India-US strategic ties

The bestowing of strategic ally status on India by the United States is the culmination of a post-cold war process to strengthen and broaden relationship between the two countries which, in the words of US national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, "goes beyond security, proliferation or regional issues."

The geo-strategic interests of Washington and New Delhi have brought them closer to each other and the newly-developed 'strategic partnership' will not only lead to major geo-political changes in the region but also enable India to fulfil its long-cherished dream of playing a greater role in Asia.

Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee, hailing the relaxation of US controls on exports to his country - which comes after years of lobbying by New Delhi - expressed satisfaction that the vision of India-US strategic partnership, shared by him and the US president, was now a reality. According to him, the relationship is based increasingly on "common values and common interests."

President Bush, who described the expanded cooperation as "an important milestone" in their bilateral relations, is hopeful that the collaboration in new areas will "deepen the ties of commerce and friendship between our two nations and will increase stability in Asia and beyond." In his meeting with Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha on January 20, President Bush discussed the next steps in their strategic relationship.

The United States has had a testy relationship with India for almost half a century. Viewed against this background, the latest turn-around in their relations is remarkable. The reasons are not far to seek. China is no doubt an important factor in growing relations between Washington and New Delhi as the United States wants to build up India to counter-balance the growing power of China. Another important reason - far more urgent at the moment - is to muster Indian support to fight Islamic extremism and terror in the region.

According to reports appearing in US media, policy makers in Washington appear to be of the view that in the "most volatile" part of the world - the Islamic crescent from Turkey to Malaysia - only Israel and India can be depended upon to act as a regional stabilizing force. New Delhi and Tel Aviv represent the two most potent non-Muslim militaries in the entire region extending from one end of the Islamic crescent to the other.

This line of argument became even more convincing when an old and trustworthy ally like Turkey declined to help the United States at a crucial time in last year's Iraq war. After that the neo-conservatives in Washington began focussing attention on developing three-way ties between Israel, India and the United States.

The green signal from Washington to Tel Aviv to go ahead with the sale of its advanced Phalcon air-borne reconnaissance system to India is indicative of the new trend. Some years back, the Clinton administration had disallowed the sale of Phalcon system to India. The relaxation of export controls will immensely increase technology cooperation between the two countries on space, missile defence and civilian nuclear programmes.

Some Indian security analysts think that by enhancing technology cooperation, Washington has given de facto recognition to India's nuclear status. Under the agreement, the US will gradually relax export controls through a series of "reciprocal steps" in which India will tighten its export regime. Washington and New Delhi will also expand cooperation on nuclear regulatory and safety measures and missile defence. It may be recalled that India was one of the first countries to welcome the Bush administration's missile defence plans in 2001 - in marked contrast to China's reaction.

The US decision to relax technology controls will also have a salutary effect on Indian business sectors - from space to information technology. Indian companies are particularly interested in importing from the United States products in the defence sector, biotechnology, space and software industries. At the moment, for example, in biotechnology Indian companies are prevented from importing from the United States sophisticated nanotechnology under existing restrictions. Therefore, the relaxation of technology exports, will give a huge boost to Indian industry as a whole.

It is interesting to note that the announcement about the relaxation of technology controls and the 'strategic partnership' between the United States and India was announced after the Islamabad peace process had taken off. Though US officials have denied any link between the two, the connection is too obvious to be brushed off.

The backlash in Pakistan would have been far more intemperate and extensive if Islamabad and New Delhi had not buried the hatchet and started a purposeful peace process. It also appears that the American offer to increase technology cooperation may have acted as one of the incentives for India to express its willingness to settle all disputes, including that of Kashmir, through a composite and meaningful dialogue with Pakistan.

For a change, the Pakistan foreign office has not come out with a knee-jerk reaction to Washington's announcement of 'strategic partnership' with New Delhi. As a matter of fact, Islamabad has wisely chosen to keep quiet over this issue because any public expression of dissatisfaction or displeasure by us would not have made any ripples in Washington. As far as the Indians are concerned, any adverse reaction from us would have nipped the recently launched peace process.

The time has come when Pakistan must face the ground realities as they exist and not as it would like them to be. Compared to India, we are a small country and cannot hope to be an effective rival of our big neighbour in international politics. It is therefore futile on our part to oppose India's efforts to achieve its potential and act as a big power in world politics - we simply cannot prevent it. Even the pretence to being the rival of India became meaningless after the country had been halved by the separation of East Pakistan.

Pakistan's obsession with being treated as equal to India is actually a legacy of pre-partition days' rivalry between the Muslim League and the Congress. After the Cabinet Mission Plan, when the British withdrawal from India became a certainty, the Muslim League demanded 50 per cent share for 30 per cent Indian Muslims at the centre - equal representation for Muslim majority provinces with Hindu majority provinces at the centre, which of course was not acceptable to the Congress.

