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India-US Relations Blog

America-India – Did the Bush Administration Oversell or Did the Obama Administration Botch It?

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This week Michael Green and Daniel Twining wrote an opinion article in the Washington Post titled Why aren’t we working with Japan and India? It is an attempt to discuss the reasons for, what they call, the current “listlessness in our two biggest strategic partnerships in Asia.” This is a serious article but deeply flawed.

The article’s key paragraph on India begins with “India has also disappointed.”. It ends with the statement “The refrain in Washington is that the Bush Administration oversold the potential for strategic partnership with New Delhi.”

We disagree. The Bush Administration established the Strategic Partnership with India. It was the most far-reaching step taken by any American President regarding India. President Bush viewed China and India as two huge countries that would play a global role in the 21st century. In his simple yet profound way, he asked which of these two countries would be a better partner for America? The answer was simple, India.

So President Bush in his direct, decisive manner made India a Strategic Partner of the USA. The Bush Administration threw away the old, failed strategy of trying to balance India with Pakistan and looked at India as a key ally, an emerging power on par with China and the only counterweight of size to China.

This is exactly how India perceives itself. This congruence of vision was the sound long term basis for the America-India Strategic Partnership implemented by President Bush. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, expressed the view of the Bush Administration at that time: “Within 20 years, the rise of the new U.S.-India partnership will be considered among the most important developments in U.S. foreign policy in our time.”

Then came President Obama. His framework for the world was completely different than that of President Bush. The Obama Administration spent its first year in trying to woo China. The Obama Administration was convinced that President Bush had gone too far in favoring India and they restored the old policy of maintaining a balance of power between Pakistan & India.

This was not just rhetoric. This has been the consistent policy of the Obama Administration since the inauguration. Witness the clear statement from Secretary Hillary Clinton in April 2010 that the manner in which India & Pakistan have pursued atomic weapons has “upset the balance of nuclear deterrence”. The Bush Administration had realized and accepted the fact that India was going to build a nuclear deterrence against China. The Clinton statement showed that the Obama Administration considered India only from the old Pakistan-India balance of power framework.

In short, the Obama Administration unilaterally destroyed the very foundation on which President Bush had built his America-India strategic partnership. But neither Government was willing to publicly accept this reality.  So both America and India continued to pay lip service to the concept of the America-India strategic partnership.

The sudden u-turn in America’s framework stunned the Indian Government and the entire Indian Establishment. In their naivete, they had assumed that America as a whole had finally understood India and embraced India’s vision of its role in the world. But where foreign policy is concerned, there may be only one India but there are two Americas. It took the Indian Government a year to realize that the America-India strategic partnership they had accepted was only with Bush’s America and not with Obama’s America. Then the Indian Government began hedging its bets and moving away from the Obama Administration. Since then, the relations between America and India have remained “listless”.

Another factor in the decay of India-US relations has been Washington’s definition of “partnership”. This is borne out by the Washington Post article which assumes a partner of America should not oppose American initiatives but align with them regardless of how the initiatives impact the partner:

Yet, in the first two years of the Obama Administration, the Indians have opposed the United States on climate and trade initiatives (the initiatives were in direct conflict with Indian objectives), failed to enact liability legislation needed for American companies to develop India’s nuclear industry (a political and ethical impossibility in democratic India), resisted meaningful economic reforms (true), cozied up to Burma’s junta with gas and arms deals (a strategic necessity for India just like cozying up to Saudi Arabia is a strategic necessity for America) and rejected U.S. combat aircraft in India’s biggest defense deal to date (the last generation aircraft offered by the U.S. were judged as inferior by the Indian Military).

President Bush had astounded the Indian Government by treating India as a real partner. He understood what India could and could not do. He focused on what was achievable which was plenty. India responded in return and we are convinced that every major Indian deal would have been won by the Bush Administration. In contrast, the Obama Administration kept imposing its own initiatives on India and expected India to to follow. This pressure backfired.

Today, the Obama Administration is facing the virtual collapse of its framework. They have realized that China is a major strategic competitor and perhaps an adversary. So the Obama Administration has gone from wooing China to building a network of allies to contain China. This is the main purpose of Secretary Clinton’s trip to India and Asia.

The Obama Administration’s cherished policy of making Pakistan stronger and more stable has collapsed. But the Administration’s tactical objective has not changed. The Obama Administration still considers Pakistan as their most reliable ticket to exit Afghanistan.

