http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2013/10/24/obama-stoops-to-conquer-pakistans-sharif/
Obama stoops to conquer Pakistan’s Sharif
The Joint Statement [JS] issued in Washington on Wednesday following the meeting between President Barack Obama and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif comes as a bombshell to the Indian foreign-policy and security establishment.
The JS not only revives full-spectrum US-Pakistan strategic alliance, it literally harks back to the Cold War era — “The President and the Prime Minister affirmed US-Pakistan friendship and cooperation and recalled our positive contributions to international peace and security at crucial junctures during the Cold War…”
I wrote in my blog earlier in the week, the US desperately needs Pakistan in its traditional role as its regional partner if it is to pursue the new Cold War effectively — that is, to establish the nine military bases in Afghanistan as part of its ‘rebalance’ in southwest Asia, and true to style Sharif came prepared with his wish list.
Without doubt, Obama has gone out of the way to court Pakistan. He has blithely ignored Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s condemnation of Pakistan as the ‘epicentre’ of global terrorism, which the latter made in the White House only last month in his meeting with the US president.
In what amounts to a snub to Manmohan Singh, Obama now hails Pakistan for the immense sacrifices it made in the struggle against terrorism and conveyed his “appreciation for Pakistan’s internal and regional security challenges” and “commended the resolve of the government and people of Pakistan, armed forces, and law enforcement agencies to defeat terrorists and praised Pakistan for its military campaign.”
Obama gave high marks to Pakistan as “an essential partner… in the advancement of shared goals of peace, security…” It will shock Delhi that the Obama-Sharif joint statement twice made oblique reference to Kashmir issue:
1. “They [Obama and Sharif] acknowledged the importance of regional balance and stability in South Asia and pursuing increased transparency and uninterrupted dialogue in support of peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues.” [Emphasis added.]
2. “The two leaders stressed that improvement in Pakistan-India bilateral relations would greatly enhance prospects for lasting regional peace, stability, and prosperity… In this context, President Obama welcomed recent engagements between Prime Minister Sharif and Prime Minister [Manmohan] Singh and expressed hope that this would mark the beginning of a sustained dialogue process between the two neighbours, aimed at building lasting peace in South Asia and resolving all outstanding territorial and other disputes through peaceful means.” [Emphasis added.]
The JS harps on the concept of ’strategic balance’ in South Asia — plainly put, India-Pakistan military and nuclear parity. Elsewhere, JS speaks of ’strategic stability’ pointedly in terms of the nuclear capability of Pakistan and India.
It says, “Prime Minister Sharif affirmed Pakistan’s support for the universal objectives of non-proliferation and disarmament. The two Leaders underscored that all sides should continuously act with maximum restraint and work jointly towards strengthening strategic stability in South Asia.”
This is a complete repudiation of the Indian position that India cannot be equated with Pakistan in regard of the nuclear weapon capability and missile development or its arms build-up. Funnily, Obama has openly certified Pakistan’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.
To be sure, the US expects the fullest cooperation from Pakistan with regard to the road map for Afghanistan that Obama is expected to unveil shortly. The JS expresses appreciation for Pakistan’s helpful role in kickstarting a peace process involving the Taliban and acknowledges that Pakistan also has been a victim of cross-border terrorism.
The US will be rehabilitating the transit routes from Afghanistan leading to Karachi Port that are vital for the current pullout of troops and equipment from Afghanistan and for maintaining the upcoming US military bases.
The Strategic Dialogue forum between the US and Pakistan has been revived which facilitates structured, comprehensive and sustained interaction at the civilian, security and military level. It will meet in Washington in March 2014.
The JS affirms that the US “plans to continue providing assistance and support, including training and equipment to Pakistan’s military and security services.” This was in direct response to Sharif’s hope of “broadening bilateral defense cooperation in areas that serve mutual interest.”
But the big-ticket item seems to be that the US is likely to consider a nuclear deal for Pakistan. The JS devotes a hefty portion to detailing the imperatives of the US assisting Pakistan in meeting the latter’s energy crisis. And, then comes a passage that distinctly suggests something big is in the works. Read the following passage embedded deep within the portion on energy very, very carefully:
“The Leaders emphasized that both sides should work together on a range of options to enable Pakistan to overcome its energy deficiencies and that both sides will hold further discussions in the working groups on Energy and Security, Strategic Stability, and Non-Proliferation.” [Emphasis added.]
