U.S.-India nuclear deal: A missile rider

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Asian Age, January 27, 2007

Missile Trap In A Nuclear Plot

The nuclear deal-related U.S. law aims to deny India space-related dual-use technology and items even as it demands New Delhi unilaterally but formally adhere to MTCR. What has this to do with nuclear energy?

Brahma Chellaney

The United States, oddly, still maintains greater technology controls against the world’s largest democracy than against communist China, whose January 11 satellite-killing weapon test has underscored for India a pressing imperative: to accelerate the development of its space and missile capabilities. Space-based assets today are critical for civil and military communications, intelligence, navigation and missile guidance. Yet, not only is America loath to undertake strictly civilian space cooperation with India of the kind Russia is proud to do, but also its legislature has used the nuclear deal to decree that India not be let off the hook on dual-use space technology controls.

As the implications of the new U.S. legislation on the nuclear deal sink deeper, an undertow of concern is prompting the Indian government to brace itself for a long, precarious course. Speciously billed as the “enabling legislation,” the law doesn’t enable the deal: it only sets the India-specific preconditions that need to be fully met before Congress grants approval at a future date, subject to the already-legislated post-implementation conditions.

Despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s hosannas for the deal, he and the external affairs minister acknowledge that several provisions of this legislation are either “prescriptive” in ways incompatible with the July 18, 2005, agreement-in-principle, or “extraneous” and incongruous to engagement “between friends.” Yet, other than telling Parliament that it “has taken note of certain extraneous and prescriptive provisions in the legislation,” the government has chosen not to publicly identify a single such rider in the so-called Hyde Act.

            Dr. Singh indeed told the Lok Sabha last month that “there are areas which continue to be a cause for concern, and we will need to discuss them with the U.S. administration before the bilateral cooperation agreement can be finalized.” How can India’s bona fide concerns about the new law, with its series of congressionally enforceable conditions, be addressed through discussions with the U.S. executive branch, whose own hands the legislation ties? Also, if India is to shield itself from the U.S. law’s “extraneous and prescriptive provisions,” shouldn’t New Delhi at least put on record its specific objections? To be sure, nuclear chief Anil Kakodkar has done well to speak out on same aspects.

             One “extraneous and prescriptive” provision mandates the continued applicability of U.S. missile sanctions law to India — a barely disguised attempt to deny space-related dual-use technology and items. At the same time, the legislation makes any Indian infraction of the Missile Technology Control Regime guidelines a cause for re-imposition of civil nuclear sanctions.

First, as is obvious, this has no connection at all with a civil nuclear energy deal. Second, by bringing this issue within its purview through a nuclear cooperation-related legislation, Congress is making it tougher for India to access sensitive technologies. Until the enactment of the Hyde Act, the lifting of the space-related technology controls against India had been an executive-branch prerogative. And third, by mandating that the deal be terminated if India were to violate MTCR guidelines, Congress has laid bare that the deal has less to do with energy and more with the full range of U.S. non-proliferation interests.

This provision, in fact, exemplifies how the new U.S. law, in seeking to conditionally allow India to import commercial power reactors and fuel, aims to hold this country perpetually to a series of good-behaviour stipulations extraneous to the deal’s stated raison d’être. The provision also goes against the rationale of the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership between the U.S. and India — an initiative that supposedly paved the way for the nuclear deal. 

The NSSP was founded to help substantially ease U.S. controls on the export of high-technology goods to India, and to permit civilian nuclear and space cooperation. These three issues came to be known as the “trinity,” which later became a “quartet” with the U.S. addition of missile defence. The fourth issue, however, didn’t remain a priority for too long because the Americans realized that missile-defence cooperation with India could chip away at the credibility of the nuclear-deterrent posture of their strategic ally, Pakistan.

Without significant progress in opening U.S. high-technology and space trade with India, the State Department, curiously, announced the “successful completion” of the NSSP process on the eve of the nuclear deal’s unveiling. In the commercial space area, for instance, NSSP had yielded only two Indo-U.S. conferences and modest modification of U.S. export-licensing requirements, along with the Indian Space Research Organization’s removal from the U.S. blacklist, innocuously named the “Entity List.” Post-NSSP, six ISRO subsidiaries were also removed, but four others still remain blackballed.

The NSSP’s forced conclusion — after Washington had shifted ground in the negotiations on some promises — appeared designed to leverage U.S. parleys with India by compartmentalizing each of the “trinity” subjects and bringing into greater play U.S. strategic and commercial interests over a wider range of issues. As the State Department “fact-sheet” of July 18, 2005, put it: “Completion of NSSP … paves the way for greater cooperation on strategic, energy security, and economic matters.”  

Indeed, when the nuclear deal was made public, it constituted just four paragraphs in a long joint statement that roped in India as a collaborator on several fronts — from a “Global Democracy Initiative” to a military-to-military “Disaster Response Initiative” for operations in “the Indian Ocean region and beyond.” The statement announced a far-reaching “Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture” embracing both research and outreach in India, as well as new bilateral dialogues on commerce, finance and energy. The security issues had been dealt with in a new defence-framework accord three weeks earlier, with New Delhi agreeing not only to “conclude defence transactions” and share intelligence with the U.S., but also to participate in U.S.-directed “multinational operations” and join the U.S.-led non-proliferation regime.

Actually, the most onerous technology sanctions India has endured for long are not in the nuclear-energy realm but centre on advanced and dual-use technologies. Where export controls against India can be relaxed through executive action, such as in high technology or civilian space, the U.S. has dragged its feet. But where complex action was needed, including congressional waivers from existing U.S. legal provisions and a special exemption by a 45-nation cartel, it concluded a nuclear deal after wringing a heavy price out of India.  

Today, the U.S. employs every export control in force as a bargaining chip. In each of the “trinity” areas, the U.S. has sought to impose conditions or extract commitments that go beyond its stated reasoning for maintaining stringent technology controls — concerns that the transfers might be diverted to military applications or leaked to a third party. In the space area, India has tightly segregated its satellite-launch and missile programmes and put in place strict export controls.

Yet the U.S. is still reluctant, despite lengthy negotiations that began much before the nuclear deal, to build broad commercial space cooperation with India by lifting its export controls on U.S.-made components and entering into equitable launch-services and technology-safeguards accords. Washington still draws back from the much-promised launch-services agreement despite securing Indian guarantees against misuse or re-export of technology. Similarly, the U.S.-India High-Technology Cooperation Group, meeting since 2003, has still to create conditions for hassle-free high-technology commerce.

Now, in a new twist, the U.S. Congress has cross-linked its action in one “trinity” area with continual U.S. controls against India in another. The Hyde Act stipulates that U.S. missile sanctions law, with its prohibition of dual-use space exports, will still apply to India even after it meets the required standard of “unilateral adherence” to the U.S.-fashioned MTCR. It is as if Congress is intent on keeping some aspects of the bilateral relationship trapped in the past. How can a strategic partnership be built with one side seeking to sustain penal measures against the other?

