the military establishment still fomenting terrorism across Pakistan’s borders with India and Afghanistan can hardly be excused. It cannot escape culpability in acts of terror by whipping up war hysteria at home.

It is the terrorist sanctuaries deep inside Pakistan, not just on its borders, that threaten world security, with terror groups enjoying a cozy relationship with “the state within the state” — the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). That may outwardly convey that it is incumbent on the international community to bring the Pakistani military, especially the ISI, to heel or risk the further spread of the scourge of terrorism.

Yet, unless New Delhi is willing to take the lead on countering Pakistan-sponsored terrorism through clear political direction and resolve, the international community is going to offer little more than sympathy to victim India. The only voice of the international community — the United Nations — is in decline, with its Security Council a seat of big-power intrigue. India needs no great power’s approval to defend its security and honour. If India acts on its own and succeeds, it will win international respect.

If it fails, some nations will make a little noise before ignoring the failure. But if it does little more than collect evidence to try and influence those pursuing their own narrow strategic interests, it will invite more Mumbai-style murderous rampages.

For the promotion of its near-term interests in the region, the U.S. continues to prop up the Pakistani military through generous aid and weapon transfers, instead of helping empower the civilian government in Islamabad. Had it supported the bold move of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani last July to bring the ISI under the control of the interior ministry, civilian oversight would have been established over a key terror-harbouring instrument. But by not backing the government, it allowed the Army to frustrate the attempt to bring the ISI under civilian control. The Army, similarly, has refused to hand over control of Pakistan’s nuclear assets to the civilian government. All this has happened despite Gen. Ashfaq Kayani’s professed intent to move the Army away from politics to its core functions.

Still, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declined to take the smallest of small steps against Pakistan even as a token expression of India’s outrage over the Mumbai assaults by 10 terrorists — all from Pakistan’s Punjab province. Instead, he has reposed his faith in the international community, urging it again this week to “use its power to persuade Pakistan” to dismantle its state-reared terror complex.

For India, the options are narrow yet clear. When the seat of official power and the seat of real power are far apart in a rotting state plagued by government atrophy, no effective action can be expected against military-nurtured groups fomenting terrorism against India unless the latter is willing to inflict pain on the real wielders of authority in Pakistan and show beyond doubt that the costs of continuing complicity in transnational terror are unbearably high for them. After all, the terror complex was set up by the Pakistani military to wage a war of a thousand cuts against India, not to dismantle it at the enemy’s bidding or the international community’s urging.

Between the two extremes — inaction and military strikes — are several dozen options for India, including economic and political opportunities against an increasingly vulnerable, near-bankrupt Pakistan. Such options cannot be the subject of a public debate though. Calibrated counteraction not only will demonstrate Indian intent but also help step up pressure on the international community to act.

Also, given the communications intercepts that link the Mumbai attackers to Pakistan-based masterminds and ISI handlers, why not add the name of the ISI head, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to the Indian list of terrorist figures in Pakistan? Pasha cannot feign ignorance about his own agency’s aid to the Laskar-e-Taiba figures who masterminded the Mumbai assaults.

Make no mistake: India will have to fight its own war against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. In essence, that would entail lending Pakistan a helping hand to stay embroiled in growing problems at home, with the hope that an ungovernable state that already is a threat to regional and international security self-destructs.

The writer is an expert on security affairs

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1216472&pageid=0

Supping with the devil

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Chellaney

It Ain’t Working

US should stop propping up the Pakistani military

Brahma Chellaney Times of India December 18, 2008

US aid to Islamabad is now close to $2 billion a year, putting Pakistan on par with Israel and Egypt as the top recipients of American assistance. And on the eve of the Mumbai terrorist assaults, the US persuaded the IMF to hand a near-bankrupt Pakistan an economic lifeline in the form of a $7.6 billion aid package, with no strings attached. Despite such largesse, Pakistan is host to the world’s most-wanted men and the main Al Qaeda sanctuary. Recent polling shows that Osama bin Laden is more popular in Pakistan than ever, even as America’s negative rating there has soared.

