A Whiff Of Fresh Western Air On The Subcontinent

DC recently-published report by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations titled, A New US Policy Toward India and Pakistan, has triggered contradictory reactions: while some have praised the effort, others have disagreed, bringing out a clear division in American thinking. It is the work of a high-level independent task force chaired by Richard Haass, a former senior director at the National Security Council, who now heads foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, a prestigious left-leaning think-tank in the nation's capital. The project director for the task force is Gideon Rose, a former associate director at the National Security Council, now a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Almost every South Asian expert in the US is on the task force and the 28-name roster is a veritable who's who of analysts who regularly write or speak about the subcontinent. It includes such luminaries as former legislator Stephen Solarz, former ambassadors William Clark and Robert Oakley, former journalists Selig Harrison and Emily MacFarquhar, nuclear expert Leonard Spector, defence expert George Tanham, academics Robert Wirsing, Raju Thomas, Francine Frankel, Stephen Cohen and Sumit Ganguly, and former administration officials Geoffrey Kemp, Paul Krei-sberg, Shirin Tahir-Kheli and John Kelly.

The aim of the report is to "end the relative US neglect of two nations which represent a fifth of humanity." The time has come, it argues, to accept that the policy of enforcing nuclear non-proliferation in South Asia via sanctions, has failed miserably. The task force recommends that Washington rethink its approach and recognise that neither India nor Pakistan can be bullied or pressured into giving up their nuclear programmes by existing Congressional restrictions on arms purchases and economic assistance. The US should instead work with both countries to pursue a more realistic approach and limited objectives.

The report highlights the Clinton administration's faint-heartedness in its relations with the subcontinent, especially its habit of deferring to Congress, which has led to a policy that is slow in conceptualisation and inflexible in implementation.

However, the report also notes that the Clinton administration has reached the same conclusions as the task force and that it is privately urging India and Pakistan not to deploy missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads or upgrade existing weapons—in return for which, Washington will improve ties between the two countries.

In fact, the experts recommend a strategy of 'dual engagement' that would include positive improvements in relations with both countries, as opposed to the either/or approach that marked past US efforts to deal with the rivalry. With India, the 'dual engagement' strategy would involve acknowledging India's growing power and importance, arranging regular reciprocal visits바카라 웹사이트 of senior officials; allowing the transfer of dual-use technologies, increasing military cooperation, assisting India's civilian nuclear programme, permitting the sale of limited conventional arms and supporting India's entry into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and other institutions such as an expanded G-7.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, it emphasises continued cooperation since it is in danger of becoming a failed state. The 'dual engagement' strategy would include maintaining channels of communication with the Pakistan military by providing training and encouraging it to support democratic institutions, resuming limited conventional arms sales, extending credits for trade and investment, forgiving or reducing debt and providing aid to support social welfare, economic modernisation, electoral and development mechanisms.

In a chapter titled, Additional and Dissenting Views, key members of the task force have warned that military sales to Pakistan would escalate conflict in the region. One of them, George Perkovich of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, feels the US "should be highly reluctant to provide military sales to Pakistan under current circumstances" as "there is little reason to believe the provision of advanced US weaponry will fundamentally improve Pakistan's circumstances or US interests."

Five members of the task force—former Congressman Stephen Sol-arz, Selig Harrison of the Carnegie Endowment, Prof. Francine Frankel of Pennsylvania University, Professor Sumit Ganguly of Hunter College in the City University of New York, and Prof. Raju Thomas of Marquette University—dissociated themselves from the task force's position that normal US-Pakistan relations cannot be complete without resuming limited conventional arms sales.

They add that it was "stretching credulity to assert that military sales of conventional equipment would cause Pakistan to draw back from its nuclear weapons programme, since the greatest advances by Pakistan toward nuclear capability were made during the last US arms sales, in the 1980s." These members have also criticised US efforts to deny India the right to deploy nuclear weapons and missiles when permanent members of the Security Council are keeping these weapons themselves, thus relegating "India to second-class status." They warn that "this report, which appears to acquiesce in Pakistan's clandestine nuclear acquisition (with China's reported assistance) of nuclear and ballistic missiles technology, may provide the clinching argument needed by advocates of testing in India to exercise the nuclear option."

바카라 웹사이트In Pakistan, the Foreign Office declined to comment, saying it would not like to say anything on the views of a think-tank. But sources claimed if the Pakistani Embassy in Washington thought it necessary, it would take it up with the US Administration to determine whether the report meant anything to it.

On the issue of the CTBT, the report notes that India's decision to impede progress—like Pakistan's continued work with Chinese help on an M-11 plant—has made it more, rather than less, difficult to move forward along the outlined course. The task force calls for realism on the part of US policymakers in the face of what has already occurred, and a plea to preserve and improve the present situation through active US engagement instead of passing up opportunities by continued neglect.

On Kashmir, the report recognises that "the US does not have a great deal of leverage in regard to the Kashmir dispute, and the time is not ripe for Washington to launch a major new initiative. Nevertheless, the US should be prepared to seize opportunities to contribute to peacemaking should they arise in the future and should have in place the capacity to do so." It also calls for incremental steps to ease tensions in Kashmir, advises against ambitious diplomacy, and urges that "the overall goal of these efforts, in turn, should be to achieve an interim set of agreements or even informal understandings, rather than to settle what in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process have been termed 'final status' issues".

Among the report's other key recommendations, the US should support Indian and Pakistani economic reforms, work to promote strong democratic institutions in the region, and restructure its own bureaucracy to better deal with South Asia.

While urging the "continuation of economic liberalisation and structural reform", the report recommends that the US "demand strict compliance with GATT commitments and discuss alleged violations openly, seeking WTO rulings where appropriate." It also warns that thorny issues be handled outside bilateral relations—by multilateral institutions such as the WTO—so as not to become a "potential source of friction".

While few quarrel with the opinion that the US needs to pay more attention to the subcontinent, many disagree with the recommendations, especially with the suggestion that arms sales be used as a way of manipulating one country or the other.

"It is the most hare-brained and irresponsible idea," said a critic who once worked with the Carter Administration. Accusing the task force of naivete, he added, "selling arms to one of the world's most unstable regions is just plain crazy."

Jim Hoagland writing in the Washington Post, was similarly indignant: "The conceit that Washington can woo such nations into reasonableness by passing out arms and other goodies has been disproved in Iraq, Iran, China and elsewhere. But it is a Washington mindset that does not die."

According to Hoagland, the approach is skewered because "India is too big, too self-important and too different culturally and socially for Washington to try to manipulate in this manner. Pakistan, which borders on being a failed state, also defies remote control." A state department official was similarly sceptical about some recommendations but said he was "cautiously optimistic" that ties between the US and India would mature and grow in a second Clinton Administration. The official said he was "surprised to learn that the majority on the task force support the resumption of arms sales to Pakistan".