The Act draws a creative distinction between an “MTCR adherent” and a “unilateral adherent” to expressly keep India within the sanctions purview of Section 73 of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. That section decrees wide-ranging trade and other sanctions in case MTCR-controlled items are transferred. But in keeping with MTCR’s status as a cartel that regulates transfers outside the league but not within, Section 73 is not applicable to any export “that is authorized by the laws of an MTCR adherent” or is for “an end user in a country that is an MTCR adherent.” 

The Hyde Act’s Section 107 flatly holds: “Congress finds that India is not an MTCR adherent for the purposes of Section 73 of the Arms Export Control Act.” To purge any ambiguity, the Act places on record, through its accompanying Explanatory Statement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s assurance that because India has “committed to unilaterally adhere” to MTCR, it “would not be considered an ‘MTCR Adherent’ as defined under Section 73.”

Israel, too, is a unilateral adherent to MTCR, but — as underlined by U.S. technology transfers, among others, to the Israeli Arrow anti-ballistic missile programme — neither the U.S. executive branch nor legislature has sought to draw such a contrived distinction in its case. In fact, if America were to apply to India the same standards it does to Israel, it will throw open not only commercial space cooperation but also high-technology commerce with New Delhi.  

In singling out India, the Hyde Act goes beyond the Arms Export Control Act, which defines an “MTCR adherent” as either “a country that participates in MTCR or that, pursuant to an international understanding to which the United States is a party, controls MTCR equipment or technology in accordance with the criteria and standards set forth in MTCR.” India cannot “participate” in MTCR as long as the cartel — like the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group — declines to admit it as a full member. But given its deal-related commitments, India will certainly fit the second criterion as an MTCR adherent. Yet the Hyde Act peremptorily dismisses that, even as it peddles the hope that India one day could “enjoy the benefits” of MTCR membership.

Equally brassily, the legislation aims to strip India’s July 18, 2005, commitment to abide by MTCR and NSG guidelines of its voluntary quality and turn it into a formal adherence involving the implementation of “specific procedures.” If India were to meet the Act’s condition to unilaterally adhere to these cartels through formal procedures rather than a voluntary public declaration, it will not only undermine its leverage to gain membership, but also become bound by all future cartel decisions, however adverse.  

China, denied entry to MTCR thus far, stays a voluntary adherent, spurning formal procedures. Moreover, it spurns the revised, more-stringent MTCR guidelines, recognizing only the original guidelines and annex framed in 1987 when the cartel was secretly formed by America, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and West Germany. But as underscored by its continuing covert missile assistance to Pakistan, China’s observance of even the original guidelines is more in the breach.

In contrast, the Hyde Act demands through its Section 104(b)(6)(B) that India harmonize its export laws and regulations with MTCR’s current guidelines and “practices,” with its Explanatory Statement amplifying that a “unilateral adherent” is also required to abide by “any subsequent changes to the MTCR guidelines and annex.” The perils of an open-ended Indian commitment have been underlined by the move of some MTCR states to institute what they call the International Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation — a sort of mini-NPT to cover missile development.

In mandating the continued applicability of missile sanctions law to India, the U.S. Congress has sought to underpin the American goal to constrain the Indian development of long-range missiles. Without building longer-range ballistic missiles, India’s nuclear deterrent will remain largely of subcontinental relevance. Hobbling the growth of Indian delivery capability thus holds the key to the U.S. objective of preventing the emergence of India as a full-fledged nuclear-weapons state.  

That objective is mirrored, as Dr. Kakodkar has put it, in the Hyde Act’s “fairly large number of sections which essentially seek to, sort of, contain or cap the Indian strategic programme.” Earlier, that objective had found expression in Dr. Rice’s accent on Indo-Pakistan “nuclear balance” and the public demand on Indian soil of her assistant secretary, Richard Boucher, that India “absolutely” define its deterrent in the sole context of Pakistan, now the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.  As shown by America’s ongoing multibillion-dollar lethal arms transfers to Islamabad, with a huge sale of 500 Amraam and 200 Sidewinder missiles being announced just last week, Washington still uses Pakistan to countervail India, even as it seeks to frame an option to leverage its India ties against China.

The Hyde Act also seeks to hold India to an exceptional standard by linking civil nuclear cooperation to its ensuring inter alia that no “equipment or technology not consistent with MTCR guidelines” is exported “by an Indian person.” The nuclear deal’s continuation thus hinges on India’s good conduct on the missile front! But even with exemplary behaviour, India is to be denied access to space launch vehicle and unmanned aerial vehicle technologies, propulsion and propellant components, launch and ground support equipment, and other MTCR-controlled, space-related items.

To the U.S., strategically leveraging its India ties vis-à-vis Beijing does not mean helping India to militarily emerge as China’s peer. U.S. policy has no intent of compounding the ascent of China as a global military power by encouraging or acquiescing to India’s rise as another military giant with intercontinental-range weaponry. Indian romanticists have yet to grasp a simple fact that no great power in history has helped build another great power. In fact, great powers work to deter the rise of another great power.

While the nuclear deal will permit the U.S. to have its cake and eat it too, India is being called upon to open itself to action from both ends of the MTCR stick — to formally adhere to the regime from outside, yet remain one of its principal targets. This is just one example of how the vaunted deal squarely puts India on the debit side of the ledger. What was intended to herald a new era in U.S.-India relations is being appropriated into a win-win deal for one side and a loss-loss proposition for the other. In this situation, India’s strategic interests have to prevail over its diplomatic interests.

Tibet is the key

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Sino-Indian Relations: Tibet is the Key

By Brahma Chellaney

 

The increasingly complex relationship between the Asian giants China and India is exacerbating long-standing territorial disputes, which may ultimately only be defused through a resolution of the Tibet question.

 

The recent Sino-Indian spat over India’s Arunachal Pradesh state triggered by the Chinese ambassador’s pronouncement in November[1] has brought home the truth that at the core of the India-China divide remains Tibet, and that unless that issue is resolved, the chasm between the two demographic titans will not be bridged.

Beijing’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh, or more specifically, to its Tawang district, stems from Tibet’s putative historical or ecclesiastical ties with Arunachal. Tibet thus lies at the heart of the disputes. To focus on Arunachal or even Tawang is not only to miss the wood for the trees, but also to play into the hands of China’s attempts at incremental territorial annexation. Having gobbled up Tibet, the historical buffer between the Indian and Chinese civilizations, Beijing now lays claim to Indian territories, not on the basis of any purported Han connection to them, but because of supposed Tibetan Buddhist ecclesiastical influence or alleged longstanding tutelary relations. A good analogy to China’s expansionist territorial demands was Saddam Hussein’s claim, following his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, to areas in Saudi Arabia on the basis of alleged Kuwaiti links to them.

Another reminder that Tibet remains the central issue was the recent shooting by Chinese border guards of unarmed Tibetans fleeing to India via Nepal through the 5,800-metre-high Nangpa-la Pass.[2] There have been instances in the past of Tibetans being shot at by the paramilitary People’s Armed Police or the People’s Liberation Army at border crossings, but this was the first such incident captured on film and shown across the world on television.

