Obama’s “Af-Pak” problem

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Chellaney

La estrategia afgana de Obama

Por Brahma Chellaney, profesor de Estudios Estratégicosen el Centro para la Investigación Política de Nueva Delhi

LA VANGUARDIA, February 7, 2009

La estrategia del presidente Barack Obama para Afganistán se centra en una “escalada” de las fuerzas estadounidenses, no para derrotar a los talibanes en el terreno militar, sino para llegar a un acuerdo político con el enemigo desde una posición de fuerza. Dicho de modo sencillo, intenta lograr en Afganistán lo que ha hecho el gobierno de Bush en Iraq, donde la “escalada” se utilizó en buena medida como demostración de fuerza para comprar a los dirigentes tribales y a otros caudillos locales suníes. Sin embargo, no es probable que esta estrategia funcione en Afganistán.

En consonancia con la promesa electoral de Obama de enviar más brigadas de combate a Afganistán, el almirante Michael Mullen, portavoz del Estado Mayor Conjunto, ha anunciado la práctica duplicación de los soldados de aquí al verano. Hay ya unos 33.000 soldados estadounidenses y otros 35.000 de las fuerzas aliadas. Sin embargo, la cuestión no es el número de efectivos (los soviéticos no pudieron doblegar a los afganos ni siquiera con 100.000 soldados), sino la estrategia. Obama ha expresado su confianza en el nuevo jefe del Centcom, el general David Petraeus, quien busca formas de ganarse a los jefes y caudillos locales, el puntal de los talibanes. Petraeus quiere explorar treguas y alianzas con los líderes tribales y guerrilleros para sacarlos del campo de batalla.

Eso es justo lo que hizo como jefe militar en Iraq durante la “escalada”, y se trata de una estrategia que cuenta con el pleno apoyo de Robert Gates, que sigue bajo Obama como secretario de Defensa. El plan “primero escalada, luego negociación” tiene como objetivo afianzar la seguridad en las ciudades afganas con la llegada de nuevas tropas estadounidenses como paso previo al inicio de las conversaciones con los talibanes.

Para que esas negociaciones tengan éxito, EE. UU. pretende arrinconar primero a los talibanes, lo cual incluye copiar otro aspecto de su experimento en Iraq (donde se ha presionado a más de 100.000 insurgentes suníes para que se pongan al servicio del Gobierno) y crear en todos los distritos provinciales afganos unas milicias locales con una pequeña formación. Estas medidas omiten el peligro que podría suponer que esas milicias se erijan ellas mismas en la ley y aterroricen a las poblaciones locales.

Si la nueva insurgencia talibán se encuentra ahora a la ofensiva (el 2008 ha resultado ser el peor año para los estadounidenses), ello se debe ante todo a dos razones: el respaldo que los talibanes aún obtienen de Pakistán y una creciente reacción pastún contra una presencia de las tropas extranjeras en suelo afgano que dura ya siete años. Una escalada de las tropas estadounidenses no forzará a los jefes talibanes ni a los caudillos locales a negociar acuerdos de paz; sobre todo, cuando algunos de los países con tropas en Afganistán dan señales de fatiga de guerra y de un deseo de retirar sus tropas. En todo caso, la presión se ejercerá sobre el Gobierno de Obama para que presente resultados rápidos en un momento en que retrocede el apoyo popular afgano a la guerra.

En realidad, sería ingenuo esperar un éxito del experimento iraquí de “escalada y soborno” en Afganistán, donde el terreno montañoso, la multitud y diversidad de las tribus, las pautas de cambios en las lealtades étnicas y tribales, la posición especial como centro mundial del tráfico de opio y una historia de conflicto civil intestino hacen que ese país sea muy diferente de cualquier otro país musulmán. En una tierra con una tradición tan larga de humillación de los ejércitos extranjeros, los sobornos no comprarán la paz. Pero Petraeus quiere idear una versión del siglo XXI de la estrategia imperial del divide y conquistarás. Si hay algo seguro es que su plan ayudará a los ya enquistados talibanes a afilar sus uñas.

Sin embargo, para contribuir a justificar la estrategia de “escalada y soborno”, se está difundiendo una engañosa distinción entre Al Qaeda y los talibanes que dibuja a la primera como el mismo diablo y a los segundos como una fuerza diferente con la que habría que lograr un compromiso. La cruda realidad es que Al Qaeda y las organizaciones respaldadas por los militares pakistaníes (como los talibanes, Laskar-e-Taiba y Jaish-e-Muhammad) constituyen hoy una mezcla difícil de separar de propagadores de la yihad con refugios seguros en Pakistán. El acuerdo con cualquiera de esos grupos sólo contribuirá a reforzar la comunidad de la yihad mundial y el conglomerado militar pakistaní.

Dadas estas circunstancias, sólo cabe considerar la estrategia de “escalada y soborno” como un enfoque miope que repetirá los errores cometidos por EE. UU. en las últimas tres décadas en Afganistán y Pakistán, unos errores que han puesto en peligro la seguridad estadounidense y la del resto del mundo libre.

Si Estados Unidos quiere reivindicar la lucha mundial contra el terrorismo, tendrá que enfrentarse a las lecciones de sus políticas pasadas, creadoras de monstruos de Frankenstein como Osama bin Laden y el mulá Mohamed Omar, así como al “Estado dentro del Estado pakistaní” (la Dirección de Inteligencia Interservicios, ISI, que adquirió gran poder en la década de 1980 como conducto encubierto de la ayuda estadounidense a las guerrillas afganas antisoviéticas).