America’s rapid exit from Afghanistan and the Obama plan to give Pakistan all the aid necessary to facilitate this exit remains the most difficult barrier between America and India. Secretary Clinton is trying to get India to steer away from Af-Pak and to get more active against China in the Pacific. The immediate strategic objective of India is to maintain and increase its presence in Afghanistan.

When strategic objectives are in such conflict, how can a strategic partnership make sense? This is the main reason for the current “listlessness” in America-India relations.

(This post originally appeared on Macro Viewpoints and has been republished with the approval of the author.)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Worst-case scenario for Pakistan

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Pakistan’s civil society is gradually being torn apart by radical extremism and sectarian violence and its powerful army seems incapable of stemming the rot. The daring attack by terrorists of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on the naval aviation base at Mehran, Karachi is the latest case in point. The hypothesis that Pakistan’s nuclear warheads may fall into Jihadi hands has once again gained currency.

Pakistan has been besieged by creeping Talibanization. Ground attack fighter aircraft, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery had to be used in 2007-08 to liberate the Swat Valley and Buner from the Sharia rule imposed by Maulana Fazlullah‘s militants. It took major military operations and large-scale army casualties to drive TTP extremists out of South Waziristan in 2009. Though TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a U.S. drone strike, the extremists simply moved into North Waziristan and still operate from there. The Army HQ at Rawalpindi and ISI headquarters in Lahore have been successfully attacked by the Taliban in league with al-Qaeda. Bomb blasts in Peshawar and elsewhere are a daily occurrence. Bahawalpur in south Punjab has become a hub for ideological indoctrination.

The Pakistan army and its rogue intelligence agency, the ISI, are having a tough time living up to their carefully cultivated hype as the self-appointed ‘defenders of the faith’ and the custodians of Pakistan’s ‘ideological frontiers’. The rank and file supports the Taliban cause and is unwilling to forgive the generals for allying with the U.S. in its war on terror. The troops are reluctant to operate against fellow Sunni Muslims. The Pushtuns, in particular, are unwilling to fight fellow Pushtuns. In 2007, an army company surrendered to the Taliban. Desertions are commonplace; cases of fratricide are often reported and many weapons have been lost to the Taliban. Apprehensions have been expressed about the radicalization of the officer cadre. Nearly six army divisions are employed in counter-insurgency operations in the Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa and FATA areas but progress in eliminating the Taliban has been painfully slow.

Despite being in tight spot, the Pakistan army and ISI continue to make facetious distinctions between the good Taliban—’strategic’ assets for employment against India and in Afghanistan—and bad Taliban. Their support for the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed is undiminished. In Afghanistan they are running with the hares and hunting with the hounds and are still looking for strategic depth. If Pakistan has earned the dubious distinction of having become the epicentre of fundamentalist terrorism, it is because the army and ISI, driven by their hatred for India, have blundered so badly.

The worst case scenario for Pakistan over the next two to three years will be a Jihadi-led coup from within the army. Radicalized officers owing allegiance to the TTP variety of Taliban could come to power. The probability of this is low but the steady deterioration in the security situation and the army’s unwillingness and inability to fight the scourge of Talibanization means the possibility cannot be ruled out. In such a nightmarish scenario, with near civil war conditions prevailing, nuclear weapons may actually be used against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan and targets in India. This would mean a holocaust on the Indian subcontinent.

It is time the international community seriously considered neutralizing Pakistan’s nuclear warhead storage sites and the delivery systems. It would be in India’s interest to join such an initiative. India should be prepared to provide military assistance, including direct intervention. The U.S. must lead the international community in efforts to convince General Kayani that the only way forward is to launch determined counter-terrorism operations to weed out the TTP, LeT, JeM and other terrorist groups that have enjoyed state patronage. The consequences of not doing so are too horrendous to contemplate.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on India’s Policy towards its Neighbours

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rarely speaks his mind on the major issues of the day. However, on June 29, 2011, in his interaction with five editors from the print medium, he spoke at length on domestic issues as well as the geo-political scenario and relations with India’s neighbours. He noted with concern the deteriorating international economic environment and said India’s neighbourhood was a very uncertain one. He said, “India would have to swim through all this adversity and keep our heads high if we have to come through.”

credit: pmindia.nic.inThe Prime Minster said that the planned draw-down of U.S. and other NATO-ISAF troops scheduled to begin in July 2011, as approved by President Barack Obama recently, was not good for India. “It does hurt us. It could hurt us. No one knows what is going to happen in Afghanistan.” However, he did not spell out India’s options to deal with the emerging situation. He once again emphasised that India supported reconciliation in Afghanistan, “I (had) told the Afghan Parliament that the reconciliation should be Afghan-led. I think (President) Hamid Karzai and other politicians can work on that. You cannot carry the good-bad Taliban distinction much too far.”