              Beijing, having wrung the concessions it desired from India on Tibet, is now publicly presenting Arunachal as an outstanding issue that demands “give and take,” cleverly putting the onus on India to achieve progress in the border negotiations. Lest the message be missed, New Delhi is being especially exhorted to make concessions on Tawang — a critical corridor between Lhasa and the Assam Valley of immense military import.

 

Text Box:

 

Tawang, located in north-western Arunachal Pradesh, borders the Line of Actual Control between India and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China. Traditionally inhabited by the Monpa (Monba) ethnic group as part of the Mon kingdom, Tawang had historically close ties with Tibet, and most of its residents are Tibetan Buddhist by religion. The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706), an ethnic Monpa, was born there. Tawang is south of the much-maligned McMahon Line that was established in 1914 as the Indo-Tibetan border. India asserted its administrative control over Tawang only in 1951 after China annexed Tibet. In 1962, during the Sino-Indian War, Chinese troops occupied Tawang for a time before withdrawing voluntarily, and the territory reverted to Indian control. However, China continues to claim Tawang as part of the TAR’s Cona County.

 

The choice before India now is stark: either to retreat to a defensive, unviable negotiating position where it has to fob off Chinese territorial demands centred on Arunachal, or to take the Chinese bull by the horns and question the very legitimacy of Beijing’s right to make territorial jurisdiction claims on behalf of Tibetan Buddhism when China has yet to make peace with the Tibetans.

Neither option augurs well for the border talks, already the longest between any two nations in modern world history. A quarter-century of border diplomacy has yielded no concrete progress on an overall settlement, nor has it removed the ambiguities plaguing the 4,057-kilometre frontline; Beijing has not even fulfilled its 2001 promise to exchange maps of the eastern and western sectors by the end of 2002.

The subtle and measured revival of Tibet as an unresolved issue will arm India with international leverage on any Chinese effort to dam the Brahmaputra River and reroute its waters. With water likely to emerge as a major security-related issue in southern Asia in the years ahead, India can hardly ignore the fact that the Indus, Sutlej and Brahmaputra originate in occupied Tibet.[3]

            Beijing’s new hardline focus on Arunachal/Tawang is apparent not only from its failure to accept the Indian proposal for a new round of border talks prior to President Hu Jintao’s India visit, but also from Chinese Ambassador Sun Yuxi’s extraordinary remarks on Indian soil that an entire Indian state belongs to his country. It is highly unusual for an envoy not only to make bellicose remarks, but also to do so on the eve of his president’s visit, unmindful of roiling the atmosphere.

Ambassador Sun followed up his statement with an interview to an Indian wire service a couple of days later during which he insisted that Arunachal was “a disputed area” and demanded that India agree to “mutual compromises” and “some give and take” in relation to that state. The Chinese foreign ministry has made no effort to contradict the statements of its ambassador, but has repeated its now-familiar slogan — “a solution that is fair, rational and acceptable” — even as it blocks progress in the border talks. 

Imperceptive or tactless statements or actions can hardly advance any country’s interests, but communist China, being a closed system, has a tradition of acting in ways unfavorable to its own long-term interests. One recent example is its rekindling of Japanese nationalism by scripting anti-Japan mob protests in April 2005, which has made Tokyo more determined than ever not to allow Beijing to call the shots in East Asia. Likewise, China’s brassy assertiveness on Arunachal Pradesh will only reinforce India’s resolve not to cede further ground to China. Indian officials take an oath of office pledging to “uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India,” and it is unthinkable that any Indian government would gift Tawang to China. As Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee has already put it, “Every inch of Arunachal is part of India.”

That Tawang is a Monpa, not Tibetan, area is a conclusion that British surveyors Bailey and Moreshead painstakingly reached, leading Henry McMahon to draw his famous redline on the Survey of India map-sheets to Tawang’s north. Earlier at Simla in October 1913, the British Indian government and Tibet, represented by McMahon and Lonchen Shatra respectively, reached agreement on defining the frontier at that meeting, to which the Chinese delegate at the Simla Conference was not invited because all parties at that time, including China, recognized Tibet’s sovereign authority to negotiate its boundary with India. Even Ivan Chen’s map presented at the Simla Conference clearly showed Tawang as part of India.

An ecclesiastical relationship or even tutelary ties cannot by themselves signify political control of one territory over another. In any case, China forcibly incorporated two other regions where Tibet exercised undisputed ecclesiastical jurisdiction and political control – Amdo (the birthplace of the present Dalai Lama) and Kham – into the Han provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan. Before claiming Tawang to be part of Tibet, China should first be required to restore Amdo and Kham to Tibet and its tutelary lamas.

Instead, a disturbing pattern of belligerent Chinese statements is emerging without apparent provocation. A diplomat-cum-senior researcher at a Chinese foreign ministry-run think-tank, for instance, recently suggested that India kick out the Dalai Lama if it wished to build “real and sustainable” relations with Beijing. In an interview with an Indian newspaper, Zheng Ruixiang of the China Institute of International Studies said, “The Tibet problem is a major obstacle in the normalization of relations between India and China. India made a mistake in the 1950s by welcoming the Dalai Lama when he fled Tibet. It is now time for correcting the past mistake and building a real and sustainable relationship with China.”[4]    

The pattern suggests that under the hardliner Hu, who made his name in the Chinese Communist Party by ruthlessly quelling the 1989 anti-China protests in Lhasa as martial-law administrator, Beijing may be striving to adopt a more forthright stance vis-à-vis India on issues such as the border disputes and the presence of the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India. Having consolidated his hold on power in the past year, Hu has begun suppressing dissent at home, strengthening the military and shaping a more nationalistic foreign policy. Hu may believe his regime can exert more strategic pressure on India, now that the railway to Tibet has been built and Pakistan’s Chinese-funded Gwadar port-cum-naval base is likely to be opened in the near future.[5]

China’s resurrection of the past and highlighting of bilateral disputes in public should provide an opportunity for India to re-evaluate its policy and add more subtlety and litheness to its stance of unilaterally accommodating China on Tibet and other issues. India needs to first grasp the damage to its China policy caused by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who as prime minister acquiesced to Chinese demands both on Tibet and the border talks during his visit to Beijing in 2003.[6] He signed on to a document formally recognizing Tibet to be “part of the People’s Republic of China,” and agreed to a new framework of border talks focused on an elusive “package” settlement that effectively rewarded Beijing for its breach of promise to fully define the frontline through an exchange of maps.

China may have ceased its cartographic aggression on Sikkim through its maps, but the important point, often overlooked, is that it has yet to expressly acknowledge that Sikkim is part of India. While it now makes India accept in every bilateral communiqué the Vajpayee formulation that Tibet is “part of the People’s Republic of China,” Beijing has to date declined to affirm, either unilaterally or in a joint statement with New Delhi, that Sikkim is part of the Republic of India. Sikkim was never an issue in Sino-Indian relations until Vajpayee made it one. He then ingeniously flaunted the Chinese “concession” on Sikkim as a cover to justify his kowtow on Tibet.[7]

Tibet is India’s trump card, yet Vajpayee capriciously surrendered it to gain a dubious concession on Sikkim, over which China has never claimed sovereignty, but has simply depicted as an independent kingdom on its official maps. An Indian concession on Tibet could only be justified in the context of making Beijing give up its claims on Indian territories, formalize the present borders and reach a deal with the Dalai Lama to bring him home from exile.