La principal lección es no desviar la atención de los intereses a largo plazo y no dejarse llevar por la conveniencia política. Sin embargo, Washington arde otra vez en deseos de conceder primacía a las consideraciones cortoplacistas.

Aun cuando el Gobierno de Obama lograra reducir la violencia en Afganistán llegando a acuerdos, ello dejaría intactos a los talibanes como fuerza de combate, con activos vínculos con los militares pakistaníes. Semejante beneficio táctico tendrá graves costes a largo plazo para la seguridad regional e internacional.

Revitalizing global counterterrorism

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Chellaney

The Threat is Common

Brahma Chellaney

The Times of India, February 6, 2009

HERZLIYA (Israel): In the face of a spreading jihad culture, President Barack Obama has ended America’s global “war” on terror as dramatically and unaccountably as his predecessor had initiated it. With the stroke of his pen, Obama has effectively terminated the war on terror that George W. Bush had launched to defeat terrorists who, he said, wanted to “establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia”.

The asymmetric weapon of terrorism is a lethal one. Dealing with such unconventional warfare remains a central theme in international discourse, as at Israel’s Herzliya Conference involving participants from the highest levels of government, business and academia. But the blunt truth is that the war on terror stood derailed long before Obama took office. The US occupation of Iraq proved so divisive in international relations that it fractured the post-9/11 global consensus to fight terror. Guantánamo, CIA’s secret overseas prisons and the torture of detainees, including through waterboarding, came to symbolize the excesses of the war on terror.

The abrupt end of the war on terror thus means little. With Iraq and Afghanistan searing his presidency, Bush himself had given up the pretence of waging a global war on terror — a war he had once equated with the Cold War struggle against communism. In fact, ever since Bush declared his war on terror, the scourge of transnational terrorism has spread deeper and wider in the world. The war’s only outcome has been that it enabled the Bush administration to set up new U.S. military arrangements extending from the Caspian Sea basin to Southeast Asia.

Not calling it a war any longer but labelling it a “struggle” or “strategic challenge” doesn’t change the grim realities. Secular, pluralistic states have come under varying pressures, depending on their location, from the forces of terror. After all, vulnerability to terrorist attacks is critically linked to a state’s external neighbourhood. A democracy geographically distant from the Muslim world tends to be less vulnerable to frequent terrorist strikes than a democracy proximate to Islamic states. The luxury of geography of Australia and the U.S. contrasts starkly with the tyranny of geography of India and Israel. It is such realities that no change of lexicon can address.

Still, Obama is right in saying “the language we use matters”. He has been wise to reach out to the Muslim world and to start undoing some of the excesses of the Bush years. The international fight against terrorism will be a long, hard slog. After all, the problem and solution are linked: Terrorism not only threatens the free, secular world, but also springs from the rejection of democratic and secular values. Worse, terrorism is pursued as a sanctified tool of religion and a path to redemption. Thus, the struggle against transnational terror can be won only by inculcating a liberal, secular ethos in societies steeped in religious and political bigotry.

In that light, the with-us-or-against-us terminology and use of offensive terms like “Islamofascism” were counterproductive. Counter-terrorism is not a struggle against any religion but against those that misuse and misappropriate religion. The need is to reach out to Muslim moderates through correct idiom, not to unite the Muslim world through provocative language. Obama’s gentler, subtler tone no doubt will help. But such a tone can be sustained only if the US continues to be free of any terrorist attack, as it has been for more than seven years. If a terrorist strike occurs in the US on Obama’s watch, the president will come under intense attack for dismantling tools that had successfully shielded that country for long

Having appointed a special envoy for each of the two regions central to the global fight against terrorism — the Pakistan-Afghanistan belt and the Middle East — Obama is likely to discover that ending the war on terror was the easy part. In fact, at a time when America’s challenges have been underscored by a deep economic recession, increasing reliance on capital inflows from authoritarian China and jihad-bankrolling Saudi Arabia, two overseas wars and eroding global influence, Obama has already started redefining US anti-terror objectives more narrowly. His defence secretary has given the clearest indication yet that the new administration will seek to regionally contain terrorism rather than defeat it.

While outwardly the US looks set to pursue a military strategy in Afghanistan and a political approach toward Pakistan, in reality its troop surge in Afghanistan is intended to cut a political deal with the Taliban from a position of strength. According to Robert Gates, US objectives have been “too broad and too far into the future” and the new scaled-back goal is “to keep Afghanistan from becoming a base for Al Qaida attacks on the US”. There isn’t enough “time, patience or money”, in his words, to pursue ambitious goals there. Washington’s proposal to triple non-military aid to Islamabad while keeping existing military-aid flow intact, other than to tie it to concrete Pakistani cooperation on the Afghan front, will free Pakistan to continue its asymmetric war of terror against India.

The jarring US intent to focus on preventing attacks against America by regionally confining terrorism means that democracies with uncongenial neighbourhoods, like India and Israel, will bear the brunt of escalating terrorism.

The writer is professor, Centre for Policy Research.

The Pak-Afghan threat to regional and international security

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Chellaney

Key to Afghanistan: Pakistan

Brahma Chellaney

Washington Times, February 1, 2009

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 Pakistani-Afghan belt has turned into a festering threat to international peace and security, and Richard Holbrooke has described his new role as a "very difficult assignment."

