The new US strategy

FOLLOWING the recent visit of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Islamabad and New Delhi, the Bush administration has announced a new strategy for long-term US engagement with the South Asian region. An important element of this strategy is to build relations with Pakistan and India at the same time.

“What we are trying to do,” says Ms Rice, “is break out of the notion that this is hyphenated relationship somehow, that anything that happens that is good for Pakistan has to be bad for India and vice versa.”

Explaining the salient features of the new strategy, the US Secretary of State, in an interview published in the Washington Post, said she had been struck by the September 11 Commission advice to “invest in the relationship with Pakistan” or risk recreating the situation of the 1990s,when it forged links to the Taliban in Afghanistan. “Pakistan has come a long way,” Ms Rice went on, “it is on a better trajectory than it has ever been, or that it has been in many, many years.”

From the Pakistan point of view, the most significant element in the new package is the US decision to sell F-16s to Pakistan which is a reversal of US policy dating back to 1990 when Washington blocked the sale of F-16 jets as a sanction against Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. US officials have not identified the type of F-16s that will be offered to Pakistan, though they have made it clear that it will not be a version that is explicitly configured to carry nuclear weapons. Foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri says Pakistan will get the latest version of F-16 C/D and the US has set no limit on the number of planes Pakistan could buy.

There has been no comment from Lockheed, but the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia, estimates that the F-16s may cost about $35 million each. This, of course, does not include the cost of maintenance equipment and spare parts which may raise the price to $60 million to $70 million a piece, or even more. Our last purchase of F-16s was for $25 million a piece.

The nation expects that negotiations with the company on prices will be conducted with utmost transparency and scrupulousness. Since the delivery of F-16s is not likely to begin before 2008, Pakistan must keep in mind the reported decision of Lockheed to close down this line afterwards and start the production of a new model of combat jet.

As a part of the new strategy, Washington has also announced plans for “a decisively broader strategic relationship” with India and has not even ruled out the prospect of helping New Delhi develop nuclear power plants. As part of the plan, the US has offered India the F-18 aircraft with a licence to manufacture them in India, civilian nuclear energy and cooperation in space energy. It has also offered to help New Delhi increase its missile defence and early warning system. Therefore, there is no reason for New Delhi to worry about the supply of F-16s to Pakistan because what the US is now offering India is far more substantial and of a strategic nature. Faced with a challenge to its supremacy from a rising China, the US has no choice but to “ bet on India”, as succinctly put by India’s top strategic thinker, K. Subrahmanyam.

The offer for expanded cooperation is actually a part of US efforts to deepen ties with India as it moves away from its Cold War past as a heavily state-controlled economy, friendly with the Soviet Union. Despite its so called “disappointment” over the proposed sale of F-16s to Pakistan, New Delhi will continue to build a stronger and closer relationship with Washington, as it serves its vital national interests.

Coming back to the proposed sale of F-16s to Pakistan, it will no doubt be regarded as a personal achievement for President Musharraf. It will strengthen his position in his real constituency — the military. According to Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, the author of the recently published book, The Idea of Pakistan, the proposed sale “symbolizes American support” for the policies of President Pervez Musharraf. Continuing, Cohen significantly says in addition to rewarding Musharraf’s steps against nuclear proliferation and terrorists, the sale may bolster Pakistan’s military enough to help it reach an agreement with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz says the US decision to sell F-16s is a reward for supporting the US war on terror. But many in Pakistan are not convinced and ask the question: why has it taken almost four years to announce this reward and why this particular juncture to make it public?

The sequence of events has made confusion worse confounded. First came the ground-preparing statement of Information Minister Sheikh Rashid to the effect that Dr A. Q. Khan’s underground network supplied centrifuges to Iran. Then came the denial of the foreign office spokesman of a foreign newspaper report that Pakistan would be supplying components of centrifuges to the IAEA to check whether they were similar to the ones available with Iran.

But that denial boomeranged when President Musharraf announced that Pakistan was indeed considering sending a sample centrifuge to the IAEA in the context of allegations against Iran. And now a new twist has been introduced by the Pakistan foreign minister that Islamabad might hand over out-of date pieces of centrifuges at the “express request of Iran and the IAEA.” Are these injudicious efforts designed to conceal the fact that there has been a quid pro quo for the supply of F-16s?