When China annexed Tibet, India not only surrendered its extra-territorial rights over that buffer, but also signed a pact in 1954 — the infamous “Panchsheel Agreement” — accepting Chinese sovereignty over Tibet without seeking any quid pro quo, not even the Chinese recognition of the then existing Indo-Tibetan border. That monumental folly stripped India of leverage and encouraged the Chinese communists to lay claims to Indian territories on the basis of Tibet’s alleged historical links with those areas.

The Panchsheel accord recorded India’s agreement to fully withdraw within six months its “military escorts now stationed at Yatung and Gyantse” in the “Tibet Region of China,” and also to “hand over to the Government of China at a reasonable price the postal, telegraph and public telephone services together with their equipment operated by the Government of India in Tibet Region of China.”

If India still has any card against Beijing, it is the Dalai Lama, who by maintaining a base in Dharamsala has become a great strategic asset for India. The Tibetans in Tibet will neither side with China against India nor accept Chinese rule over their homeland. If, following the death of the present 71-year-old Dalai Lama, Beijing were to take control of the institution of the Dalai Lama (in the way it has anointed its own Panchen Lama), India will be poorer by several army divisions against China.

The only way India can build counter-leverage against Beijing is to quietly reopen the issue of China’s annexation of Tibet and Beijing’s failure to grant the autonomy promised to Tibetans in the 17-point agreement it imposed on Tibet in 1951. This can be done by India in a way that is neither provocative nor confrontational, and that recognizes that building a mutually beneficial relationship with China does not demand appeasement on India’s part. 

India can start by diplomatically making the point that China’s own security and well-being will be enhanced if it reaches out to Tibetans and grants genuine autonomy to Tibet through a deal that allows the Dalai Lama to return from his exile in Dharamsala. If the Chinese ambassador to India can publicly demand “mutual compromises” on Arunachal — a statement portrayed by the Indian press as an attempt to “play down” his unabashed claim on Arunachal — is it too much to expect the new Indian ambassador in Beijing to genially appeal to China’s own self-interest and suggest it pursue “mutual compromises” with the Tibetans on Tibet?

 

This is an edited version of an article originally published in The Asian Age on November 18, 2006.

 

 

[1] Chinese ambassador Sun Yuxi publicly reiterated Beijing’s claim to Arunachal Pradesh shortly before Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to India in November 2006. See “Arunachal Pradesh is our territory: Chinese envoy,” Rediff India Abroad, November 14, 2006, http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/nov/14china.htm; and Seema Guha, “China claims Arunachal Pradesh as ‘Chinese territory,’” DNA World, November 13, 2006, http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1063888/ .

[2] For a detailed examination of this incident, see “The Death of Kelsang Namtso,” China Rights Forum, No. 4, 2007, http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/CRF.4.2006/CRF-2006-4_Kelsang-Namtso.pdf.

[3] For more on the water resource issue and its international implications, see Wang Weiluo, “Water Resources and the Sino-Indian Strategic Partnership,” China Rights Forum, No. 1, 2006, http://hrichina.org/public/PDFs/CRF.1.2006/CRF-2006-1_Water.pdf.

[4] See Saibal Dasgupta, “India should dissolve Dalai Lama’s govt: Beijing think-tank,” The Times of India, January 9, 2007, posted at http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=14685&t=1&c=1.

[5] Pakistani authorities were reportedly keen for Hu to visit Gwadar during his visit to Pakistan, and to inaugurate the commercial port, which was built with Chinese assistance, but the trip was ruled out for security reasons due to tensions in the region. In addition, some construction projects handled by Chinese engineers are not expected to be completed until April 2007. For the strategic role of the Gwadar port, see B. Raman, “Hu’s Visit to Pakistan: Mixed Results,” South Asia Analysis Group, China Monitor, Paper No. 4, December 3, 2006, http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers21%5Cpaper2048.html.

[6] Vajpayee was Prime Minister of India briefly in 1996, and then again from March 1998 until May 2004.

[7] Sikkim, formerly an independent kingdom bordering Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan as well as India, became India’s twenty-second state in 1975 through a popular referendum. China and India agreed on the opening of trading posts on the Sikkim-Tibet border in the first-ever Sino-Indian joint declaration, signed in June 2003. While the joint declaration was initially expected to include precise formulations on the status of Sikkim and Tibet, India’s acknowledgement of Tibet as part of China was not matched by an explicit Chinese recognition of Sikkim as part of India. See M.K. Razdan, “Agreement on trade through Sikkim,” The Tribune (Chandigarh, India), June 23, 2003, http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030624/main1.htm; Harvey Stockwin, “India and China, Repeating Old Habits,” The Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, Volume 3, Issue 15, July 29, 2003, http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=19&issue_id=680&article_id=4755.

Mastering martial arts

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Hindustan Times, November 27, 2006

 

While emphasizing cooperation, India needs to leverage its policy towards China

 

Mastering martial arts

 

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

 

 

A key challenge for Indian foreign policy is to manage an increasingly intricate relationship with an ascendant China determined to emerge as Asia’s uncontested power. For different reasons, New Delhi and Beijing wish to play down the competitive dynamics of their relationship and put the accent on cooperation. This was on full display during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s New Delhi visit, which yielded a rhetoric-laden joint statement with nice jingles, such as “all-round mutually beneficial cooperation”.

 

            It makes sense for India to stress cooperation while working to narrow the power disparity with China. Cooperation holds special appeal to India, given that territorially it is a status quo state that has traditionally baulked at anchoring its foreign policy in a distinct strategic doctrine founded on a “balance of power”, or “balance of threat”, or “balance of interest”.

 

            By contrast, an accent on cooperation suits China because it provides it cover to step up a strategic squeeze of India from diverse flanks. It also chimes with its larger strategy to advertise its ‘peaceful rise’. China’s choir book indeed has been built around a nifty theme: its emergence as a great power is unstoppable, and it is incumbent on other nations to adjust to that rise.

 

            In keeping with India’s growing geopolitical pragmatism, the wooden-faced Hu received a friendly but formal welcome in New Delhi. The prime minister did not shy away from giving vent to India’s disquiet over the slow progress of the 25-year-old border negotiations by calling for efforts to settle the “outstanding issues in a focused, sincere and problem-solving manner”. And by urging that the progress in ties be made “irreversible”, the PM implicitly pointed to the danger that blunt assertion of territorial claims or other belligerent actions could undo the gains.

 

            Still, the visit was a reminder that Indian foreign policy has yet to make the full transition to realism. Consider the following two paragraphs in the joint statement:

 

“The Indian side recalls that India was among the first countries to recognize that there is one China and that its one-China policy has remained unaltered. The Indian side states that it would continue to abide by its one China policy. The Chinese side expresses its appreciation for the Indian position.