Mr. Obama is right to emphasize an integrated U.S. strategy toward 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 break its close nexus with the Taliban. Toward that end, Mr. Obama is set to more than triple nonmilitary aid to a near-bankrupt Pakistan, already one of the three largest recipients of U.S. assistance but with the military aid currently 3 times larger than the economic aid.

The latest surge, oddly, is intended for a nonmilitary mission – to strike a political deal with the Taliban from a position of strength. That is why Defense Secretary Robert Gates, scaling down U.S. objectives he said were "too broad and too far into the future," told Congress this week 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 of U.S. troops was used largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni leaders and other local chieftains. But Iraq-style payoffs have little chance of creating 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. Proceeds from the $300-million-a-year drug trade, routed through Pakistani territory, fund the Taliban and several Pakistan-based terror groups.

When the newly elected 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. Similarly, despite the risk that Pakistan could slide from narco-terrorism to nuclear terrorism, Washington prefers continued military control over the Pakistani nuclear arsenal through the National Command Authority because the general who heads that body is vetted by the Pentagon and 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 United States is to unveil a huge jump in nonmilitary aid to Islamabad under the pending bill, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, which Mr. Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Mrs. Clinton co-sponsored last July with eight other senators.

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. Pakistani generals haughtily believe the United States needs them more than Pakistan needs America.

Indeed, it would be naive to expect the Pakistani army and ISI to be brought to heel through a mere restructuring of the U.S. aid program. For the Pakistani military, the Taliban and other militant groups remain not just useful surrogates, but force multipliers vis-a-vis Afghanistan and India.

At a time when Pakistan’s solvency depends on continued U.S. aid and an American-backed multilateral credit line, Washington has greater leverage than ever. Yet, greater U.S. largess to help stabilize Pakistan is to run parallel to the surge-and-bribe endeavor in Afghanistan, with greenbacks serving as a common lubricant. The strategy suggests the United States is now seeking not to defeat but to contain terrorism in the region.

Without a fundamental break from failed U.S. policies and recognition that the path to success in Afghanistan lies through Pakistan, Mr. Holbrooke’s "very difficult assignment" will end in failure, even as the surge deepens the military quagmire in Afghanistan.

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."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/01/key-to-afghanistan-pakistan/

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.)

Dealing with the epicenter of global terrorism

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Chellaney

Pakistan key to Afghan war

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Japan Times

U.S. President Barack Obama is right to talk about "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan" and the need to evolve an integrated U.S. strategy toward these two closely tied countries. But even as he has embarked on some major steps, his evolving strategy does not suggest a meaningful integration.

While pursuing a large "surge" of U.S. forces in Afghanistan without clarity on the precise nature and length of the military mission, Obama is seeking to do, albeit in more subtle ways, what U.S. policy has traditionally done vis-a-vis Pakistan — prop up that state.

Obama’s priority is to prevent Pakistan’s financial collapse while getting the Pakistani military to break its close nexus with the Taliban. Toward that end, Obama is set to more than triple nonmilitary 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 more than 100,000 troops, couldn’t pacify that country, whose mountainous terrain and entrenched antipathy to foreign intervention have historically made it "the graveyard of empires."

More troubling is the fact that Obama’s planned near-doubling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by summer to almost 64,000 is intended for a nonmilitary mission — to strike a political deal with the Taliban from a position of strength.

All in all, Obama’s strategy on Pakistan and Afghanistan signals subtle shifts but no fundamental break with failed U.S. policies, thus raising the specter of regional and international security coming under greater pressure.

Ironically, Obama has set out to do in Afghanistan what his much-despised predecessor did in Iraq, where a surge of U.S. troops was used largely as a show of force to buy off Sunni tribal leaders and other local chieftains. But Iraq-style payoffs have little chance of creating a stable, more peaceful Afghanistan, even if deals struck with local Taliban commanders yield short-term gains in assorted territorial pockets.

Unlike Iraq, which has had a middle class and a high level of literacy, Afghanistan is still basically a tribal society and plagued by corruption.

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. An estimated 92 percent of the world’s opium supply is from Afghanistan.

Proceeds from the $300-million-a-year drug trade, routed through Pakistani territory, fund the Taliban and several Pakistan-based terror groups, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-i-Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Maktab al-Khidamat and Hizb ul-Tahrir.

Pakistan is also the main sanctuary of al-Qaida. But while Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida 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 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry stated, "a single country has become ground zero for the terrorist threat we face. The consensus among our intelligence agencies is that top al-Qaida leaders are plotting their next attack from Pakistan, where the prevalence of religious extremists and nuclear weapons make that country the central, crucial front in our struggle to protect America from terrorism."

Unless its jihad culture is unraveled, there is a potent risk of Pakistan sliding from narco-terrorism to nuclear terrorism. Diminishing that risk demands that the fledgling Pakistani civilian government be encouraged by the U.S. to assert 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, Obama identified Pakistan as the critical front 15 months ago when he publicly advocated direct U.S. action there, including hot pursuit from Afghanistan into Pakistani territory, if Pakistani security forces failed to play their role. It is thus little surprise that as president, Obama has continued one of the Bush administration policies: allowing CIA missile strikes on terrorist hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

But it will be difficult for Obama 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 like CENTO and SEATO in the 1950s, 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. CIA-ISI ties are still cozy.