Maintaining a cautious approach towards Pakistan, the Prime Minister repeated his earlier statement on visiting Pakistan. He had said that he would visit Islamabad only when he was convinced that there had been sufficient progress in the ongoing talks and there was a substantive agreement to be signed. He was not convinced that Pakistan had done enough to eliminate terrorism emanating from its soil but believed that “India should continue to talk and engage with Pakistan to solve outstanding issues”.

He expressed his satisfaction with the progress in relations with Bangladesh. “The Bangladesh Government has gone out of its way to help us in apprehending anti-India insurgent groups that were operating from Bangladesh for long. And, that is why we have been generous in dealing with Bangladesh. We are not a rich country, but we offered it a line of credit of $1 billion when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came here. We are now looking at ways and means of some further unilateral concessions. We are also looking at ways and means of finding a practical and pragmatic solution to the sharing of Teesta waters. I plan to go there myself…” However, he expressed his unhappiness about extremist forces in Bangladesh and said, “We must reckon that at least 25 per cent of the population of Bangladesh swears by the Jamiat-ul-Islami and they are very anti-Indian, and they are in the clutches, many times, of the ISI. So, the political landscape in Bangladesh can change at any time.” This became an embarrassing faux pas as his words were misinterpreted in Bangladesh to mean that 25 per cent of the population is anti-Indian.

The Prime Minister welcomed the defeat of the LTTE in Sri Lanka. He advised the Sri Lankan government to find an amicable solution to the Tamil problem that is acceptable to the Tamilian people. He said, “The Tamil problem does not disappear with the defeat of the LTTE. The Tamil population has legitimate grievances. They feel they are reduced to second-class citizens. And our emphasis has been to persuade the Sri Lankan government that we must move towards a new system of institutional reforms, where the Tamil people will have a feeling that they are equal citizens of Sri Lanka, and they can lead a life of dignity and self-respect.”

The Prime Minister did not express any views on the continuing political and constitutional stalemate in Nepal or on India’s relations with China and Myanmar. Overall, the Prime Minister’s pronouncements reiterated India’s known position on most issues regarding India’s relations with its neighbours and were marked by a renewed emphasis on continuity. Observers who were looking for some bold initiatives to resolve ongoing challenges would have been disappointed.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

How not to Exit Afghanistan

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According to Henry Kissinger (“How to Exit Afghanistan,” Washington Post, June 8, 2011), four conditions must be met to make the exit strategy viable: “A cease-fire; withdrawal of all or most American and allied forces; the creation of a coalition government or division of territories among the contending parties (or both); and an enforcement mechanism.” None of the four appears viable at present. Nor do these conditions look achievable in the 2014-15 time frame that the exit strategy is planned to be completed.

As had been widely anticipated, the Taliban has launched a vigorous spring offensive and the US-led NATO-ISAF forces have retaliated with equal force. The Pakistan army has apparently learnt nothing from the killing of Osama bin Laden and continues to pretend that his presence at Abbottabad was a mystery. Instead of reinvigorating its efforts to eliminate terrorists who are undermining Pakistan’s security, the army is still holding off from launching the long-delayed offensive against the TTP in North Waziristan. Meanwhile, reports of US drone attacks against terrorists along the Af-Pak border continue to trickle in virtually on a daily basis. While it is early days yet in this year’s military confrontation, a continuing stalemate can be foreseen.

A U.S. Congressional study report, released on June 8, 2011, has found that nation-building efforts in Afghanistan are floundering as the massive economic aid programme lacks proper oversight and breeds corruption. It says that most local officials are incapable of “spending wisely”. It also says that there is little evidence to support the view that even the “politically pleasing” short term results will be sustainable once the draw-down begins. The report notes that the Afghan economy could easily slip into a depression as it is mainly a “war-time” economy that is a “huge distortion”. It is well known, of course, that the U.S. military conducts its own development programme in the areas cleared of the Taliban to win the people’s support, irrespective of the aid programmes approved by the Afghan government.