 

“The Indian side reiterates that it has recognized the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China, and that it does not allow Tibetans to engage in anti-China political activities in India. The Chinese side expresses its appreciation for the Indian position”.

 

Gratuitously and without any reciprocal Chinese commitment to a one-India policy, New Delhi again pledged to “abide by” a one-China policy despite the recent bellicose Chinese territorial claims. Needlessly and unilaterally, it reiterated its recognition of the central Tibetan plateau (what Beijing calls the “Tibet Autonomous Region”, or TAR) as part of China.

 

How can bilateral diplomacy become so one-sided that India propitiates and China merely records its ‘appreciation’? What about getting China to recognize Arunachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Sikkim as part of the Republic of India? China has merely suspended its cartographic aggression on Sikkim without issuing a single statement thus far unequivocally recognizing it as part of India.

 

It is true that mistakes made in the past weigh down Indian policy. But should India continue or correct those slip-ups? Why should the present PM stick with his predecessor’s 2003 folly in recognizing TAR as “part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China”? In any event, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s blunder did not come with an obligation for New Delhi to one-sidedly reaffirm that recognition at the end of every meeting between an Indian and Chinese leader.

 

A second clue of the Indian predilection to bend backwards was the manner New Delhi willingly shielded Hu from the media by permitting no questions at what was officially labelled an ‘interaction’ with the press. Knowing that Indian and foreign journalists would ask searching questions, among others, on China’s expansionist territorial demands, the Chinese side persuaded the hosts to limit the ‘interaction’ to a reading out of statements by Hu and the PM.

 

It is paradoxical that to welcome the world’s leading autocrat, the largest democracy cracked down on Tibetan demonstrators and allowed Hu to appear at a news conference in the scripted style he sets at home. Not that this won India any gratitude: the scattered Tibetan protests were enough to rankle Beijing to demand that New Delhi live up to its word not to let Tibetans wage political activity.

 

What makes Hu’s shielding by India more surprising is that the official talks brought out his hardline stance on the territorial disputes. Yet the next day at Vigyan Bhawan Hu disingenuously called for an “early settlement of the boundary issues”. The reason the two countries are locked in what is already the longest and most-barren negotiating process between any two countries in modern world history is that China — not content with the one-fifth of the original state of J&K it occupies — seeks to further redraw its frontiers with India, coveting above all Tawang, a strategic doorway to the Assam Valley.

 

Seeking to territorially extend the gains from its 1950 annexation of Tibet, Beijing has followed a bald principle in the border talks: ‘what is ours is ours to keep, but what is yours must be shared with us’. India, having thrust aside potential leverage due to an unfathomable reluctance to play its strategic cards, has retreated to an unviable position to ward off demands flowing from China’s insistence that what it covets is ‘disputed’ and thus on the negotiating table.

 

It is past time India started building needed room for diplomatic manoeuvre through counter-leverage, even as it keeps cooperation the leitmotif of its relations with Beijing. Without strategic leeway, India will remain on the defensive, locked in unproductive negotiations and exposed to the Chinese use of direct and surrogate levers to nip at its heels. It is not that India has only two options: either persist with a feckless policy or brace for confrontation. That is a false choice intended to snuff out any legitimate debate on the several options India has between the two extremes.

 

Military and economic asymmetry in interstate relations does not mean that the weaker side should bend to the diktats of the stronger or pay obeisance to it. If that were so, only the most powerful would enjoy true decision-making autonomy. Diplomacy is the art of offsetting or neutralizing the effects of a power imbalance with another state by building countervailing influence.

 

A realpolitik approach offers India multiple cards to exert a counteracting power. The PM’s scheduled visit to Japan next month is an opportunity to discuss adding strategic content to a fast-growing relationship with a natural ally. Through close strategic collaboration, Taiwan can be to India what Pakistan is to China. Prosperous, democratic Taiwan indeed offers better economic lessons than China.

 

New Delhi can begin modestly. Let it refine its Tibet stance to add some elasticity and nuance on an issue that defines the India-China chasm and forms the basis of Chinese claims on India. Without retracting its present Tibet position, can’t India propose to China that its path to greatness will be assisted if it initiated a process of reconciliation and healing in Tibet and reached a deal that ended the Dalai Lama’s exile? Seeking such a settlement is not a tactical ploy but a strategic necessity, because the Tibet issue will stay at the core of the India-China divide until it is resolved.

 

China’s anti-satellite weapon test: Implications for India

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Friday, Feb. 9, 2007 Japan Times

India’s vulnerability bared

NEW DELHI — Whatever may have been China’s motivation, its Jan. 11 anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test is bound to have lasting global impact like no other military event in recent years.

Three issues stand out on the surprise test: Beijing’s ingrained opacity, which prevented it from owning up to the test for almost two weeks; a lot of unsafe space debris to last decades in low orbit as a result of the destruction of one of China’s aging weather satellites; and the setting of a treacherous precedent (it was the first ASAT kill by any power in more than two decades).

While China’s message, in line with its growing geopolitical ambitions, may have been directed at America, its immediate neighbors like Japan and India are likely to be more rattled by its precision in timing a high-speed rocket carrying a "kinetic" weapon to kill a circling satellite. Although the rocket probably was the KT-1, similar to India’s PSLV, the demonstrated sophistication invokes wishful thinking about averting militarization of space.

Instead of accelerating its space-launch and missile programs, New Delhi has allowed the asymmetry to widen to a point where China has now laid bare India’s battlefield vulnerability.

Indeed, the Chinese ASAT lethality arguably holds the greatest import for India. The only counter to ASAT weapons is a capability to pay back in kind. The United States and Russia can cripple China’s communications and expose its ground assets if their space assets were struck. Japan, also concerned over the test, is fortunate to be ensconced under the U.S. security umbrella. India, by contrast, neither has the missile reach for a counter-offensive in the Chinese heartland nor seeks ASAT power to deter the destruction of its space assets.

Fighting a 21st-century war with one’s key space assets disabled will be worse than facing an adversary with one hand tied. Such assets are critical not just for communications but also for imagery, navigation, interception, missile guidance and delivery of precision munitions.

To sustain peace with China, India needs to be able to defend peace. Can it be forgotten that India was caught napping in 1962 because the full-scale Chinese invasion lasting 32 days was totally unexpected? Or that, in 1986-87, war clouds emerged out of a clear blue sky on the Sino-Indian horizon? The key lesson is that what matters is adversarial capability, not intent, which can change suddenly.

In today’s world, one side can impose its demands not necessarily by employing force but by building such asymmetrical capabilities that a credible threat constricts the other side’s room for maneuver and ability to withstand pressure. Yet, curiously, the more India has fallen behind minimum deterrence, the more it has sheltered behind the delusional rhetoric of cooperation with China.