Considering the fact that Obama estimates:
a) ”an enduring US-Pakistan partnership is vital to regional and international security”;
b) “US-Pakistan partnership [should be] built on a foundation of mutual interest and respect”;
c) Pakistan is “an essential partner” for the US; that the two countries share commitment to “democracy, human rights, freedom. ad respect of international law”;
d) Pakistan’s “efforts to improve its strategic trade controls and enhance its engagement with multilateral export regimes”;
e) Pakistan’s “constructive engagement” with the Nuclear Security Summit process and the IAEA;
f) “strategic stability” and “strategic balance” is critically needed in South Asia.
Well, considering all above, the likelihood exists that the US is gearing up to meet Pakistan’s longstanding demand for a nuclear deal similar to what India got in 2008, as the prize Washington has to pay for full cooperation from the Pakistani military for the US’s post-2014 strategies in Afghanistan and Central Asia.
To be sure, Indian foreign policy faces a major crisis — arguably, its biggest crisis during the nine years under the stewardship of PM Manmohan Singh. But then, it is India that is at fault. For one thing, Delhi completely goofed up on Afghanistan.
Delhi insisted on viewing the Afghan war as a real war on terror and faithfully co-related it with the India-Pakistan tensions and in that obsessive mindset it overlooked that the US had a geopolitical agenda and the al-Qaeda was an alibi to establish a long-term military presence in the region that overlooks China, Russia, Iran and India.
Even today, Indian pundits have no clue to what is unfolding in Afghanistan and they are talking ad nauseum about the implications of the US’ ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan. (See my article “Post-American” Afghanistan is a chimera.)
The result is that Indian strategic community failed to comprehend why India-Pakistan normalization became so very crucial for the US’ geo-strategy. The Indian pundits got annoyed with US secretary of state John Kerry for advising Delhi that India-Pakistan dialogue process should be maintained at a sustained level and that India-Pakistan normalization would be the best contribution Delhi could make for the stabilization of Afghanistan.
The Indian pundits would have nothing short of a great game in Afghanistan vis-a-vis Pakistan. On top of it, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party made India-Pakistan dialogue an election issue. Some TV channels deliberately kept up a campaign to whip up public sentiments against India-Pakistan dialogue. The result has been that the Manmohan Singh government pulled down the shutters and walked out of the dialogue process with Pakistan.
But history tells us that standstill is invariably a recipe for deterioration of India-Pakistan relations. The Americans know the India-Pakistan history, too, and can very well anticipate some flashpoint coming up in the months ahead.
And they are fed up with India’s political class and self-styled experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is the plain truth. Finally, Obama decided to altogether throw the Indians out of his AfPak agenda and pursue his key objective, which is to get Pakistan on board, especially its military.
Simply put, Obama is a man in great hurry. The US desperately wants the Taliban to be won over, or else, the American bases in Afghanistan will become targets and body bags will start arriving home. Even Bagram air base faces rocket attacks lately.
Delhi should have opened a channel to Beijing a long time ago regarding Afghanistan, given the congruence of interests between the two countries. Interestingly, during Manmohan Singh’s talks in Beijing on Wednesday, China suo moto proposed that the two countries should work together in Afghanistan. Indeed, the RIC [Russia-India-China] meeting at foreign-minister level, which is scheduled to take place in Delhi in November, now assumes much strategic significance. Nonetheless, it needs Herculean effort at the diplomatic level for Delhi to figure a way out of the cul-de-sac in which India’s AfPak policy has landed. Simply put, Delhi made a series of catastrophic errors of judgment through the past seven or eight years. In any mature democracy there would have been accountability for such policy breakdowns, but not in India.
The foreign-policy trajectory during the past nine years of the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh was predicated on the assumption of a profound strategic partnership with the US. Some pundits dreamt of a US-Indian condominium to ‘fix’ Pakistan. But, clearly, it is Pakistan that the US wants as its key ally — not India. Of course, India is important — but as a market for US exports, including weapons. The US has already sold weapons to India worth some $10 billion and is now promising ‘co-prduction’ with Indian companies.
The shameful irony is that Delhi just created a ‘level playing field’ for America’s Westinghouse in selling nuclear reactors to India by contriving to nettle the Russian project in Kudankulam 3 and 4 in a legal tangle and indefinitely postponing the signing of the agreement. Delhi did it so that there is US-Russia parity, and now it transpires Obama wants Pakistan-India ’strategic balance’
Obama stoops to conquer Pakistan’s Sharif
The Joint Statement [JS] issued in Washington on Wednesday following the meeting between President Barack Obama and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif comes as a bombshell to the Indian foreign-policy and security establishment.