The two-year old efforts to move towards reconciliation with the so-called “good Taliban” have not made much headway. Secret talks being mediated by Germany between the U.S. government and Tayyab Agha, said to be a close confidante of Mullah Mohammed Omar, are unlikely to achieve a major breakthrough as no one is quite sure whether Agha is actually negotiating on behalf of Mullah Omar or whether the Taliban are simply using the talks as a ploy to buy time. The Haqqani shoora, that enjoys ISI support and patronage, is not part of the reconciliation process.

While regional efforts to secure peace in Afghanistan remain haphazard, these are likely to slowly gather momentum as the date for the draw-down of forces approaches. During a visit to Kabul in mid-May, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh endorsed President Karzai’s “process of national reconciliation” and said, “We hope that Afghanistan will be able to build a framework of regional cooperation that will help its nation-building efforts.”

There is so far no sign that the U.S. and its allies are planning to make substantive efforts to put in place a viable international peacekeeping force to help the Afghan government to maintain security after their own exit from Afghanistan in 2014. If this is not done, the Taliban will gradually seize one province after another, with covert help from Pakistan, and will eventually force the capitulation of the government – paving the way for their triumphant return to power. Conflict termination on such terms would signify the failure of President Obama’s exit strategy.

India-US Relations Blog

Is America Achieving The Improbable in Afghanistan, India & Pakistan?

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Recently I returned from a trip to India. The biggest story during my visit was the spectacular raid inside Pakistan to get Osama Bin Laden. It was pure shock and awe. There was an instantaneous burst of applause for America’s brilliant action.

Unfortunately, within a day or two, the sentiment changed. India, like Afghanistan, had always maintained that Pakistan provides sanctuary to terrorists and in many cases actively encourages, aids and provides material support to terrorists. This reality, Indians thought, was ignored by America either because of America’s self-interest or gullibility.

The discovery that Bin Laden was hiding in the open in a Pakistani military town confirmed to Indians that they were right and America was wrong for all these years. Indian society then compared the execution of Osama Bin Laden to the complete freedom provided within Pakistan to the terror-masters of the horrific 2008 Mumbai attack.

Indians have always accused America of a double standard for terrorists. This feeling morphed into certainty after the Bin Laden raid. Then came statements by American officials exonerating Pakistan’s Top Leadership and proclamations about how Pakistan was still America’s ally.

The insult and the injury cut very deep. The people I spoke to were quietly livid. I was stunned by the intensity of their feelings against what they see as America’s duplicitous dealings with Pakistan.

These were Lawyers, Doctors, Teachers and others in India’s middle class, the heart of India’s educated society. They understand the good about America. They understand the need for Indo-American partnership. But gone is their euphoria about the heady Bush days of Indo-US Strategic Partnership. Today, their anger and contempt towards America seemed unanimous. As one said simply, “this country (America) cannot be our friend”.

The India-Pakistan relationship has been a zero-sum game. So this sentiment within India should translate into a vote of confidence for America inside Pakistan. Right?

But the anger against America seems to be even more intense within Pakistan. From reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post, the rank and file of the Pakistani Army is “seething with anger” against America. Most Pakistanis seem convinced that America is trying to bring mayhem and terror to Pakistan to meet its own objectives in Afghanistan.

What about Afghanistan? America is pouring billions into Afghanistan every year to protect Afghans from the Taliban. This seems more and more like a waste of money and more importantly lives of young American soldiers.

credit: static.guim.co.ukThis week, the Taleban launched attacks in the northern cities of Herat and Taloqan. Also this week, about 200 Afghan militants crossed into northwestern Pakistan and engaged in a gun battle with Pakistani security forces. Rather than work even more closely with American forces, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan issued an ultimatum this week to American Forces and NATO to cease all strikes against Afghan homes. Why?

As Stratfor, the widely respected geo-strategy firm wrote this week “Opposition to the ISAF and the counterinsurgency-focused campaign across the country is on the rise among even anti-Taliban elements of the government and general population…… the trajectory of declining patience and tolerance of and increasingly virulent opposition to ISAF military operations across broader and broader swaths of Afghan society continue to worsen,…..”.

America is deeply involved in these three countries in different ways. American leadership would like to be a mediator between these countries and facilitate accommodation between them, if not peace. Unfortunately, America seems to be achieving just the opposite.

These are three societies at conflict with one another. When you are a friend or enemy of one society, you automatically are not an enemy or a friend of the other society. But today these vastly different societies have developed the same image of America.

If this isn’t an improbable achievement, I don’t know what is!