It is not lack of resources but a reluctance to get its priorities right that has left India far short of meeting its minimal-deterrent needs. The way India squanders resources is unspeakable. Embarrassed neither by its emergence as the world’s largest arms importer nor by its continued lack of priority to building an armament-production base at home, India has unveiled plans to spend at least $ 20 billion over the next five years to import weapons. Such imports ostensibly will seek to equip India for the next war, when what it faces increasingly are unconventional threats ranging from trans-border terrorism to ASATs.

Rather than prepare to fight war, India ought to give greater priority to preventing aggression. A full-fledged war in southern Asia remains remote 35 years after the last one. Preventing war demands systems of deterrence. India can easily cut its proposed arms imports by half and invest the savings to build deterrence.

Take another egregious case: India plans to spend $ 3.4 billion to land a man on the moon by 2020, with its first lunar orbiter scheduled for 2008 and first manned space flight for 2014. Such an ambitious mission can be a priority for a country like China that has met its basic national-security needs and amassed $ 1 trillion in the world’s largest foreign-exchange hoard. But for India this is an extravagance when it still cannot launch its own telecommunications satellites. Surely, India’s interests on planet Earth and its outer space take precedence over a lunar dream.

Before it can think of developing a counter-capability to shield itself from an ASAT menace, it will have to deal with two obtrusive mismatches that hobble its deterrence promise. The first mismatch is between its satellite and launch capabilities. Greater operational capability necessitates large satellites. While India has first-rate satellite-manufacturing expertise, it still needs a foreign commercial launcher like the Ariane 5 of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company to place its INSAT-4 series satellites in geostationary orbit.

The second mismatch is in the military realm — between the technical sophistication to build nuclear warheads and the extent to which they can be delivered reliably by missiles. Nearly a decade after it went overtly nuclear and almost a quarter-century after the missile program launch, India still lacks the full reach against China. The thermonuclear warhead India tested with a controlled yield in 1998 still awaits a delivery vehicle of the right payload range.

Why should a country with one-sixth of humanity to defend still seek incremental progress in the intermediate-range ballistic missile field rather than aim to technologically leapfrog to an intercontinental ballistic missile? Without ICBM capability, India can be neither in the global league nor able to deter ASAT threats.

As several Indian companies emerge as global players in their own right, the Indian state would be a behemoth on the world stage if it remedied its vulnerability problem. Indeed, India owes a thank-you to Beijing for delivering another reminder of its shortcomings.

Internationally, the ASAT test is likely to discredit China’s claim about its peaceful rise. In fact, the test may prove counterproductive by buttressing perceptions of a China threat.

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

Make-believe peace

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Make-Believe Peace

Part I

Asian Age, February 24, 2007

 

Brahma Chellaney

 

Death and destruction are an abomination to human conscience. So when terrorist attacks and slayings become increasingly recurrent, catchphrases like “peace process,” “confidence-building measures” and “people-to-people contact” help serve as a salve to a society’s conscience. That in essence is the story of today’s India and its benighted relationship with Pakistan. Unable to contain escalating attacks that have given it the dubious distinction of being the world’s most-battered victim of terrorism, India has sought solace behind such beguiling catchwords. In the process, however, it is unwittingly making itself a prisoner of make-believe.

 

            The past week began in India with the gruesome killing of at least 68 innocent people on board the Samjhauta Express and ended with renewed confidence-building bonhomie with Pakistan. To those steeped in Indian epics, the ending may signify the triumph of good over evil. In reality, however, the events represent just a new page in an unending epic about India’s love for pretence.

 

            To be sure, democratic India is no different than autocratic Pakistan in attaching little value to the lives of ordinary citizens. As long as the governing elites remain ensconced in a security cover, the leadership in New Delhi or Islamabad takes any loss of lives in its stride. The poor, after all, have always counted for little in both countries.

 

Nor are the two governments different when it comes to play-acting and rhetoric. The Indian public, for instance, has got so accustomed to hearing after each attack the same empty vows to defeat terrorism that deep cynicism has set in. The latest train attack is proof that the two governments have become a mirror image of each other in terms of reaction.

 

Every right-thinking citizen wants peace so that national energies can be concentrated on rapid economic modernization and the narrowing of disparities in society. But why should New Delhi pretend it is engaged in a “peace process” with Islamabad when in reality the current process is merely aimed at normalizing relations?

 

In any case, instead of delivering peace, the process continues to deliver more terrorism, not just on India’s doorsteps in Jammu and Kashmir as before, but deep inside the country. In the past year-and-a-half alone, India has suffered major terrorist bombings from the Gangetic plains to the south, even as the Pakistani intelligence has opened new flanks against this country via Bangladesh and Nepal.

 

If it were just called a normalization process, that would not only be more honest but also help instil greater reality. Pakistan’s continued refusal to have normal trade with India, for instance, is a reminder that bilateral ties are far from full normalization. A mutual stake in a peaceful diplomatic environment can be fashioned only on the building blocks of regional cooperation and integration. Today the vaunted South Asian Free-Trade Area (SAFTA) accord is in danger of being stillborn.

 

Another official pretence heard in recent days is that the Samjhauta Express attack was an attempt to “derail” the supposed peace process. This suggests the bombers were naïve to believe that their act would disrupt a process that has yet to take bilateral ties to where they were in 1999 before the Kargil war, despite the much-trumpeted opening of new cross-border transportation routes. When the process survived the much deadlier bomb attacks on Mumbai commuter trains last July, how could a strike on the Samjhauta Express wreck the ongoing dialogue?

 

In any event, the dialogue process has a not-so-invisible third party prodding and guiding from the back — a party that refuses to talk to Iran (on grounds it doesn’t talk to “evil”) but demands India kiss and make up with a military dictatorship that already has a lot of blood on its hands. It is because of this third-party role that, despite the qualitatively escalating and geographically expanding terrorism it confronts, India has huffed and puffed but stayed in the farcical peace process. The terrorists and their patrons not only cherish this factor but also have enough experience to know that as long as they continue to kill ordinary citizens but spare political leaders (who with their commando rings are difficult to target in any case), New Delhi will continue to negotiate with Pakistan.

 

With the aid of a domestic media that tends to easily go over the top, Indian officials have also suggested that the militants’ detestation of the Samjhauta Express made the train the target. But that begs a question: Could the bombers really have thought that one attack would eliminate from service a train that has run regularly since 1976, except for a two-year hiatus? Also, why was the train attacked in India, not in Pakistan?

 

            India may be loath to face up to reality, but the harsh truth is that there is a clear design behind the increasing frequency of major terror strikes against it. First, by attacking a range of targets, from India’s business capital and Silicon Valley to major pilgrimage centres, the terrorists have driven home the message that they can strike at will anywhere.

 

Second, by saddling India with the highest incidence of terrorism in the world, the perpetrators and their masterminds help present it internationally as a country riven by internal strife. They cannot slow down India’s GDP growth rate, but they have sought to put the accent on the negative to help undercut its rising profile.

 

The mounting tide of terrorist attacks exposes India’s internal frailty in roughly the same way that Pakistan’s emergence as a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terror raises troubling questions about that country’s stability. This gives vicarious comfort to those generals in Islamabad who have always believed that India cannot be allowed to rise without Pakistan’s own ascension, and that a sinking Pakistan should take India down with it.

