Neighbourhood watch

In South Asia, US president Barack Obama’s top priority in the next few years will be the Pakistan-Afghanistan situation. As this situation will remain unstable, the level of US frustration will remain high too. The relationship with India will feel the impact of this.

We face an opportunity and a danger. The US has now an apocalyptic view of Pakistan, which has replaced Afghanistan as the real problem. Pakistan’s collapse, as a nuclear power, presents a nightmare scenario. Accordingly, the US should show a determination to steer Pakistan away from hostility towards India, and stem the tide of Islamism there.

The danger comes from Pakistan’s well-honed tactics to dupe the US, extract a military and economic price for cooperation, propagate the “existential” threat from India and demand US intervention on India related issues. The limits of even US’s power in dealing with a nuclear weapon state should not be underestimated. US may end up yielding to some of Pakistan’s demands. Already, the danger of India being seen as a “problem” can be sensed. Our refusal to engage with Pakistan unless our bottom lines on the Mumbai attack are met will become an irritant and a point of pressure on us. As a regional power, and one with future global responsibilities, we will be told to share the burden of responsibilities rather than ride on the back of others.

China will be projected as a benevolent actor to put us further on the defensive. China has already begun talking of involving India, not because of the need to take cognisance of our sensitivities as the West may think, but to promote the agenda of linking the situation on Pakistan’s eastern frontier to a solution to the Af-Pak problem.

Statements made by secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the US pressure on us to not react to Pakistani provocations and resume the dialogue with Pakistan, and General Petraeus’s remark that India is very much part of US envoy to Af-Pak Richard Holbrooke’s mandate, indicate the core of US thinking, no matter what diplomatic gloss is put on it to soften the reality.

Earlier, the US was seeking an India-Pakistan engagement to stabilise the environment in South Asia so that it could deal with Afghanistan in cooperation with Pakistan. Now the US will seek India’s help in stabilising the deteriorating situation in Pakistan itself, which threatens to make the situation in Afghanistan more difficult to deal with.

Yet the US will not want to lose India’s goodwill and open a contentious diplomatic front with us. It has therefore to play its cards astutely. Exhortations to Pakistan by top US leaders to concentrate on the enemy within and not be obsessed by the Indian threat strike the right note, but our guard should not be lowered because of this tactical US shift. US expectations of some appeasing gestures by India towards Pakistan will move up the diplomatic ladder if progress on the Af-Pak front stalls.

With the appointment of envoys for Afghanistan by many countries, a consensus is emerging among them to seek India’s cooperation in a collective framework. The US strategy to press India for steps that would reassure Pakistan will be pursued on its behalf by other countries, especially European.

The US will not be able to resolve the central contradiction in its objectives. It wants concessions from India, which India has no reason to give without a quid pro quo. It is unwilling to compel Pakistan to end terrorism against India and take action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack, a minimum condition for us to resume the India-Pakistan dialogue. The US cannot seriously ask India to reduce its presence in Afghanistan, to which Pakistan is fiercely opposed. It wants Pakistan to fight the Taliban wholeheartedly, while the Pakistanis consider some of these elements as their strategic assets in Afghanistan.

After past statements expressing confidence about their safety, the US is now feeding concerns about the danger of Pakistan collapsing and its nuclear weapons falling into the hands of religious extremists. The reasons behind such dramatisation would be to mobilise greater Congressional support for the economic-military aid package for Pakistan without tight conditions as well as stepped up effort by the international community in the region, besides pressuring the Pakistan government and the military to combat the Pakistani Taliban more forcefully.

US commitment upfront to massive economic and military aid to Pakistan signals reward, not punishment, for non-performance. So long as Pakistan’s India-related demands to the US are motivated by hostility, as is the case, US arms support to Pakistan will cause us concern, which the Americans will disregard. This can impede trust building, necessary for an enhanced defence supply relationship between India and the US.

The writer was India’s foreign secretary.