Let’s be clear: US policy on Pakistan isn’t working, and unless Washington fundamentally reverses course, it risks losing the war in Afghanistan and making the West an increasing jihadist target, including the scene of Mumbai-style murderous rampages. After all, as the history of terrorism since the 1980s attests, innovative terrorist strikes carried out against Indian targets have later been replicated in the West. That includes attacks on symbols of state authority, the midair bombing of a commercial jetliner and coordinated strikes on a city transportation system.

The jihadists’ logic in employing soft-state India as their laboratory has been that if they can bleed the world’s largest democracy through novel and recurrent attacks, they perfect techniques for application against the tougher free societies in the West. If the terrorists can bring the developing world’s most-successful democratic experiment under siege, with the intent to unravel its secular and pluralistic character, it is only a matter of time before Western societies get similarly besieged. That the tourism ad’s “incredible India” is, in reality, little more than a miserable India — which presents itself as an easy target by merely craving international sympathy as a constant victim — does not detract from the danger that the Mumbai-attack masterminds have set up a model for use elsewhere.

Yet the US response, however positive in the diplomatic realm, has failed to recognize that the Mumbai attacks mark a potent new threat to free societies and that unless the masterminds are brought to justice, such cold-blooded rampages are likely to be carried out in the West. The alacrity with which the American media returned to the India-Pakistan hyphenation in covering the Mumbai assaults betrayed superficiality and old mindsets — a failing compounded by media organizations calling the attackers not terrorists but “militants” (like the New York Times) or “gunmen” (including the Washington Post). Diplomatically, it has been déjà vu — the US exerting pressure and Islamabad staging yet another anti-terrorist charade to deflect that pressure and pre-empt Indian retaliation.

Given the easy manner outlawed terrorist outfits in Pakistan resurface under new names, the US knows well that a ban on any group or temporary detention of a terrorist figure is of little enduring value. More Mumbai-type attacks can be prevented only if the masterminds are identified and put on trial and their sponsors in the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment are, with the help of Europeans, indicted in The Hague for war crimes. Yet, despite a broken Pakistan policy, the US seems reluctant to fix its approach. The reason for that is not hard to seek: US policy remains wedded to the Pakistani institution that reared the forces of jihad — the military.

Indeed, US policy is still governed by a consideration that dates back to the 1950s — treating the Pakistani military as central to the pursuit of American geopolitical objectives. As American scholars Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph have put it, “For roughly 50 years, the US destabilized the South Asia region by acting as an offshore balancer. Its actions allowed Pakistan to realize its goal of ‘parity’ with its much-bigger neighbour and to try to best that neighbour in several wars”. The more recent “de-hyphenation” of India and Pakistan was not a calculated US policy shift but the product of Pakistan’s descent into shambles and India’s notable rise after 1998. Under Bush, US policy simply went from hyphenation to parallelism. That has involved building strategic partnerships with and selling arms to both. For the first time ever, the US is building parallel intelligence-sharing and defence-cooperation arrangements with both.

The war in Afghanistan and the containment strategy against Iran have only reinforced the US dependence on the Pakistani military, despite mountains of intelligence indicating the latter is playing both sides — bolstering the Taliban and other terror groups while pretending to be a counter-terror ally. Instead of helping empower Pakistan’s civilian government to gain full control over the national-security system, including the nuclear establishment and the ISI, US policy acts as a stumbling block by continuing to prop up the Pakistani military through generous aid and weapon transfers, including bombers and submarines of relevance only against India.

For its own sake, Washington has to stop pampering and building up the military as Pakistan’s pivot. By fattening the Pakistani military, America has, however inadvertently, allowed that institution to maintain cosy ties with terror groups. A break from this policy approach would be for the Obama administration to embrace the idea currently being discussed in Washington — condition further aid to the reconfiguration of the Pakistani military to effectively fight terror and to concrete actions to end institutional support to extremism. If not, the US is bound to lose two wars — the one in Afghanistan and the other on transnational terror — while staying mired in Iraq.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

Why the U.S. must change policy course on Pakistan

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Chellaney

Stop pampering Pakistan’s military

The Mumbai attacks underscore the importance of rooting out institutional support for terror

By Brahma Chellaney

Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 2008 edition

The recent Mumbai terrorist assaults underscore the imperative for a major change in American policy on Pakistan – a shift that holds the key to the successful outcome of both the war in Afghanistan and the wider international fight against transnational terror.