 

Three, the generals still value home-grown terrorist militias as useful proxies to bleed India and to press it to make concessions on Kashmir. To suggest that only some elements in the Pakistan military establishment are tied to the terrorists is to say that there are rogue elements in the military and intelligence beyond the control of the government. If that were true, it would be a strange paradox that the writ of a military dictatorship doesn’t extend fully to its own base — the military — as well as a cause for international concern that rogue officers are on the terrorist prowl.

 

If any motive can logically be deduced for the cowardly attack on the hapless Samjhauta Express passengers, it is a frightful one. It is as if some sinister force, playing with the blood of the innocent, was perhaps seeking to prove, under the nose of the Indian government, that Pakistan is indeed a terror victim.

 

It took military ruler Pervez Musharraf no time to portray Pakistan as a victim and to claim the attack would “strengthen the resolve” for “peace between the two countries.” His regime was also quick to resurrect its demand from last year for joint anti-terror investigations, but India did well to shoot it down.

Remember the outrage in India when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, like a bolt from the blue, turned Indian policy on its head and declared Pakistan a fellow victim of terror on the fifth anniversary of 9/11? He went on to embrace Pakistan as a partner against terror. The PM’s case was that since India had tried in vain to contain growing terrorism, it could now employ a joint mechanism to persuade the terrorist sponsor to correct its course. Even if the joint mechanism didn’t deliver results, the reasoning went, India will not be a loser. Such was Dr. Singh’s prescience in calling Pakistan a fellow victim of terror that just over five months later a number of Pakistanis fell victim to an act of terror on Indian soil.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the train bombing occurred on the eve of the Pakistan foreign minister’s visit and about two weeks before the first meeting of the joint anti-terror mechanism. That this first meeting is to take place nearly six months after the mechanism was announced is a reflection of the haste with which India embraced a half-baked proposal from a third party now promoting peace by zealously selling weapons to both sides. But if Indian investigators do find credible evidence to link the train bombers with one of the terrorist militias fathered by the Pakistani generals, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Muhammed, it will raise the troubling issue if the perpetrators acted at the behest of their military bosses.

 

Is it inconceivable that a military regime waging a low-intensity conflict against India centred on the export of jihad to murder and maim the innocent would order, in pursuit of dubious political goals, a terrorist strike that kills a number of its own countrymen, mostly Mohajirs and Hindus? And with Pakistani missiles named after invaders like Ghauri, Ghaznavi, Babar and Abdali, was it a mere accident that the train attack occurred in Panipat, the scene of three ignominious defeats in Indian history, the last being at the hands of Abdali in 1761?

 

(To be continued)

 

 

Time for Reality Check

Part II

Asian Age, February 25, 2007

 

Brahma Chellaney

 

Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf maintains not only his two-faced approach on terrorism but also the self-serving myth that his rule helps prevent an Islamist takeover. Even if he were to die suddenly, military rule would continue in Pakistan, with another general succeeding him. In fact, far from being a bulwark against radicals, Musharraf has helped marginalize and splinter mainstream parties and allowed Islamists to gain political space.

 

With Musharraf benefiting more than any other ruler in the world from the 9/11 events, Pakistan has emerged the third largest recipient of US aid, which includes economic and military assistance and counter-terrorism subsidies. In addition, America has helped Pakistan reschedule repayment of international debt totalling $13.5 billion, and is currently providing $5 billion in credit guarantees for Pakistani purchase of 62 F-16 fighter-jets.

 

Still, as the US national intelligence director admitted last month, Pakistan is the hub of a global web of Al Qaeda connections and “home for some top terrorist leaders,” with President George W. Bush himself calling Pakistan “wilder than the Wild West.” Musharraf’s regime has yet to realize that before Pakistan’s image can be transformed, it has to cut off its institutional support to terrorism. Indeed, until the military’s vice-like grip on power is broken, Pakistan is likely to remain a problem state, neither at peace with itself nor with its neighbours.

 

The make-believe on India’s part, however, continues. New Delhi has not only embraced as its partner a regime wedded to terror, but also chosen not to speak about the lack of democracy in Pakistan and about Musharraf’s recently unveiled plan to stay enthroned for five more years beyond 2007. While New Delhi has called Pakistan a “victim” of terrorism, Musharraf’s chief benefactor, Bush, has painted a grim picture of Al Qaeda’s strength inside that country, saying, “Taliban and Al Qaeda figures do hide in remote regions of Pakistan … and recruit and launch attacks.”

 

            India’s latest showpiece is an agreement with the Musharraf regime to purportedly reduce the “risk from accidents relating to nuclear weapons.” India needs to deepen its engagement with Pakistan at all levels. But confidence building cannot rest on the back of a public-relations gimmick like this accord.

 

How can any kind of risks be reduced when the Pakistani nukes are with the military and the Indian nukes under tight civilian oversight? While the Pakistan military has integrated nuclear weapons with its war-fighting doctrine and strategy, India is committed to a retaliation-only posture. Despite global concerns about terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction, the current international spotlight on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran helps obscure the danger that Pakistan — with terrorists and nuclear weapons controlled by Islamist generals — could be just one step away from our worst nightmare.

 

If the Pakistan military didn’t know about the nuclear black-market ring run by Pakistani scientists and intelligence and army officials for 16 long years, how can it offer to reduce any “risks,” that too from “accidents” (whatever that means)? All that the latest agreement says is that in the event of an “accident,” the concerned state will do what it is supposed to do in any case — “immediately take necessary measures to minimize the radiological consequences” — and, if need be, share “urgent information” with the other side. If any “accident” can be covered up, one can be sure the Pakistan military will do just that.

 

In the case of the far-reaching proliferation ring, a single individual, A.Q. Khan, was conveniently made the scapegoat in a charade that saw Musharraf pardon and shield him. The world has been made to believe that Khan set up and ran a nuclear Wal-Mart largely on his own. India itself has contributed to the creation of this fable through its references to “the A.Q. Khan ring.”

 

Of greater consequence for India is the nuclearization of Pakistani terrorism. Musharraf and his fellow generals would continue to export terror as long as they can play nuclear poker. Disabling Pakistan’s potential for nuclear blackmail thus holds the key to forcing it to act against transnational terrorists on its soil. Yet, ever since the scandal over the Pakistani illicit nuclear exports broke, India has chosen not to depict the Pakistan military as a rogue proliferator but rather to give it succour through ostensible nuclear confidence-building talks started by the Vajpayee government.

 

India is still unduly influenced by the Bush administration’s misbegotten policy on Pakistan. America could be a positive influence on Indo-Pakistan relations but the Bush team’s geopolitical games make it otherwise. Washington uses Pakistan for multiple objectives: as a gateway to military operations in Afghanistan; for reconnaissance and covert action in Iran; and to counterbalance India. Bush’s looming confrontation with Iran has only enhanced Pakistan’s importance as a staging ground for US anti-Iranian operations.