Tellingly, when the Pakistani government attempted in July to bring the ISI under civilian control, Washington did not come to its support, thus allowing the army to frustrate that move. Instead, the U.S. has tried to convey that the ISI is in the midst of being revamped and that its ranks are being purged of jihadists — a story Washington has repeated almost every year or two since 9/11.

Similarly, Washington seems to prefer the present 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 CIA. Still, some shifts in U.S. policy are now under way. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged during her Senate confirmation hearing that the new administration would "condition" future U.S. military aid to concrete Pakistani steps to evict foreign fighters and shut down the Taliban and al-Qaida sanctuaries. She also warned that those in Pakistan who refuse to fall in line would pay a price.

In fact, Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Clinton, as senators, had sponsored a bill in July that proposed that more U.S. aid be channeled to Pakistan for humanitarian and development needs, including the promotion of political pluralism, the rule of law, human and civil rights, education, public health and agriculture. The bill also sought to tie future U.S. weapons sales to a certification by the secretary of state to Congress that the Pakistani military was making "concerted efforts" to undermine al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The Obama administration is now pushing for the early passage of that still-pending bill, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act. But it will be naive to expect the Pakistani military to be brought to heel through a restructuring of the aid program alone. For the military, the Taliban and other militant groups remain useful surrogates.

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 asymmetrical warfare on the east against India. The U.S. has sought to reduce its logistics dependence on the Pakistani military. But given the troop surge, the new land-transit deals with Russia and Central Asian states will not significantly cut America’s dependence on Pakistan, through which three-quarters of U.S. war supplies go to Afghanistan.

More fundamentally, there is no indication Obama intends to abandon the long-standing U.S. pampering of the Pakistani military.

While championing a huge increase in nonmilitary assistance to Pakistan, he has thus far signaled no intent to slash the generous military aid flow other than to tie it to specific goals. Also, his administration is still not clear whether Afghanistan or Pakistan should be its priority No. 1.

Biden, an early supporter of a surge in Afghanistan, has contended for a year now that the U.S. must focus on securing Afghanistan because "if Afghanistan fails, Pakistan could follow." He is wrong.

With the U.S. military intervention now more than seven years old, the time when a surge could work has already passed. More importantly, the U.S. can never win in Afghanistan without first dismantling the Pakistani military’s sanctuaries and sustenance infrastructure for the Taliban. But 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 extremism and export terrorism.

Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s newly appointed "special representative" to Afghanistan, warned in a March 2008 Op-Ed that: "The conflict in Afghanistan will be far more costly and much, much longer than Americans realize. This war, already in its seventh year, will eventually become the longest in American history, surpassing even Vietnam."

He went on to ask: "Will short-term success create a long-term trap for the United States and its allies, as the war becomes the longest in American history?"

But the analysis also underlined his mistaken belief that the Afghanistan conflict is rooted entirely in internal factors: Massive, "officially sanctioned corruption and the drug trade are the most serious problems the country faces, and they offer the Taliban its only exploitable opportunity to gain support."

The U.S. military cannot directly achieve in Afghanistan what high-pressure American diplomacy can deliver on that front through Pakistan. As Bush administration national security adviser Stephen Hadley pointed out days before Obama assumed the presidency, "You can’t really solve Afghanistan without solving Pakistan." Even Kerry, after returning from a January tour of the region with Biden, has acknowledged that "Pakistan is the strategic center of gravity for defeating insurgents in Afghanistan."

At a time when Pakistan’s solvency depends on continued U.S. aid flow as well as on American support for securing international credit extending beyond the recent $7.6 billion International Monetary Fund bailout package, Washington has greater leverage than ever before.

Without a fundamental shift in U.S. policy on Pakistan and recognition in Washington that the path to success in Afghanistan lies through Pakistan, Holbrooke’s very difficult assignment will end in failure, even as the troop surge deepens the military quagmire in Afghanistan.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is a regular contributor to The Japan Times.

The Japan Times: Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009

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.

Incredible India turns 59

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Chellaney

Incredulous !ndia

Brahma Chellaney

Hindustan Times, January 27, 2009

The Indian republic is now a mature 59-year-old. Whether it is a world power in the making or just a large subcontinental state with global-power pretensions is a moot question. What is beyond dispute is that India, home to more than one-sixth of the human race, continues to punch far below its weight. Internationally, it is a rule-taker, not a rule-maker.

Among India’s strengths is that it has a long, historical record of being a great power and of playing a mainstream, cooperative role in international relations. In 1820, at the advent of the industrial revolution, India and China alone made up nearly half of the world income. But by the time India emerged as a republic, its share of global GDP had shrunk to a mere 3.8 per cent.

Another one of India’s strengths is that it symbolizes unity in diversity. It is the most diverse country in the world. Indeed, it is more linguistically, ethnically and religiously diverse than the whole of Europe. India is where old traditions go hand-in-hand with post-modernity. More importantly, India has shown that unlike the traditionally homogenous societies of East Asia, a nation can manage and thrive on diversity.

A third strength is that democracy remains India’s greatest asset. India is the only real democracy in the vast contiguous arc from Jordan to Singapore. While the concepts of democratic freedoms and the rule of law are normally associated with the West, India can claim ancient traditions bestowing respect to such values. Basic freedoms for all formed the lynchpin of the rule in 3rd century BC of Emperor Ashoka who, as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has pointed out, “did not exclude women and slaves as Aristotle did”.