The JS not only revives full-spectrum US-Pakistan strategic alliance, it literally harks back to the Cold War era — “The President and the Prime Minister affirmed US-Pakistan friendship and cooperation and recalled our positive contributions to international peace and security at crucial junctures during the Cold War…”
I wrote in my blog earlier in the week, the US desperately needs Pakistan in its traditional role as its regional partner if it is to pursue the new Cold War effectively — that is, to establish the nine military bases in Afghanistan as part of its ‘rebalance’ in southwest Asia, and true to style Sharif came prepared with his wish list.
Without doubt, Obama has gone out of the way to court Pakistan. He has blithely ignored Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s condemnation of Pakistan as the ‘epicentre’ of global terrorism, which the latter made in the White House only last month in his meeting with the US president.
In what amounts to a snub to Manmohan Singh, Obama now hails Pakistan for the immense sacrifices it made in the struggle against terrorism and conveyed his “appreciation for Pakistan’s internal and regional security challenges” and “commended the resolve of the government and people of Pakistan, armed forces, and law enforcement agencies to defeat terrorists and praised Pakistan for its military campaign.”
Obama gave high marks to Pakistan as “an essential partner… in the advancement of shared goals of peace, security…” It will shock Delhi that the Obama-Sharif joint statement twice made oblique reference to Kashmir issue:
1. “They [Obama and Sharif] acknowledged the importance of regional balance and stability in South Asia and pursuing increased transparency and uninterrupted dialogue in support of peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues.” [Emphasis added.]
2. “The two leaders stressed that improvement in Pakistan-India bilateral relations would greatly enhance prospects for lasting regional peace, stability, and prosperity… In this context, President Obama welcomed recent engagements between Prime Minister Sharif and Prime Minister [Manmohan] Singh and expressed hope that this would mark the beginning of a sustained dialogue process between the two neighbours, aimed at building lasting peace in South Asia and resolving all outstanding territorial and other disputes through peaceful means.” [Emphasis added.]
The JS harps on the concept of ’strategic balance’ in South Asia — plainly put, India-Pakistan military and nuclear parity. Elsewhere, JS speaks of ’strategic stability’ pointedly in terms of the nuclear capability of Pakistan and India.
It says, “Prime Minister Sharif affirmed Pakistan’s support for the universal objectives of non-proliferation and disarmament. The two Leaders underscored that all sides should continuously act with maximum restraint and work jointly towards strengthening strategic stability in South Asia.”
This is a complete repudiation of the Indian position that India cannot be equated with Pakistan in regard of the nuclear weapon capability and missile development or its arms build-up. Funnily, Obama has openly certified Pakistan’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.
To be sure, the US expects the fullest cooperation from Pakistan with regard to the road map for Afghanistan that Obama is expected to unveil shortly. The JS expresses appreciation for Pakistan’s helpful role in kickstarting a peace process involving the Taliban and acknowledges that Pakistan also has been a victim of cross-border terrorism.
The US will be rehabilitating the transit routes from Afghanistan leading to Karachi Port that are vital for the current pullout of troops and equipment from Afghanistan and for maintaining the upcoming US military bases.
The Strategic Dialogue forum between the US and Pakistan has been revived which facilitates structured, comprehensive and sustained interaction at the civilian, security and military level. It will meet in Washington in March 2014.
The JS affirms that the US “plans to continue providing assistance and support, including training and equipment to Pakistan’s military and security services.” This was in direct response to Sharif’s hope of “broadening bilateral defense cooperation in areas that serve mutual interest.”
But the big-ticket item seems to be that the US is likely to consider a nuclear deal for Pakistan. The JS devotes a hefty portion to detailing the imperatives of the US assisting Pakistan in meeting the latter’s energy crisis. And, then comes a passage that distinctly suggests something big is in the works. Read the following passage embedded deep within the portion on energy very, very carefully:
“The Leaders emphasized that both sides should work together on a range of options to enable Pakistan to overcome its energy deficiencies and that both sides will hold further discussions in the working groups on Energy and Security, Strategic Stability, and Non-Proliferation.” [Emphasis added.]