First, if the US does not insist on getting to the bottom of who sponsored and executed the attacks in India’s commercial and cultural capital, the Mumbai attacks will probably be repeated in the West. After all, India has served as a laboratory for transnational terrorists, who try out new techniques against Indian targets before seeking to replicate them in other pluralistic states.

Novel strikes first carried out against Indian targets and then perpetrated in the West include attacks on symbols of state authority, the midair bombing of a commercial jetliner, and coordinated strikes on a city transportation system.

By carrying out a series of simultaneous murderous rampages after innovatively arriving by sea, the Mumbai attackers have set up a model for use against other jihadist targets. The manner in which the world was riveted as a band of 10 young terrorists – nearly all from Punjab Province in Pakistan – held India hostage for three days is something jihadists would love to replicate elsewhere.

Second, let’s be clear: The scourge of Pakistani terrorism emanates not so much from the Islamist mullahs as from generals who reared the forces of jihad and fathered the Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group reportedly behind the Mumbai attacks.

Facing growing international pressure to hunt down the Mumbai masterminds, Pakistan’s government raided a militant camp in Kashmir Sunday. Yet civil-military relations in Pakistan are so skewed that the present civilian government is powerless to check the sponsorship of terrorist elements by the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, or even to stop the Army’s meddling in foreign policy. Until civilian officials can stand up to these institutions, Pakistan will neither become a normal state nor cease to be a "Terroristan" for international security.

US policy, however, still props up the Pakistan military through generous aid and weapon transfers. Even as Pakistan has emerged as a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terror, US policy continues to be governed by a consideration dating back to the 1950s. Washington has to stop viewing, and building up, the military as Pakistan’s pivot. By fattening the Pakistani military, America has, however inadvertently, allowed that institution to maintain cozy ties with terrorist groups.

One break from this policy approach would be the idea currently being discussed in Washington – to tie further US aid to a reconfiguration of the Pakistani military to effectively fight militants. The nearly $11 billion in US military aid to Pakistan since 9/11 has been diverted to beef up forces against India. Such diversion, however, is part of a pattern that became conspicuous in the 1980s when the ISI agency siphoned off billions of dollars from the covert CIA assistance meant for anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan.

For too long, Washington has allowed politically expedient considerations to override its long-term interests.

The US must actively encourage the elected leaders in Pakistan to gain full control over all of their country’s national-security apparatus, including the nuclear establishment and ISI. And to forestall a military coup in response to such action, Washington should warn the generals of serious action, including possible indictment in The Hague.

The ISI, a citadel of Islamist sentiment and a key source of support to the Taliban and other terrorist groups supporting jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, should be restructured or disbanded. State-reared terror groups and their splinter cells, some now operating autonomously, have morphed into a hydra.

US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan, like border troops in India, have been trying to stop the inflow of terrorists and arms from Pakistan. The real problem, however, is not at the Pakistani frontiers with Afghanistan and India. Rather it is the terrorist sanctuaries deep inside Pakistan that continue to breed extremism and export terrorism.

Since the economic viability of Pakistan depends on continued US aid as well as on US support for multilateral institutional lending, Washington has the necessary leverage. Further aid should be linked to definitive measures by Pakistan to sever institutional support to extremism. Only when the institutional support for terrorism is irrevocably cut off will the sanctuaries for training, command, control, and supply begin to wither away.

Unless the US reverses course on Pakistan, it will begin losing the war in Afghanistan. While America did make sincere efforts in the aftermath of the Mumbai assaults, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, personally visiting Islamabad to exert pressure, US diplomacy remains limited by Washington’s continuing overreliance on the Pakistani military.