Through forward thinking and a dynamic foreign policy, India — the world’s most-assimilative civilization — can now truly play the role of a bridge between the East and the West, including a link between the competing demands of the developed and developing worlds. But its manifold weaknesses weigh it down. National security remains its most-glaring failing. Put simply, India has failed to heed the principal lesson from an inglorious history of having been raped, plundered and subjugated repeatedly over more than eight centuries — from the forays of Mahmud of Ghazni to the colonial interventions of European powers.

Nowhere is India’s frailty more apparent than on what historically has been its Achilles’ heel: internal security. Wedged in an arc of failing or authoritarian states that seek, in different ways, to unravel its multiethnic, pluralistic character, India confronts a tyranny of geography. As a result, it faces serious threats from virtually all directions. Just as India has been battered by growing trans-border terrorism because of its location next to the global epicentre of terror, its security has come under pressure from its geographical proximity to an overly ambitious China, which trained and armed Naga and Mizo guerrillas long before Pakistan fashioned proxy war as an instrument.

Yet, despite cross-border security challenges now emanating even from Bangladesh and Nepal, India manifests a triple deficit in key aspects of national power — a leadership deficit, a strategic foresight deficit, and a national-security planning deficit. Nothing better illustrates that than the manner in which it has handled the unparalleled Pakistani-scripted amphibious terrorist assaults on its commercial capital two months ago. By firing only empty rhetoric and playing victim once again, it is inviting more Mumbai-style carnages.

The best description of today’s India comes from its tourism ad campaign’s themes, including its ‘Incredible India’ slogan. An ‘incredible’ country that has allowed its national-security challenges to become so acute as to bring the very future of a united, inclusive India under a cloud. A real ‘land of the Buddha’ that has confronted a continuous Pakistan-waged unconventional war since the 1980s but to date is unable to shed his pacifist blinkers, let alone initiate any concrete counteraction to stem a rising existential threat.

A true ‘land of adventure’ that has no articulated national-security strategy, or a defined defence policy, or a declared counterterrorism doctrine, yet is the world’s only large country dependent on other powers to meet basic conventional-defence needs. Although the authoritative Grimmitt report of the Congressional Research Service lists India as the world’s No.1 arms importer during the 2000-2007 period, this ‘incredible’ country has seen its military strength actually erode in the face of such a shopping binge, to the extent that its officials openly doubt that it has the capability to decisively defeat a near-bankrupt Pakistan. It’s clearly a ‘land of the tiger’ where ad hoc, personality-driven actions customarily trump institutionalized, holistic policymaking. A blithe ‘land of festivals’ where the bigger the state failure, the less the republic learns.

In sum, an ‘Incredible India’ that has all the talent, yet displays a paucity of rationality in policy approach. Welcome to the authentic India.

India is incredible in every sense. As if to underscore that, the slogan in the current multimillion-dollar international campaign has an exclamation mark instead of a capital ‘I’ in India. The blunt truth is that India cannot be understood through plain logic. With its spiritual heritage, India transcends earthly reasoning and rationality. Still, if it wishes to be a world power playing a role commensurate with its size, it will have to transform itself from an incredible to credible India.

Brahma Chellaney is a strategic affairs specialist.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=b51befc5-2886-4bf4-bf88-bf65b76d6841&&Headline=Incredulous+!ndia

Chinese naval buildup

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Chellaney

China plays maritime chess

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

Japan Times, January 22, 2009

The start of Chinese patrols in the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden is intended to extend China’s naval role and presence far from its shores while demonstrating, under United Nations rules of engagement, a capability to conduct complex operations in distant waters.

Today, taking on pirates under the placard of internationalism offers China a welcome opportunity to add force to its global power ambitions. The antipiracy plank earlier made it handy for Beijing to agree to joint patrols with Pakistan in the Arabian Sea and extend cooperation to ASEAN. Another Chinese objective is to chip away at India’s maritime dominance in the Indian Ocean — a theater critical to fashioning a Sino-centric Asia. If China can assert naval power in the Indian Ocean to expand its influence over the regional waterways and states, it will emerge as the preeminent Asian power.

The geopolitical importance of the Indian Ocean today is beginning to rival that of the Pacific. Much of the global oil-export supply passes through the Indian Ocean rim region, particularly through two constricted passageways — the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman, and the piracy-plagued Strait of Malacca.

In addition, the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the nuclear standoff with Iran undergird the critical importance of the Indian Ocean region. Asserting naval presence in the Indian Ocean and expanding maritime power in the Pacific are part of the high-stakes game of maritime chess China is now ready to play. Its buildup of naval forces directly challenges Japan and India and impinges on U.S. interests.

China, undergirding its larger geostrategic motives, says it is "seriously considering" adding to its navy fleet a first aircraft carrier — a symbol of "a nation’s comprehensive power," as a military spokesperson put it.

Now, with Chinese President Hu Jintao publicly calling for rapid naval modernization and the last defense White Paper disclosing that "the Navy aims to gradually extend its strategic depth," naval expansion and greater missile prowess are clearly at the core of China’s force modernization. Since 2000 alone, China has built at least 60 warships. Its navy now has a fleet of 860 vessels, including at least 60 submarines.