Instead of adopting a negative attitude towards India's progress, we should focus on making Pakistan a progressive, democratic, peaceful, stable and prosperous country. If rivalry with India has become a part of our psyche and we cannot live without it, then let us have a healthy rivalry - competition with our neighbour in the fields of individual freedoms, human rights, independent judiciary, free and fair elections, peaceful transfer of power, treatment of minorities, economic prosperity, the care of the elderly and poor, social reforms, literacy rate, the quality of education and, of course, sports. Let us hope this is not asking too much of most Pakistanis. The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

2004: the year of decision

History normally runs on rails, with one development following another in fairly obvious succession. Colourful personalities and dramatic events abound, and it may seem like a roller-coaster ride at times, but twenty years later the outcome is just about what you would have expected at the start.

Once in a while, however, history goes right off the rails - and this may be one of those times. We'll probably know for certain by the end of this year (2004).

Two years ago we were being told that 9/11 had changed everything, but that was just media hype. In reality 9/11 changed nothing except Americans' mistaken belief that they were invulnerable to foreign threats, and normally the 'terrorist threat' would have faded into the background in a year or so, to be replaced in the headlines by some trendy new problem. But a hijack has occurred, and the course of history really may have changed. That would be very bad.

Americans are still largely invulnerable to foreign threats, but a tiny chink labelled 'terrorism' has opened up in their armour, and both the US government and the Islamist terrorists who planned 9/11 are working overtime to make that the central issue in global affairs. They are pursuing their own private agendas, of course, but the combination of huge American power and extreme Islamist violence has persuaded far too many people that the 'war on terror' is what global politics is really about in the early 21st century.

The 'war on terror' is a huge distraction from the real priorities that face the world. The human population of this planet has tripled in the past sixty years. Even if it never doubles again, that puts enormous pressure on both resources and the environment. The pressure is mounting even faster because many of those who have been poor (including most Asians) are rapidly industrialising and raising their consumption levels.

Meanwhile, those who are left out of the prosperity, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, become ever more desperate and resentful. The tightly interconnected wealth-producing machine that is the globalised economy is tremendously vulnerable to environmental catastrophes, political shocks, or even financial mismanagement. There is a full agenda that needs our undivided attention if we are to get through the next half-century without a really big blow-up.

Until recently, things were looking pretty hopeful, because the biggest obstacles to global action on these issues had been removed one after another. The cold war ended, and the great powers began to cooperate.

Democracy spread around the world by non-violent means, and with the help of globalised mass media something that you could call world public opinion began to emerge. Complex multilateral deals were made on difficult issues like trade and climate change.

During the '90s, the way the world worked was changing fast enough that we seemed to have a chance of making it through the first half of the 21st century without a big smash and a massive die-back of the human population. Bad things happened in small, out-of-the way places like Bosnia and Rwanda, but the broad trend was reassuring. It still is, but broad trends have been dislocated by relatively local events in the past.

China was not doomed to go into centuries of isolation and stagnation in the early 15th century just as its immense wealth, technological prowess and ocean-going fleets had positioned it to dominate the entire planet. Europe didn't have to throw away a century of relative peace and rapidly rising prosperity in the needless cataclysm of the First World War. If the emperor Zhu Di's favourite concubine had not been killed by the lightning strike that burned down the Forbidden City in 1421, or if Gavrilo Princip had gone home after failing to assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand on his first try in Sarajevo in 1914, everything might have been very different.

Things would certainly be very different now if the Al Qaeda hijackers had been caught before they carried out 9/11, or if George W. Bush had not been awarded victory by the US Supreme Court after the 2000 election. What we are living with now is a runaway fluke.

A small band of Islamist fanatics is trying to provoke a global confrontation between the West and Islam as a way of levering themselves into power in Muslim countries, and a US administration dominated by neo-conservative ideologues is using this threat to justify their own project for global American hegemony through military power. Neither is likely to succeed, but between them they could wreck both the institutions and the spirit of multilateral cooperation that were going to ease our way through the real crises that are coming.

For every fluke that actually derails the train of history, hundreds do not. Both the United Nations and the Nato alliance are already in a potentially terminal crisis, but it is still too early to say whether this one will change our future for the worse. It could all be over by next year.