Before the chickens come home to roost, the US pampering of the Pakistani military has to end.

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

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1212/p09s01-coop.html

Toward a new international order

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Chellaney

Tall order in a time of ‘peace’

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Japan Times, December 2, 2008

The U.S.-sparked global financial meltdown is just the latest sign that the world is at a defining moment in history. Given the global ace of political, economic and technological transformation witnessed the last two decades, the next 20 years are likely to bring equally dramatic change.

Yet the world cannot remain saddled with outmoded, ineffective institutions and rules. With the rise of non-Western economic powers and the emergence of nontraditional challenges — from global warming to energy and food crises — the institutional structure and mandate need to advance. That demands far-reaching institutional reforms, not the halfhearted and desultory moves seen thus far, geared mostly at establishing ways to improvise and thereby defer genuine reforms.

A classic case is the Group of Eight’s "outreach" initiative, which brings some emerging economies into a special outer tier designed for show.

Worse was the reform-shorn Group of 20 summit meeting, hosted earlier this month by a lame-duck U.S. president who will be remembered in history for making the world more volatile, unsafe and divided through a doctrine that emphasized pre-emption over diplomacy in a daring bid to validate Otto von Bismarck’s thesis that "The great questions of our time are not decided by speeches and majority decisions . . . but by iron and blood."

George W. Bush’s blunders ended up causing the collapse of U.S. soft power and triggering a domestic backlash that propelled the election of the first African-American as president.

But while Barack Obama is the symbol of hope for many in the world, he inherits problems of historic proportions at a time when the United States — mired in two wars and a financial crisis compounded by the weakest U.S. economy in 25 years and a federal deficit approaching $1 trillion — can no longer influence the global course on its own.

Obama simply cannot live up to the high expectations the world has of him. A new U.S. resident cannot stem the global power shifts. The days are over when the U.S. could set the international agenda with or without its traditional allies.

The real challenge for Obama is to help lead America’s transition to the emerging new world order by sticking to his mantra of change and facilitating international institutional reforms. The evolution of a new rule-based architecture of global governance will jibe well with long-term U.S. interests.

The financial contagion’s current global spread could have been contained and its effects limited had the broken Bretton Woods system been fixed. Hopefully, we won’t need a major sustained crisis to engulf each international institution before it can be reformed. Some institutions already may be beyond repair, making their dissolution or replacement the only viable option. Even amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, there is still only talk of reform, without a real push for a new international financial architecture.

Existing institutions were born of conflict and war. As Winston Churchill once said, "The story of the human race is war." But global power shifts now are being triggered not by military triumphs or geopolitical realignments but by a factor unique to the contemporary world — rapid economic growth.

The speed and scale of Asia’s economic rise has no parallel in world history. Asia’s growing importance in international relations — best illustrated by authoritarian China’s rise as a world power in one generation — signals a systemic shift in the global distribution of power.

While the present ailing international order emerged from the ruins of a world war, its replacement has to be built in an era of international peace and thus designed to reinforce that peace. That is no easy task, given that the world has little experience establishing or remaking institutions in peacetime.

Reform is also being stymied by entrenched interests unwilling to yield some of their power and prerogative. Rather than help recreate institutions for the changed times, vested interests already are cautioning against "over-reaction" and conjuring up short-term fixes for the multiple crises the world confronts. But without being made more representational, fit and efficient, the existing institutions — from the United Nations to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — risk fading into irrelevance.

Some, like the International Monetary Fund, may never regain relevance, and not be missed. Others, including the G8 and International Energy Agency, are crying for membership enlargement, while the World Bank — if recast and freed of the overriding U.S. veto power — could focus on poverty alleviation especially in Africa, most of whose residents live on the margins of globalization.

It will ill-behoove an African-American U.S. president to continue the international neglect of Africa — a neglect China has sought to blithely exploit. Other institutions, such as the U.N., can be revitalized through broad reforms.