The fate of the proposed gas pipeline from Iran hangs in the balance. During her recent visit, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shared with her Islamabad hosts her government’s concerns about the gas pipeline project. Her message in New Delhi and Islamabad was clear and unambiguous — Washington does not want the project to go ahead.

There was a time when Pakistan used to say that the pipeline from Iran would be feasible even if it were not extended to India. What is Islamabad’s position now? Will it be swayed by US foreign policy objectives and will Iran become off limits? If Iran is going to be to the Junior Bush administration what Iraq was to the Senior Bush, then Ms Rice’s message on the pipeline will certainly be repeated again and again and more forcefully.

It is a pity that the gas pipeline from Iran may become a victim of American foreign policy objectives because, if implemented, it would give both India and Pakistan a big economic stake in peace, an avowed objective of American South Asian policy. As far as India is concerned, the import of natural gas from Iran is an important element in New Delhi’s search for energy security.

At the invitation of the Pakistan prime minister, the Indian petroleum minister Mani Shanker Aiyar will pay a visit to Islamabad in May to discuss the Iran-India gas pipeline and prospects for bilateral cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector. The Indian petroleum minister will visit Tehran in June to seal a deal for the import of natural gas from Iran to India through Pakistan. This means Iran is not off limits and its gas pipeline continues to be a viable project for both Pakistan and India. New Delhi may however, exploit Tehran’s keenness to go ahead with the project to bargain for a better price.

The pipeline project will open up a new and potentially exciting chapter in Indo-Pakistan bilateral relations. Since each side will get an economic stake in the other, this is bound to generate stability and predictability in the political equation. Another advantage of the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline can be that its grid can be extended into Turkmenistan to allow Central Asian and Caspian gas to flow in. Also, the grid can be extended to China thereby tying Iran, Pakistan, India, China and Central Asia into a common energy network that would also lower the cost of transportation.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Learning from China

IT is sheer coincidence that the Chinese Premier Wen Jaibao and the Pakistan President Parvez Musharraf are visiting New Delhi within the space of four days this month. One leaves India on April 12 and the other arrives on 17. In a way, both are coming for the same purpose: to firm up the right on the Indian territory they claim.

However, the difference between the two is that Beijing has created congenial conditions for an agreement, establishing trade routes and economic ties with New Delhi. Islamabad, on the other hand, has yet to offer New Delhi the most favoured nation (MFN) status that India gave Pakistan some years ago. Islamabad concedes it has no other option because of the obligation under the WTO charter but doesn’t know how to cope with hostile domestic lobby.

There is yet another big difference. China froze its claim on the Indian territory so as to move ahead in other fields. Both sides decided not to disturb the status quo, although it tilted towards China. The result is the confidence the two have built to take up the prickly border question.

Pakistan wants even the 56-year-old Line of Control (LoC) to break up like a glass, as Musharraf put it in his latest statement. He does not favour implementing the confidence-building measures (CBMs) until there is a settlement on Kashmir. The threatening attitude by Islamabad has not undergone any change over the years, unlike that of Beijing which has been cooing peace for some time. It has reportedly offered to exchange the territory it has claimed in Arunachal Pradesh in the west with India’s recognition of China’s possession of Aksai Chin area in the east. New Delhi has come a long way since this is more or less what China had suggested to India as a solution before the 1962 war.

It may sound comical but New Delhi used to treat Beijing in the same manner as Islamabad does New Delhi. India’s stance then was not to hold any dialogue with China until it returned the territory it had occupied in the 1962 war. New Delhi has taken almost 25 years to face facts: one, what it claims may not tally with the reality on the ground; two, it is in no position to take back the lost territory forcibly. In adopting this line, the successive governments at the centre have gone even against parliament’s unanimous resolution to recover every inch of Indian land under the Chinese occupation. Pakistan may have to traverse the same path to come to the conclusion that the LoC cannot be changed nor can Kashmir settled through ultimatums or wars which, in any case, the two countries have fought four times in the last 50 years. The situation does not look like changing even after Pakistan’s acquisition of F-16s which at best can fuel the arms race.

This happened some 35 years ago when America gave Pakistan the Patton tanks. At that time also, Washington had assured New Delhi that Islamabad would not be allowed to use the Patton tanks against India. But it could not do anything when Pakistan introduced them in the 1965 war. F-16s are worse because they are the carriers of nuclear weapons. If hostilities are ruled out, then why F-16s or any other weapons?