There is a clear strategic shift under way in China on force planning. Historically a major land power, China is now putting the accent on building long-range maritime power to help underpin geopolitical interests, including winning new allies and safeguarding its energy and economic investments in distant lands. China has been in the lead in avariciously acquiring energy and mineral assets in Sudan, Nigeria, Iran, Venezuela, Burma, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and other states that have a record of showing scant respect for international contracts. Through naval power-projection force capability, Beijing intends to dissuade such states from reasserting control over Chinese-held assets.

More significantly, rising naval power arms China with the heft to pursue mercantilist efforts to lock up long-term energy supplies, assert control over transport routes, and assemble a "string of pearls" in the form of listening posts and special naval-access arrangements along the great trade arteries.

Just as China’s land-combat strategy has evolved from "deep defense" (luring enemy forces into Chinese territory to help garrote them) to "active defense" (a proactive posture designed to fight the enemy on enemy territory, including through the use of forces stationed in neighboring lands or seas), a shift in its sea-warfare posture has emerged, with the emphasis on greater reach and depth and expeditionary capability.

And just as Beijing has used its energy investments in Central Asia as justification to set up at least two offensively configured, armor-heavy mechanized corps — with Xinjiang as their springboard — to fight deep inside adversarial territory and secure strategic assets, China’s growing oil imports from the Persian Gulf and Africa have come handy to rationalize its growing emphasis on the seas.

Chinese naval power is set to grow exponentially. This will become evident as Beijing accelerates its construction of warships and begins to deploy naval assets far from its exclusive economic zone. In fact, Chinese warships inducted in recent years have already been geared for blue-sea fleet operations. China is on track to deploy a fleet of nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (known as SSBNs). It has already developed its new Jin-class (Type 094) SSBN prototype, with satellite pictures showing one such submarine berthed at the huge new Chinese naval base at Sanya, on the southern coast of Hainan Island. Within the next 25 years, China could have more nuclear assets at sea than Russia.

Against that background, it is no surprise that the Chinese Navy is extending its operations to a crucial international passageway — the Indian Ocean. China indeed has aggressively moved in recent years to build ports in the Indian Ocean rim, including in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Burma. Besides eyeing Pakistan’s Chinese-built port of Gwadar as a naval anchor, Beijing has sought naval links with the Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar.

India, with its enormous strategic depth in the Indian Ocean, is in a position to pursue a sea-denial strategy, if it were to adopt a more forward-thinking naval policy designed to forestall the emergence of a Beijing-oriented Asia. It has to start exerting naval power at critical chokepoints, in concert with the Japanese, U.S. and other friendly navies. In essence, that entails guarding the various "gates" to the Indian Ocean. More broadly, Japanese-Indian naval cooperation and collaboration have become inescapable.

Brahma Chellaney, a 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."

The Japan Times: Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009

Pakistan: A Festering Problem For Global Security

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Chellaney

Employ other options

It is still not too late for India to fundamentally change tack in order to make Pakistan verifiably dismantle its military-nurtured terror complex.

Brahma Chellaney

Asian Age, January 28, 2009

Ever since
the Pakistani-scripted Mumbai terrorist assaults, it was clear that diplomacy alone
would not make Pakistan
sever its ties with terror groups, especially if it were not backed by forceful
pressure. Yet New Delhi
chose to fire only empty rhetoric. The external affairs minister has now admitted
that Pakistan remains “in a
state of denial”, while the home minister has characterized Islamabad’s response as: “Zero. What have
they provided? Nothing”.

More than
two months after the attacks, India’s
options are rapidly shrinking. A Rand Corporation report, raising the spectre
of more Mumbai-style carnages, warns: “Pakistan
has likely concluded from the events since the December 2001 attack on the
Indian parliament complex and prior, that India
is unable or unwilling to mount a serious effort to punish and deter Pakistan for
these attacks. Accordingly, from India’s vantage point, to not
respond would signal a lack of Indian resolve or capability”. It is still not too late for India to change
tack.

Let’s be
clear on two key aspects. First, it is naïve to contend that the only
alternative to the present inaction is war. Between these two extremes lie a
hundred different political, economic and diplomatic options — none of which New Delhi has exercised. It
has, for example, not recalled its high commissioner from Islamabad, or suspended the composite
dialogue process, or disbanded the farcical joint anti-terror mechanism, or halted
state-assisted cultural and sporting links, or invoked trade sanctions.

Furthermore, despite the Inter-Services Intelligence
agency’s direct involvement in the Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul
last July and indirect role in the more-recent Mumbai attacks, New
Delhi has neither declared nor urged the U.S. to designate the ISI as a
terrorist organization. Yet by New Delhi’s own account, that rogue Pakistani
agency has a long history of plotting and executing terrorist attacks in India,
including the 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai which killed hundreds of people and the 2006 Mumbai train bombings that left
more than 200 dead. India’s
commercial capital has been repeatedly targeted to undermine the country’s
rising economic power.

New
Delhi
actually has shied away from taking even the smallest of small steps as a
symbolic expression of India’s
outrage. Such glaring inaction does not jibe with the prime minister’s thesis that
“some Pakistani official agencies must have supported” the Mumbai attacks. Nor
does it square with the popular expectation that the attacks would be a tipping
point in India’s
forbearance with Pakistan-fomented terrorism.