Detractors portray the U.N. as a "talk shop" where "no issue is too small to be debated" endlessly. But it remains the only institution truly representative of all nations. Its main weakness is a toothless General Assembly and an all-powerful cabal of five Security Council members, who opaquely seek to first hammer out issues among themselves but of late appear irredeemably split. The U.N. has to change or become increasingly marginalized.

To mesh with the international nature of today’s major challenges and the consensual demands of an interconnected world, reforms in all institutions ought to center on greater transparency and democratic decision-making. The Security Council cannot be an exception.

To help jump-start stalled reforms, those aspiring to be new permanent members would do well to suggest an across-the-board abolition of the veto, to fashion a liberal democratic institution where decisions are arrived at through a simple three-quarters majority rule.

Brahma Chellaney is a professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

The Japan Times: Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2008

Preventing more Mumbai-style murderous rampages

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Chellaney

Break the terrorist siege of India

The Mumbai assaults reveal the new face of terror, and unless the effete Indian leadership wakes up, transnational terrorists are sure to carry out more murderous rampages, writes Brahma Chellaney

Economic Times, November 29, 2008

Just as the blazing World Trade Centre in New York came to symbolize the 9/11 events, television footage of the fire raging in Mumbai’s landmark Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels has laid bare yet newer face of terror. The multiple, simultaneous assaults in Mumbai are just the latest example of how the world’s largest democracy has come under siege from terrorist forces. The attacks are also a bloody reminder to US President-elect Barack Obama that even as he seeks to deal with the financial meltdown, the global war on terror stands derailed, with the scourge of terrorism having spread deeper and wider.

International terrorism threatens the very existence of democratic, secular states. Yet the US occupation of Iraq not only helped fracture the post-9/11 global consensus to fight terror, but also handed a fresh cause to Islamists, giving a new lease of life to Al Qaeda. Obama will need to bring the anti-terror war back on course by building a new international consensus and focusing on rooting out terrorist sanctuaries in the Pakistan-Afghanistan belt — the epicentre of international terror.

It will, of course, require a sustained international campaign to eliminate the forces of jihad that pursue violence as a sanctified tool of religion and a path to redemption. The challenge is also broad: The entire expanse from the Middle East to Southeast Asia is home to Islamist groups and troubled by terrorist violence, posing a serious challenge to international and regional security.

But as the Mumbai strikes show, India — because of its location next to the Pak-Afghan belt and its eyesore status for jihadists as the only real democratic, secular state in the vast arc stretching from Jordan to Malaysia — will stay on the frontlines of global terror. To help unravel the Indian republic, the jihadists have sought to undermine its rising economic strength by repeatedly making its financial capital their target since 1993, choosing to carry out their latest strikes at a time when foreigners already have been heavy sellers of Indian equities.

The strikes — the eighth in a spate of attacks in India in the past five months — were exceptionally brazen and daring, even when viewed against the high level of terrorism now tormenting India. Indeed, since 9/11, the world has not witnessed terrorism on this scale or level of sophistication and coordination. Transnational terrorists, including those tied to Al Qaeda, are waging an open war on India, yet the Indian leadership is unable to declare a war on terror.

The question India needs to ask itself is: Why has it turned into a laboratory for international terrorists, who try out new techniques against Indian targets before seeking to replicate them in other pluralistic states? Innovative strikes first carried out against Indian targets and then perpetrated in the West include attacks on symbols of state authority, midair bombing of a commercial jetliner and coordinated strikes on a city transportation system. Now, jihadists, arriving by boat, have innovatively carried out a series of horrific assaults in Mumbai that are not only unmatched in daring, but also set up a model for imitation elsewhere.

What India needs is a credible counter-terror campaign. But what its harried citizens get after each major terrorist attack are stock platitudes. Empty rhetoric is eating into the vitals of internal security. Indeed, after the government’s ritual condemnation of each attack and the standard promise to defeat terror, India puts the strikes behind it and goes back to what now defines it — partisan politics and scandal. That is, until terror strikes again. Worse, the fight against terror has been increasingly politicized and got linked to communal, electoral and vote-bank considerations.