Washington knows all that. But it has to sustain its armament factories which have many US Congressmen and senators in their pocket. It is no secret that the Lockheed Martin that produces F-16s was about to slash its workforce because it had no orders. The supply to Pakistan will keep the plant going and if India follows the Pakistan’s example, the Lockheed Martin may need to expand its business.

That the US is willing to give India more sophisticated weapons only complicates the situation, making Pakistan feel more insecure and taking the normalization between New Delhi and Islamabad farther. Dictatorship and democracy mean the same thing to America when its own interests are involved.

This is the reason why ‘China resents the role of the US in the Asia-Pacific region’, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ruefully realized when she was not occupying the position. Understandably, Beijing does not want Washington to poke its nose all over the world, definitely not in the area that China believes is close to its frontiers. It is also worried over the proposition that America may “build India into a world power to counter China”. This may well explain why Beijing is keen on burying the hatchet with New Delhi even on the boundary question.

Otherwise also, the hostility with India does not pay China which has realized that the democratic system it resented during Jawaharlal Nehru’s days is not expansive in its policies. Nor is it difficult to live with such a country. In fact, Beijing wants to correct the impression that the communist China cannot live as a friend with the democratic India. The Chinese premier told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Laos recently that “the handshake between you and me will catch the attention of the world”. This is also meant to convey the US a message of sorts.

China is, therefore, keen on India and Pakistan finding a peaceful solution to their problems. This, Beijing believes, will keep America out of the region. China is as much talking about ‘a strategic alliance’ with Pakistan as America is talking about India. But what Washington and Beijing really want is to suck India and Pakistan into their scheme of things.

Alas, both New Delhi and Islamabad are still not focused on their region. Why don’t they come together to constitute another centre of power, from Iran to Myanmar. They are culturally akin to each other and command resources and markets which can excel other economic and military arrangements. They are talking about everything except an economic union. Were they to concentrate on forging alliances they would have America at their door, not the vise-versa.

People in India and Pakistan have shown that they want to live in peace. They have discovered that both can hit it off well. They should freeze their territorial disputes, as China has done, till they have built enough confidence in each other to take up even the most intractable problem like Kashmir. New Delhi and Beijing have walked far through the trade way.

This does not mean that Kashmir should be put on the back burner. The process of Kashmiris talking among themselves that began at Kathmandu should gain momentum. They should be allowed to meet freely. Something concrete may emerge from these contacts. India and Pakistan can pick up the thread from where the Kashmiris let it off.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

Rumsfeld and the generals

SOMETIME this summer President Bush will pick a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to lead a US military that has been battered by the war in Iraq. When you ask military officers who should get the job, the first thing many say is that the military needs someone who can stand up to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The tension between Rumsfeld and the uniformed military has been an open secret in Washington these past four years. It was compounded by the Iraq war, but it began almost from the moment Rumsfeld took over at the Pentagon. The grumbling about his leadership partly reflected the military’s resistance to change and its reluctance to challenge a brilliant but headstrong civilian leader. But in Iraq, Rumsfeld has pushed the services — especially the Army — near the breaking point. The military is right that the next chairman of the JCS must be someone who can push back.

The process of selecting the next chairman is one of those subterranean Washington political affairs that the public often learns about when it’s over. But it is already a subject of lively discussion among current and former officers. Since there’s so much at stake in this year’s decision, here’s a JCS form sheet, based on conversations with current and retired officers and Pentagon civilians:

To appreciate the difficulty of the job, think about the body language when Rumsfeld holds a news conference with the current chairman, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers. Rumsfeld is feisty, irreverent, outspoken; Myers is decorous, upright, respectful. Perhaps that’s the way it should be, but some in the military argue that Myers has taken deference too far. His friends counter that working for Rumsfeld isn’t easy and that Myers has tried, quietly and behind the scenes, to challenge the secretary when he was over the line.

Iraq has been a delicate dilemma for Myers — he needs to support the president’s policy publicly while also challenging the civilians privately. Critics think Myers sometimes erred in sounding too dutifully supportive, as in comments he made during an April 2004 visit to Iraq. The insurgency had exploded so violently then that there was contingency planning to evacuate the Green Zone. But Myers blandly called the intense fighting “a symptom of the success that we’re having here in Iraq,” according to a forthcoming history of the war by The Post’s Thomas E. Ricks.