Second, even
in the military realm, India
has more than one option against Pakistan. Contrary to the
simplistic belief, there isn’t just one military option — waging war. Mounting
a military attack is at one end of the spectrum and, obviously, can be the
option of only last resort. India
ought to look at a military option that falls short of war.

Often in
interstate relations, as history testifies, a credible threat to use force can
achieve objectives that actual use of force may not help accomplish. But for a
threat of force to deliver desired results, it has to be realistic, sustained
and ceaseless until the adversary has demonstrably conformed to international
norms and rules. Mounting such a threat entails full-scale force mobilization
so that the adversary realizes it will face a decisive military onslaught
unless it complies with the demands. But there can be no credible threat if the
adversary believes — as it did during India’s botched Operation Parakram
in 2002 — that the threat is not backed by the requisite political will to
carry it out.

Furthermore,
given that a credible threat of force demands war-like simulation, the strategy
brought into play has to replicate war scenarios. As modern history attests, the
outcome of any war is crucially shaped by elements other than the
sophistication and range of weaponry. The single most-important factor is
strategy. War can be won by taking an enemy by surprise, or by punching through
a front that the adversary didn’t expect to be the focal point of attack, or
other flanking manoeuvres.

There will
be little surprise element in the present circumstances, given that an all-out troop
mobilization will become known. But the second element — keeping the enemy on
tenterhooks as to which front may be chosen for the principal onslaught — can
be ensured through offensive military deployments along the entire length of India’s border with Pakistan.

Such a
strategy, if sustained and backed by political resolve to go the whole hog if
necessary, will put unbearable pressure on Pakistan at a time when that state
is in dire straits financially, with its solvency in question and political
authority fragmented. Moreover, the snow-blocked Himalayan mountain-passes
foreclose the possibility of China
opening another front to relieve Indian military pressure on its “all-weather”
ally.

Pakistan has never been more vulnerable to
coercive pressure than today. The deployment of battle-ready Indian forces
along the entire border will force Pakistan to follow suit. Such
mobilization will cost it millions of dollars daily. It will bleed Pakistan at a
time when it is already seeking international credit extending beyond the recent
$7.6 billion IMF bailout package. Bankrupting Pakistan, in any event, has to be
part and parcel of the Indian strategy.

With full
force mobilization in place and the armoured corps ready to punch through
Pakistani defences at multiple points, India
would be well-positioned to ratchet up political, economic and diplomatic
pressures on Pakistan and
get the U.S. and others to
lean on Islamabad.
For India to de-escalate, Pakistan would have to verifiably and
irreversibly dismantle its military-run terror complex and hand over to India
top-ranking terrorist figures. This would be an operation intended to compel Pakistan
to come clean, no matter what it takes.

Make no
mistake: Non-military pressures will not work because Pakistan is a
militarized state, even if a failing one. With the Obama administration set to
prop up Pakistan by tripling non-military aid to it while maintaining the
existing military-aid flow, albeit with conditions tied to Pakistani
cooperation on the Afghan front, India has to stop offshoring its Pakistan
policy. Without a credible Indian threat of force, Pakistan, far from dismantling its terrorist
infrastructure, will continue to prevaricate over the identity of the 10 Mumbai
attackers and not bring to justice all the planners of those strikes, making
more Mumbai-style terrorist rampages certain.

More than
six decades after its creation, Pakistan has not only failed to emerge as a
normal nation, but actually lapsed into a de facto failed state by Westphalian
standards, with the line between state and non-state actors blurred and the
tail (the military establishment) wagging the dog (the state). It has become
what its founder had feared: A truly “moth-eaten” state. It is the world’s
Terroristan rolled into an Anarchistan. Keeping such a state intact will pose
very serious challenges to regional and international security.

Rather than
leave an ungovernable Pakistan
and a wild Afghanistan
as festering threats to global security, the time has come to think bold about
a new political order in the Hindu-Kush region. To fix Afghanistan, as the previous U.S. national security adviser said just before
demitting office, we need to first “solve Pakistan”. To help Pakistan
self-destruct, it has become imperative to do what Ronald Reagan did to the
Soviet Union — make it broke — while cashing in on its deep internal
fault-lines.

Singhing for Bush

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Chellaney

George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh — nuclear soulmates?

By Brahma Chellaney

A Reuters column January 20, 2009

They were certainly not made for each other. Yet the trigger-happy George W. Bush found a soulmate in diffident Manmohan Singh. When the Indian prime minister publicly told the little-loved Bush that the "people of India deeply love you," he was expressing his own deep-seated admiration of a U.S. president whose just-ended term in office constituted a nadir from which it will take America years to recoup its losses.

Singh’s fulsome praise for Bush stood out at that September 25, 2008 White House news conference. The Indian leader had actually timed that visit to Washington so that it coincided with the expected congressional ratification of the controversial U.S.-India nuclear deal. But the Senate clearance of the deal got delayed because of the new congressional and executive focus on a bailout package to rescue sinking U.S. financial institutions.

Almost every paragraph in the prepared statement Singh read out at that press conference ended with a sappy tribute to Bush:

•"And the last four-and-a-half years that I have been prime minister, I have been the recipient of your generosity, your affection, your friendship. It means a lot to me and to the people of India."

•"And Mr. President, you have played a most-important role in making all this happen."

•"And when history is written, I think it will be recorded that President George W. Bush made an historic goal in bringing our two democracies closer to each other."