Combating terror demands at least four different elements — a well-thought-out strategy, effective state instruments to implement that strategy, a credible legal framework to speedily bring terrorists to justice, and unflinching political resolve to stay the course. India is deficient on all four.

Unlike other important victims of terror in the world, India has no published counter-terror doctrine. And a retiring Chief Justice of India was compelled to remind fellow citizens that, “We don’t have the political will to fight terrorism”. Effete leadership, political one-upmanship and an ever-shifting policy approach indeed have spurred on more terrorism. Not a single case of terrorist attack in recent years has been cracked, yet in the ongoing Malegaon bombing probe, the nation has witnessed the bizarre spectacle of authorities deliberately leaking titbits of information on a daily basis.

Terrorists have again exposed the woeful lack of adequate training and preparedness on the part of those tasked to be the first response to terror. The quick and easy manner several high-ranking Mumbai law enforcement officers, including the anti-terrorism squad head, fell to terrorist bullets not only threw the response into disarray, forcing authorities to call out the army, but also revealed police ineptitude.

Against this background, India serves as an exemplar of how not to fight terror. It is extraordinary that a prime minister who embraced the sponsor of terrorism as a partner and set up a joint terror mechanism with it should today allude to Pakistan’s involvement in the Mumbai assaults.

Through its forbearing approach, India has seemingly come to accept terrorist strikes as the products of its unalterable geography or destiny. Its response to the jihadist strategy to inflict death by a thousand cuts has been survival by a thousand bandages. Just as it has come to brook a high level of political corruption, it is willing to put up with a high incidence of terrorism.

Turning this appalling situation around demands a new mindset that will not allow India to be continually gored. That in turn means a readiness to forge a bipartisan consensus to do whatever is necessary to break the terrorist siege of the country. What is needed is a new brand of post-partisan politics, coupled with the political will and vision to combat terror, or else Mumbai-style murderous rampages would be executed elsewhere in India.

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

Will Obama help renew America’s soft power?

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Chellaney

Obama represents welcome change for India

Reuters November 14, 2008

Columnist Brahma Chellaney says in keeping with Obama’s personality, change under him will be cautious, calibrated and incremental, but packaged to convey a clean break from the Bush era.

(Brahma Chellaney is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own.)

By Brahma Chellaney

Saddled with problems of historic proportions, U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has little time to savour his epochal victory. He is inheriting national and global challenges more formidable than any an American president has faced at inauguration. The necessity to clean up the unprecedented mess that occurred on President George W. Bush’s watch crimps Obama’s ability to pursue major new initiatives.

For the next one year and more, Obama will be preoccupied with finding ways to extricate the U.S. from the economic recessionary trends at home and the military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In addition, he has to devise more-workable American policies on Russia, Iran and North Korea, re-engage the U.S. in finding an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, and help nuclear-armed but quasi-failed Pakistan pull back from the brink of collapse.

The team Obama assembles will reveal the kind of leadership and change the world can expect. But it won’t be easy for him to live up to the high expectations that the world has of him.

For India, an America that returns to playing a mainstream international role and renews its ability to inspire and lead is better than the rogue superpower that the Bush presidency helped create.

The abdication of American values was symbolized by Bush’s establishment of the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the revealed network of illegal CIA detention camps elsewhere.

That helped undermine America’s real strength – its ability to inspire and lead. The U.S., after all, won the Cold War not by military means but by spreading the ideas of freedom, open markets and better life that helped drain the lifeblood from communism’s international appeal.

During the Bush presidency, India’s external security environment deteriorated. Thanks to the Bush Doctrine, an arc of contiguous volatility now lies to India’s west, stretching from Pakistan to Lebanon. The war on terror that Bush launched stands derailed, even as the level of trans-national terrorism emanating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan belt has escalated.