By this time next year, we will know whether the Bush administration's adventure in Iraq has succeeded or failed, and whether Mr. Bush himself has been re-elected or defeated. Without the neo-cons in Washington to inflate their importance, the Islamist terrorists would dwindle to a minor policy problem, and normal service would be resumed on all the important global issues. Decisive years are generally something you would prefer to avoid, but this is going to be one.- Copyright

Now the 'peace bomb'

It was not a day after. It was 10 days later. The peace bomb had exploded in Pakistan in the shape of a joint statement. The devastation of hard-liners was nearly complete. At Lahore and Islamabad the people I talked to spoke about travel and trade, not jihad or jung (war).

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf had given words to their silent prayers. They had become so tired of terrorism and so pessimist about their country's future that they had only to be caressed to spring to response.

This does not mean that there is no odd note in the pleasing music of conciliation. A few religious groups and the remnants of hawkish mind use strong language when they criticize the joint statement. For them, the "anti-Indianism" represents the ethos of Pakistan. But their number is small and they look isolated. The desire to make up with India is building into an avalanche, threatening to wash away every impediment in the way of normalization.

In the process, Musharraf has gained in height and acceptability. It is not that the sentiment for democracy has lessened but it is felt that he is better than the alternatives available in the country. Nearly all political parties go on reiterating their backing.

The army corps commanders have gone on record to support the joint statement publicly and most newspaper columnists - a powerful lot in Pakistan - have suddenly begun to argue that India is the country's best bet. This may well be a genuine realization. But it comes at a time when people are ahead of them and firmly believe that they must bury the hatchet with India.

Former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, rang up a Pakistani editor last week to complain that the Lahore Declaration he had signed with Vajpayee was no different in content from the joint statement. He is probably right. The Jamaat-i-Islami, which has welcomed the joint statement too, had at that time shown its anger by throwing brickbats at diplomats and others who were travelling to the venue of banquet in honour of Vajpayee at Lahore.

Indeed, the mood in Pakistan has completely changed. Partly it is because of the 9/11 attacks and America's ultimatum to Islamabad to come on board to fight against terrorism.

Partly, it is the fallout from the people-to-people contact and visits by parliamentarians to each other's country. I could see when I led the Indian parliamentarian delegation to Pakistan six months ago a recognizable change taking place in the attitude of the people, a sort of determination to have peace as if the past 55 years had been a waste.

People in India are still niggardly in their reciprocity. True, those who made fun of the 'mombattiwalahs', lighting candles at the border, look sheepish. The BJP that has followed an anti-Pakistan line is cautious because it realizes that Vajpayee has too much stake in peace. The pro-party scribes are embarrassingly too vociferous in their support. Still the mood across the border is more upbeat and more gushing, although laced with suspicion.

Yet the biggest change has come in Musharraf himself. He is unrecognizable from the Agra days. He has given up petulance and learnt patience. "He is really a changed man," top journalists told me. Some attribute it to the attempts made on his life. Some think that Washington has twisted his arm. They may be contributory factors.

What really counted with him was Vajpayee's assurance and his own conviction that India and Pakistan could solve the problems, including Kashmir, through a composite dialogue. At one stage during the talks in Islamabad, Vajpayee's insistence on a particular phraseology on terrorism made Musharraf say that they could drop the joint statement. The atmosphere became tense. But then both of them changed the tone and tenor of their talk to span the distance.

It is not only Musharraf but also the Pakistanis on the whole who have put their faith in Vajpayee despite their dislike for the BJP he leads. Their expectations from him have soared high and they are awaiting something concrete, however small, emerging in the next few weeks. The mere beginning of talks will not satisfy them; something else should come along.

At several meetings of intellectuals, journalists and legislators I raised the question: What would they like India to do? One suggestion that came up at every meeting was that visas should be made available across the window without the condition to report to the police (I was shadowed by the Pakistani police even this time).

People argued that the spies did not require a visa to travel; they had their own ways to come in. Another suggestion was to reserve seats for the Pakistani students in our technical and management institutes. And at all the meetings the resumption of trade was proposed without waiting for the operation of Safta (South Asian Free Trade Area) two years hence.

On Kashmir, I was surprised to find the absence of rhetoric or even the demand for its integration with Pakistan. A solution should be found, however long it took, was the general opinion. True, people are willing to wait but it would be folly on our part to believe that without a solution on Kashmir or the mere status quo could normalise relations.

One who knows the mind of Musharraf warned me that he might wait for a year for the solution of Kashmir. If it did not take place by then he might go back to his 'old ways.' I hope not. But some equation on Kashmir, if not a solution, should come about before Musharraf gives up his uniform as the chief of the army staff at the end of this year. An army chief in Pakistan becomes a point of parallel authority the moment he steps in.

Maybe, some steps should be taken to institutionalize what has been proposed in the joint statement. Our parliament should endorse it. Once our parliament puts its seal of approval, the Pakistan National Assembly and the Senate would be forced to follow suit. The writer is a free lance columnist based in New Delhi.