•"And when this restrictive regime ends, I think a great deal of credit will go to President Bush. And for this I am very grateful to you, Mr. President.”

•“So, Mr. President, this may be my last visit to you during your presidency, and let me say, Thank you very much. The people of India deeply love you.”

Referring to Singh’s expression of love for the much-despised Bush, Anand Giridharadas wrote in the New York Times, “Laura Bush is not alone, after all.” Perhaps the only thing Singh didn’t do at that event was to hand Bush, with tear-welled eyes, a rose.

Bush’s otherwise negative legacy includes a foreign-policy triumph – the nuclear deal with India, consummated through his bonding with Singh.

These two dissimilar personalities displayed similar political traits at critical times. Their bond served as a reminder that, contrary to international-relations theory, history is shaped not just by cold calculations of national interest, but heavily by the role of personalities, including their personal attributes, idiosyncrasies and hobbyhorses.

Their personalities were apart, yet Bush and Singh showed they share a lot in common, including an emphasis on spinning reality to suit political ends. While Bush led the U.S. into Iraq through lies and deception, Singh’s Iraq was the nuclear deal, into which he led India blindly. And just as Bush claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Singh asserted fanciful benefits in the nuclear deal.

While Bush was a catalyst in America’s declining global influence, Singh has served as a catalyst in undermining India’s inner strength to the extent that New Delhi today pursues a policy of propitiation toward China and a policy of empty rhetoric against Pakistan-fomented terrorism even as its internal security has come under siege.

Under their leadership, America and India became internally weaker.

Bush and Singh, although one was strident and the other soft-spoken, displayed the same fondness for generalities and the same knack of handling crises in ways that make them exponentially worse.

Yet neither wavered from his chosen path even when the democratic majority was against that course.

When Bush could not have his way, he resorted to bullying and intimidation. Singh does it differently — he goes into a sulk, threatening to resign, as he did last summer until the Congress Party gave in to his wishes on the nuclear deal.

Singh’s obsessive fixation on that deal was matched by Bush’s destructive mania on Iraq, where his swan song involved ducking shoes.

While Bush will be remembered for horrors like Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo and blunders like Iraq and Afghanistan, Singh will be remembered for the “cash-for-votes” scandal that marred his July 22, 2008 win in a Parliament confidence vote and his memorable credulity in setting up a joint anti-terror mechanism with terror-exporting Pakistan.

Indeed, Singh’s first diplomatic response to the Mumbai attacks was to invite the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief to India. But for second thoughts in Islamabad, the head of that rogue Pakistani agency would have landed up in India, as per the invitation, “to assist in the investigations” — analogous to a mafia leader assisting police.

Handing Islamabad a dossier of evidence the same day Singh said “some official agencies in Pakistan must have supported” the attacks symbolized unremitting naïveté. If state agencies were involved, how could New Delhi expect the Pakistani state to act against them?

While Bush allowed his national-security agenda to be hijacked by neocons, the onetime-socialist Singh emerged as India’s chief neocon.

His two votes against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board, for example, cost India hundreds of millions of dollars as Tehran, in reprisal, reneged on the terms of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) contract, forcing New Delhi to buy LNG from other suppliers at a much higher price.

Bush was always protective of Singh. The Bush administration’s unclassified answers to 45 congressional questions on the nuclear deal were kept secret for nine months not only because the replies belied Singh’s assurances to Parliament, but also as their disclosure “could have toppled the government” in New Delhi, according to Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post. The answers became public only after the danger to Singh’s political survival had passed.

Singh, for his part, shielded even a Bush political appointee. “To err is human,” Singh famously said when Ambassador David Mulford triggered a furore in early 2006 with undiplomatic remarks.

Now, on two consecutive days this month, Mulford ticked off Singh himself for linking Pakistani “official agencies” to the Mumbai attacks.

On one occasion, Mulford said: “I think one needs to be very, very careful about making those kinds of allegations unless you have very concrete evidence to that degree of specificity.” On another occasion, he declared: “I don’t think we want to take the view that we make accusations against certain parties without the usual evidences and proofs.”

How did New Delhi respond to that scolding? It made not even a peek.

Both Bush and Singh squandered taxpayer money. While the economic costs of the Bush-initiated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already totalled a staggering $1.6 trillion, with the Bush administration having awarded billions of dollars in no-bid reconstruction contracts to favoured companies that did little on the ground, Singh, as a “thank-you” to Bush for the nuclear deal, unveiled yet another purchase of obsolescent arms — eight Boeing P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft, in a $2.1 billion deal.

Another “thank-you” — a nuclear-accident liability coverage bill, currently in circulation within the government — could be pushed in the brief Parliament session in February in the same manner eight bills were rammed through in 17 minutes on December 23, 2008 in the midst of continuous uproar in the Lok Sabha, the ruling lower House.

Bush famously said about Russian leader Vladimir Putin: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward… I was able to get a sense of his soul.” That prompted Senator John McCain to claim he also looked into Putin’s eyes, only to see three letters: K-G-B.

But if there is anyone who says he got a sense of Bush’s soul it is Singh. He looked into Bush’s eyes and read three words: love for India. While the U.S.-India relationship began to blossom under Bush, the wreckage he has left — extending from Pakistan-Afghanistan to Wall Street — will cost India dear.

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

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

http://in.reuters.com/article/specialEvents1/idINIndia-37547520090120?sp=true