The core tenets of the Bush Doctrine were fourfold: the U.S. should pursue pre-emptive strikes where necessary; it should be willing to act unilaterally – alone or with a “coalition of the willing” – if it cannot win the United Nations’ sanction; the primary focus should be on politically transforming the Middle East; and Iraq ought to be the cornerstone in bringing about region-wide democratic change.

When Bush wasn’t chasing pre-emption, he was pushing sanctions. That too had an adverse effect on India’s regional interests. Take Burma and Iran.

In his nearly eight years in office, Bush has signed more punitive executive orders against Burma than against any other country. It is as if impoverished, inwardly focused Burma threatens regional or international security.

The blunt truth is that the Bush approach only helped strengthen the Burmese military junta despite popular discontent. In fact, to India’s detriment, it helped push Burma into China’s strategic lap.

India has also lost out to China in Burma on the energy front. After China torpedoed an early 2007 U.S.-led attempt to impose a Security Council diktat on Burma to improve its human-rights record, the junta thanked Beijing by first withdrawing the status of India’s GAIL company as the “preferential buyer” of gas from the offshore A-1 and A-3 fields and then signing a production-sharing contract with China’s CNPC.

For India, this was a discomforting diplomatic setback because the A-1 and A-3 blocks are partly owned by two Indian state-run companies.

Similarly, Bush’s sanctions approach against Iran has failed to either dislodge the clerical regime there or make Tehran fall in line on the nuclear front. But with the Bush administration ratcheting up tensions with Iran, the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project proposal has turned into a geopolitical nightmare for New Delhi, which has faced intense U.S. pressure to side with Washington’s international campaign against Tehran.

The net result has been that India’s relations with Iran have come under strain. Seeking to subtly punish India for its two votes against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board, Tehran has gone back on the terms of a deal to supply 5 million tonnes of liquefied national gas (LNG) annually to India for 25 years from 2009.

Even while waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush had wanted to militarily take on Iran – a confrontation that would have had a cascading effect on the Indian economy by disrupting oil imports.

Yet, underlining how power respects power, Bush mollycoddled the world’s longest-surviving autocracy in China, to the extent that he ignored the brutal suppression of the Tibetan uprising earlier in the year and showed up at the Beijing Olympics in August.

In place of the blustering and blundering Bush, Obama will be a welcome change for India. In keeping with his personality, change under Obama will be cautious, calibrated and incremental, but packaged to convey a clean break from the Bush era.

Yet, there is concern in some quarters in India that Obama may appoint a special envoy on Kashmir and mount non-proliferation pressures on New Delhi.

Such concern has been articulated in particular by Indian neoconservatives (“neocons”), who are feeling orphaned with the end of the Bush era and conjuring up visions of U.S. activism even before Obama has set up his foreign-policy team.

After the vaunted Indo-U.S. nuclear deal – which tethers India firmly to the U.S.-led international non-proliferation regime – there isn’t much non-proliferation room to keep badgering New Delhi.

The deal was a bipartisan U.S. product, with Obama himself contributing to tightening its terms by successfully inserting two legislative amendments – one of which restricts India’s uranium imports to “reasonable reactor operating requirements”, while the other seeks to deter Indian testing by threatening a U.S.-led international nuclear-trade embargo.

As for Kashmir, the truth is that, from Harry Truman to Bush, U.S. presidents have tried to pitchfork themselves as peacemakers between India and Pakistan to help advance American interests.

It was the Bush White House, for example, that helped set up the 2001 Agra summit meeting between then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revealing its dates before New Delhi and Islamabad had a chance to get their act together.

The question is: Why should India be defensive on Kashmir? Is it the terror-exporting irredentist party seeking to redraw frontiers in blood? Even if a special U.S. envoy is appointed, what can he seek that India has not already offered under current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – from making frontiers “meaningless and irrelevant” so as to create a “borderless” Kashmir, to the “sky is the limit” in negotiations?

Indian interests demand a new U.S. approach on subjects ranging from the challenges in India’s troubled neighbourhood to the global climate crisis. That is exactly what the political change in Washington promises.

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

Stagecraft and Statecraft

Category Archives: International Security