The leading candidate to succeed Myers is the current vice chairman, Marine Gen. Peter Pace. He has served as Myers’s deputy since October 2001 and is the image of the solid, square-jawed Marine. His supporters say that after four years of dealing with the White House and Pentagon civilians, he has unique skills, especially in operating at the interface of political and military affairs. Pace’s detractors argue that he has been co-opted by Rumsfeld. They complain that he will sometimes pull his punches in meetings with the secretary and avoid criticizing him face to face.

Some observers think Rumsfeld has already decided to recommend Pace, and that he’s likely to pick Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani as Pace’s vice chairman. Giambastiani is a leading military expert on Rumsfeld’s pet topic of high-tech “transformation.” A Pace-Giambastiani team might help Rumsfeld lock in his legacy, but at a cost of continued grumbling in the Pentagon corridors.

A second Marine candidate is Gen. James Jones, who’s currently the NATO commander. He’s smart and sophisticated, with the polish of a corporate CEO. It’s said he was considered for chairman last time around but signalled that he wasn’t interested, and he was recently on the short list for director of national intelligence. Jones wouldn’t be pushed around by anyone, but observers wonder whether he would have the right chemistry with Rumsfeld and Bush.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

US’s F-16 game plan

WHAT does the military-industrial complex do when it runs out of enemies? No problem, darling. It still has friends. And with friends like India and Pakistan, who needs enemies?

Military hardware is surely the most astonishingly brilliant con ever devised. You spend millions on creating a fabulous death machine, offer it to one side in the name of security/superiority, and then make it a must-buy for the other in the name of parity. Talk of a win-win situation. By the time you’ve created an F-16 it’s a no-brainer.

The only concern about the F-16s that the United States is finally delivering to Pakistan (they were sold heaven knows how many years ago) is whether all these years of disuse have converted them into F-15s. However, Pakistan’s defence establishment will ensure that what it receives is in mint-shape. India’s parallel purchasing force must have already measured out what is needed for strategic compensation.

Money, of course, is no object. It rarely is for governments. It never is for governments spending on patriotism. Have you ever stopped to consider why governments on principle have no respect for money? Because a government is the only body, apart from the awkwardly named non-government organisation, or NGO, which does not have to earn what it spends. A government simply orders us to pay a large percentage of what we have earned, legitimately, and gives that arbitrary order the force of law through the will of parliament. Governments do not earn, they spend. And “patriotic spending” is the ultimate holy cow: he who challenges it does so at serious risk. Pakistan’s defence budget is passed as a one-line item. The one section that is never questioned in an Indian finance minister’s speech is any rise in defence spending.

Bill Clinton was the only politician I can recall who actually took advantage of the peace dividend following the collapse of the Soviet empire, and cut the budgets of both the Pentagon and the CIA. But Clinton was an unusual man. With George Bush, life is back to normal. To be fair, 9/11 did not take place under Clinton’s watch, but Bush is a traditionalist of the military-industrial complex cadre who would have found ways and means to strengthen its profitability.

True, the F-16s can carry nuclear weapons. And if George Bush has decided to go ahead with the delivery of these planes, then this means official American recognition of Pakistan, and by corollary, India, as acceptable and mature nuclear powers. This is the most welcome aspect of this arms deal. America cannot now revert to the non-proliferation regime.

If it has sold some of its finest weapons-delivery means to nuclear powers, then it cannot pretend that it still expects them to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. Clinton put serious pressure on both countries to disband their nuclear arms, as Strobe Talbott’s excellent memoir on the subcontinent, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb, reveals.

Clinton had bullied Narasimha Rao into inaction when Rao wanted to declare India’s nuclear status, and thought, mistakenly, that he could repeat his performance. (Choice morsel from Talbott’s book, always worth re-savouring: the Clinton White House learnt of Pokharan 2 from CNN rather than the CIA. The CIA therefore got all the three Bigs of the last 15 years wrong. It failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. It failed to predict India’s bomb. And of course it got Iraq hopelessly wrong. Clinton must have cut the CIA budget with special glee.) Bush has ended that element of Clinton’s policy, for there is no endorsement better than arms sales.

Since one consequence of nuclear capability is the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) syndrome, the presence of F-16s in both countries might, paradoxically, strengthen notions of security among the insecure, and contribute further to the search for peace. Peace has never been a problem for sensible people. One assumes that insensible opinion in Pakistan has now concluded that Kashmir cannot be solved by war, and insensible opinion in India has decided that Pakistan cannot be destroyed by military aggression. Hawks will always search for better claws, but is there any ceiling to an arms race?