Considering the fact that Obama estimates:
a) ”an enduring US-Pakistan partnership is vital to regional and international security”;
b) “US-Pakistan partnership [should be] built on a foundation of mutual interest and respect”;
c) Pakistan is “an essential partner” for the US; that the two countries share commitment to “democracy, human rights, freedom. ad respect of international law”;
d) Pakistan’s “efforts to improve its strategic trade controls and enhance its engagement with multilateral export regimes”;
e) Pakistan’s “constructive engagement” with the Nuclear Security Summit process and the IAEA;
f) “strategic stability” and “strategic balance” is critically needed in South Asia.
Well, considering all above, the likelihood exists that the US is gearing up to meet Pakistan’s longstanding demand for a nuclear deal similar to what India got in 2008, as the prize Washington has to pay for full cooperation from the Pakistani military for the US’s post-2014 strategies in Afghanistan and Central Asia.
To be sure, Indian foreign policy faces a major crisis — arguably, its biggest crisis during the nine years under the stewardship of PM Manmohan Singh. But then, it is India that is at fault. For one thing, Delhi completely goofed up on Afghanistan.
Delhi insisted on viewing the Afghan war as a real war on terror and faithfully co-related it with the India-Pakistan tensions and in that obsessive mindset it overlooked that the US had a geopolitical agenda and the al-Qaeda was an alibi to establish a long-term military presence in the region that overlooks China, Russia, Iran and India.
Even today, Indian pundits have no clue to what is unfolding in Afghanistan and they are talking ad nauseum about the implications of the US’ ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan. (See my article “Post-American” Afghanistan is a chimera.)
The result is that Indian strategic community failed to comprehend why India-Pakistan normalization became so very crucial for the US’ geo-strategy. The Indian pundits got annoyed with US secretary of state John Kerry for advising Delhi that India-Pakistan dialogue process should be maintained at a sustained level and that India-Pakistan normalization would be the best contribution Delhi could make for the stabilization of Afghanistan.
The Indian pundits would have nothing short of a great game in Afghanistan vis-a-vis Pakistan. On top of it, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party made India-Pakistan dialogue an election issue. Some TV channels deliberately kept up a campaign to whip up public sentiments against India-Pakistan dialogue. The result has been that the Manmohan Singh government pulled down the shutters and walked out of the dialogue process with Pakistan.
But history tells us that standstill is invariably a recipe for deterioration of India-Pakistan relations. The Americans know the India-Pakistan history, too, and can very well anticipate some flashpoint coming up in the months ahead.
And they are fed up with India’s political class and self-styled experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is the plain truth. Finally, Obama decided to altogether throw the Indians out of his AfPak agenda and pursue his key objective, which is to get Pakistan on board, especially its military.
Simply put, Obama is a man in great hurry. The US desperately wants the Taliban to be won over, or else, the American bases in Afghanistan will become targets and body bags will start arriving home. Even Bagram air base faces rocket attacks lately.
Delhi should have opened a channel to Beijing a long time ago regarding Afghanistan, given the congruence of interests between the two countries. Interestingly, during Manmohan Singh’s talks in Beijing on Wednesday, China suo moto proposed that the two countries should work together in Afghanistan. Indeed, the RIC [Russia-India-China] meeting at foreign-minister level, which is scheduled to take place in Delhi in November, now assumes much strategic significance. Nonetheless, it needs Herculean effort at the diplomatic level for Delhi to figure a way out of the cul-de-sac in which India’s AfPak policy has landed. Simply put, Delhi made a series of catastrophic errors of judgment through the past seven or eight years. In any mature democracy there would have been accountability for such policy breakdowns, but not in India.
The foreign-policy trajectory during the past nine years of the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh was predicated on the assumption of a profound strategic partnership with the US. Some pundits dreamt of a US-Indian condominium to ‘fix’ Pakistan. But, clearly, it is Pakistan that the US wants as its key ally — not India. Of course, India is important — but as a market for US exports, including weapons. The US has already sold weapons to India worth some $10 billion and is now promising ‘co-prduction’ with Indian companies.
The shameful irony is that Delhi just created a ‘level playing field’ for America’s Westinghouse in selling nuclear reactors to India by contriving to nettle the Russian project in Kudankulam 3 and 4 in a legal tangle and indefinitely postponing the signing of the agreement. Delhi did it so that there is US-Russia parity, and now it transpires Obama wants Pakistan-India ’strategic balance’