 

If in the process a dictatorial but pliant regime is strengthened in Islamabad, why would the White House care? Bush certainly has one concern — continued Pakistani assistance to an increasingly resurgent Taliban — yet such is his policy tangle, he doesn’t know how to stop that. But what has New Delhi to gain by deferring to the US on Pakistan?

 

As if turning the entire region between India and Israel into an arc of volatility is not enough, the Bush team seems itching to militarily take on Iran — an action that would disrupt energy shipments to India through the Strait of Hormuz and potentially have a cascading effect on the Indian economy, which is more dependent on the Gulf for oil and gas imports than any other major economy in the world. Yet, even on Iran, New Delhi chose to defer to the US.

 

Remember what the prime minister assured Parliament when his government marginalized India’s role on Iran by voting to take the Iranian nuclear issue out of the International Atomic Energy Agency board (of which India is a permanent member) to the UN Security Council (where India has no role to play)? He said India was opposed to punitive sanctions or coercive measures against Iran. Now, India has been in the international vanguard in implementing Security Council Resolution 1737 on new sanctions against Iran.

 

The Bush administration transfers a range of offensive, India-directed weapon systems to Pakistan and then lobbies feverishly to sell arms to New Delhi while pretending to be a factor for peace in the region. If there is one confidence-building measure crying for adoption, it is a commitment by India and Pakistan to suspend arms imports for a specified number of years — a moratorium that will have little effect on their security but help save tens of billions of dollars for pressing national needs. This is a moratorium, you can be sure, Washington will not encourage.

 

In fact, until the US stops geopolitically exploiting Pakistan, Pakistanis will not regain their democratic rights. And innocent Indians and Pakistanis will continue to get killed by the Pakistan military’s terrorist proxies.

 

            A military autocracy that is part of the problem cannot become part of the solution. To secure enduring peace on the subcontinent, there has to be a return to civilian rule in Pakistan, with the people there getting the freedoms that Indians enjoy. In the absence of open elections and public accountability, Musharraf’s rule has created a pressure-cooker society, giving rise to greater extremism. What Pakistan needs is a safety valve — true democratic participation that would empower the masses and allow issues to be decided at the ballot box.

 

            For India, the latest terrorist killings should be an occasion for a reality check on its Pakistan policy. No policy that forsakes reality can deliver sustainable dividends.

 

(Concluded)

Christian Science Monitor op-ed

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from the February 22, 2007 edition – http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0222/p09s01-coop.html

 

Musharraf’s choice: president of Pakistan or dictator of ‘Problemistan’?

Pakistan needs true democratic participation to empower the masses and decide issues at the ballot box.

By Brahma Chellaney

 

NEW DELHI

The fight against international terrorism cannot be won without demilitarizing and deradicalizing Pakistan. That’s what makes Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s latest move so worrisome.

Mr. Musharraf took power more than seven years ago in a military coup. Since then, national conditions have markedly worsened. A military dictatorship justified as essential for bringing stability has actually taken the country to the edge.

Now, without drawing international attention, Musharraf has unveiled a plan that will make Pakistan’s greatly awaited elections a farce. Under this plan, the outgoing parliament and four provincial legislatures would “elect” him to a new five-year term as president in the fall, before he oversees national polls a few months later. Five years ago, Musharraf orchestrated another charade – a referendum – to extend his self-declared presidency.

Musharraf’s maneuver is the latest in a long series of broken promises to return his country to democracy. And it does not bode well for Pakistan’s central challenge: moving away from militarism, extremism, and fundamentalism, and toward a stable, moderate state.

The perils of ‘partnership’ in the war on terror

Although the United States compelled Pakistan post-9/11 to abandon the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and become an ally in the war on terrorism, that partnership has yielded dubious results. To be sure, Musharraf’s cooperation led to the capture of some Al Qaeda figures such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that he is unwilling or unable to crack down on the terrorist radicals in his midst. His foreign minister boasted that Pakistan had not handed “a single Pakistani” to America and that all the Al Qaeda men captured and transferred to US authorities were foreigners.

Pakistan‘s home-grown, Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias continue to operate openly. Indeed Musharraf’s main benefactor, President Bush, said last week: “Taliban and Al Qaeda figures do hide in remote regions of Pakistan. This is wild country; this is wilder than the Wild West.”

Musharraf’s sinking popularity has spurred speculation that he might declare a state of emergency to smother vocal opposition. But the more power he usurps, the more dependent he becomes on his military and intelligence. That limits his ability to sever their cozy ties with extremist and terrorist elements.

Musharraf oils his dictatorship with generous American aid. Mr. Bush is too preoccupied with a self-created mess in Iraq to bother about the latest election shenanigan, especially when the Taliban resurgence (supported by Pakistani aid, critics charge) has made the NATO use of Pakistani airspace even more vital for military operations in Afghanistan. Bush’s intensifying confrontation with Iran has only enhanced Pakistan’s importance as a staging ground for US anti-Iranian operations.

The Commonwealth of Nations, which reinstated Pakistan’s membership after a 4-1/2-year suspension following the coup, has looked the other way ever since Musharraf reneged on the very promise that won his country reentry – to give up his dual role as president and Army chief by 2005. Don’t expect the Commonwealth to make even a peep when Musharraf stays on as Army chief beyond the next deadline of Nov. 15, 2007 – set by a constitutional amendment he himself engineered to miss the first deadline.

Although the only times when India and Pakistan have come close to peace have been during the brief periods of democratic rule in Islamabad, New Delhi has played no small role in helping Musharraf gain legitimacy from the time it invited him out of the blue to a 2001 peace summit. Today, India not only refrains from speaking about the lack of democracy in Pakistan but, in a major policy reversal, has come to see Musharraf as a partner against terrorism.

A dictatorship that is part of the problem has ingeniously presented itself to the outside world as part of the solution. The scourge of Pakistani terrorism ema- nates 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-i-Tayyaba. Yet by passing the blame for their disastrous jihad policy to their mullah puppets, Musharraf and his fellow generals have made many outsiders believe that the key is to contain the religious fringe, not the puppeteers.

Why military rule must end

Musharraf perpetuates the self-serving myth that his rule helps prevent an Islamist takeover. But military rule would persist in the event of his sudden death.

Until the military’s viselike grip on power is broken and the rogue Inter-Services Intelligence agency is cut to size, Pakistan is likely to remain a common thread in the investigations of most acts of international terrorism.

In the absence of open elections, military rule has created a pressure-cooker society. What Pakistan needs is a safety valve – true democratic participation that would empower the masses and decide issues at the ballot box.

Jihad culture is now deeply woven into Pakistan’s national fabric. Unraveling it won’t be easy. But it is essential. Heavy-handed rule from Musharraf – or any other general – won’t eliminate Pakistan’s extremist elements. The development of a robust civil society – though painful in the short term – will aid democracy, marginalize radicals, and bring Pakistan back from the brink.

Some may think that Musharraf’s scheme to stay enthroned is a necessary evil in the service of a greater good. That’s half right: It is evil, but it’s not necessary. The West needs to exert pressure on him to show real courage – and to bring real reform – by holding himself accountable to voters and making coming elections an honest affair.

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

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