Just recently President Pervez Musharraf declared that Pakistan had crossed a vital threshold when it achieved more than minimum deterrence capability. Indian defence ministers have always been blunt about their ability to deliver maximum punishment on the enemy in case India becomes the victim of a first strike. So what has the policy become now? Maximum deterrence? Mid-level deterrence?

The truth may be simpler. There is a visceral attraction to new weapons systems which defence establishments might find impossible to resist. War is fought between enemies, but the puppeteers of war, the arms manufacturers have no enemies. They only have friends. Any and every customer is welcome in the arms bazaar. They have no ideology. Their faith is written with the ink on a chequebook. Their inspiration is fear, and their catechism is the spread of suspicion. The fear does not have to be real; imaginary will do, as long as it can be sustained in the imagination.

Morality does not enter this game. Morality is for nerds. As long as you have the wherewithal, weapons are available, whether it be a flying machine or flying mortar. During a conversation the other day, Inder Malhotra, one of the greats of Indian journalism, mentioned that the 16 months of ceasefire that had held between India and Pakistan must be the longest uninterrupted trouble-free period in memory. The one incident of exchange of mortar, he added, was by “non-state” sources. Was mortar of such calibre so freely available to “non-state sources”, I wondered.

He laughed at my naivete. Had I seen the news on television, he asked, the previous evening? All I had to do was see the weapons that had been seized from an Indian Rajdhani train to realize what was available on our subcontinent from “non-state” sources. Some arms manufacturer somewhere must be thanking God for creating Indians and Pakistanis of a particular variety.

A basic question must be addressed even if it cannot be adequately, or convincingly, answered: do India and Pakistan need any more hi-tech, exorbitantly priced weapons for each other? Aren’t the nuclear bombs and missiles sufficient?

It is obvious that President Bush treats Pakistan as a vital strategic partner of America in the world’s most volatile region, and wants to reward President Musharraf for the risks the latter has taken in pursuit of a joint strategy with Washington. But surely President Bush also appreciates that there are imponderables.

Would Pakistan be as cooperative in its support of American military action as it was during the war against the Taliban, if the United States moved against Iran? Nor can Pakistan choose to be aloof, as it has been about the war in Iraq. Iran is a border state. There cannot be a clause in the sale contract insisting that the F-16s are permitted to fly in only one direction — towards India!

One presumes that the American decision is part of a larger scenario in which Pakistan is a pro-American fortress guarding the eastern walls of the Middle East region. This would in turn fit in well with the American desire to see peace between India and Pakistan, so that Pakistan stops being a hostage, in its mind, to the Indian threat. The problem with such formulations is that they are drawn on shifting sand, vulnerable to passing storms.

It is possible that someone in Washington has calculated that both India and Pakistan need a weapons upgrade from the West; that India’s defence budget is too Russia-centric; and that the best way to force India to turn west for arms is to supply Pakistan with them. This seems possible if only because it sounds logical. But is it the logic of a think tank strategist or a defence contractor?

I only have the questions. I wish I had the answers.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.

Settlement expansion

PRESIDENT BUSH didn’t leave much room for doubt about his position on Israeli settlement construction when he last addressed the issue. The government of Ariel Sharon “must freeze settlement activity,” the president said in a speech to European leaders in Brussels in February.

Moreover, he added, a Palestinian state “of scattered territories will not work.” The large settlement expansion announced by Mr Sharon’s government last week grossly violates both those principles. Construction of the 3,500 new homes between the existing West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim and East Jerusalem, on what is now barren land, would contravene previous Israeli commitments to the Bush administration and the U.S.-sponsored “road map” for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

By sealing off Jerusalem Arab neighbourhoods from the West Bank as well as a key north-south corridor, it also would make a contiguous Palestinian state practically impossible.

In that sense Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was only stating the obvious when she said that the settlement plan was “at odds with American policy.” It is, in fact, an important test of whether Mr Bush will be willing to press Israel as well as the Palestinians to take the steps necessary to realize his vision of a two-state solution.

In his first term, Mr Bush almost never differed with Mr Sharon: That was in part because the administration blamed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the continuing conflict and because the Israeli leader made a point of working closely with the White House.

In this case, Mr Sharon must have known that his new initiative might be troublesome.

— The Washington Post