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Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Time to Cool the Rhetoric on Pakistan

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However justified, the public berating of Islamabad has become counterproductive

The comments made by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta during his swing through South Asia last week once again raise the question of how coordinated the Obama administration’s regional policy is.  An earlier post flagged this issue two months ago by noting the curious timing of Washington’s decision to offer a large bounty for the arrest or capture of Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, a major jihadi leader allowed to live in plain sight in Pakistan.

True, the decision was overdue and eminently warranted, as Saeed is a man who for too long has escaped the dispensation of justice.  But it was announced in a way sure to rub Islamabad’s already inflamed sensibilities, just as Washington began an effort to salvage collapsing relations with Pakistan.  It was unveiled during a visit to New Delhi by Wendy Sherman, the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, who no doubt wanted to address complaints that the administration was letting Pakistan slide on the issue of anti-Indian terrorism.  But as it was issued on the eve of Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides’ arrival in Islamabad, the open reminder about their perfidy was a strange way to commence a trip aimed at making nice with Pakistani leaders.

Panetta’s words were similarly understandable but also counterproductive.  While in New Delhi he took a gratuitous swipe at Pakistani officials by publicly joking about the necessity of keeping them in the dark about the U.S. commando mission that killed Osama bin Laden – “They did not know about our operation.  That was the whole point.”  And in Kabul, he lashed out by warning Islamabad that U.S. leaders are reaching “the limits of our patience” regarding the sheltering of Afghan insurgents in the tribal areas.  The rebukes also follow the conspicuous snubbing of President Asif Ali Zardari at the NATO summit in Chicago last month.

To be sure, Panetta’s criticisms are entirely right on the merits.  Evidence of Pakistani treachery is in ample supply and has become the standard by which duplicity among allies will henceforth be measured.  The Abbottabad raid would have ended futilely, and most likely fatally for American forces, were the generals in Rawalpindi brought into U.S. confidence.  Likewise, Pakistan has played an egregious double game in Afghanistan, serving as the toll road for provisions destined for the same U.S. troops being killed and maimed by jihadi militants it enables.  And Panetta’s scolding only echoes the uncharacteristically blunt charges leveled last September by Admiral Mile Mullen, the immediate past chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who more than anyone else in Washington tried to establish a personal rapport with the Pakistani military leaders.

Yet the public smackdowns also undercut important U.S. interests.  A senior Pakistani military leader is quoted in the Washington Post as saying that he views the pointed joke in New Delhi as “an intended insult” and that “It is not the exclusive domain of the United States to lose its patience.”  The Los Angeles Times reports that the reprimands were so ill-received in Pakistan that they derailed a nearly-complete agreement to reopen key NATO supply lines into Afghanistan that Islamabad shut down after an U.S. airstrike killed 26 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border last November.

The closure is costing the United States some $100 million a month as cargo is shipped via more expensive routes through Central Asia.  In recent months, Islamabad has publicly insisted on a sharp increase in transit fees and a fulsome apology for the border incident in exchange for restarting the supply lines.  But according to the Times, Pakistani officials in private had in the last few weeks begun to back away from their public calls and many in Washington thought that a transit deal was within sight.  Now, following Panetta’s criticisms, Islamabad is back to demanding a full public apology.  The upbraiding might also have thrown a spanner in the exploratory talks that U.S. and Pakistani officials have held on a new counterterrorism partnership.

More broadly, the harsh rhetoric does not help the fragile democratization process within Pakistan.  A quick resolution of the transit dispute is very much in Islamabad’s interests.  The thread-bare public treasury –not to mention the Pakistani army’s vast business empire – is in desperate need of revenue that would come from increased transit fees as well as the $3.5 billion in military and economic assistance that the Obama administration has requested for the upcoming fiscal year.  Moreover, the country will soon be forced to turn once again to the International Monetary Fund for a financial lifeline, a move that will require Washington’s assent.

But U.S. officials also need to reckon with the new complexity of Pakistan’s domestic politics.  Gone are the times when a military autocrat could simply order up strategic cooperation with Washington, as Pervez Musharraf did at the outset of the U.S. war on terrorism.  Nowadays, Zardari’s elected government must contend with volatile public opinion that is incensed with perceived U.S. affronts to the country’s sovereignty and honor.  It also does not help that many Pakistanis see Zardari as an American patsy, a contention that his chief political rival, Nawaz Sharif, has seized upon with an alacrity that is matched only by its hypocrisy.

This week’s finding by a judicial commission that Husain Haqqani, Zardari’s first ambassador in Washington, is guilty of disloyalty to the nation provides Sharif with another drum to beat.  So Zardari has very narrow space to maneuver, especially as parliamentary elections approach, perhaps as early as this fall.  Sherry Rehman, the current Pakistani envoy in Washington, rightly notes that Panetta’s blunt rhetoric “leaves little oxygen” to those in Islamabad who seek a better relationship with the United States.

In between his broadsides last week, Panetta also said something that should be borne in mind by every Washington policymaker tempted to express his frustrations and indignations in the open:

It’s a complicated relationship, often times frustrating, often times difficult…. But the United States cannot just walk away from that relationship.  We have to continue to do what we can to try to improve (the) areas where we can find some mutual cooperation.

There is surely a place for tough talk in U.S.-Pakistan relations but these days it’s best kept behind closed doors.

This commentary was originally posted on Chanakya’s Notebook.   I invite you to follow me on Twitter.

India-US Relations Blog

Is Nancy Powell the right choice for India?

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Although fluent in honeyed words, in substance, the Obama administration is proving to be a disappointment for India. None of the promises of the George Bush years has been realized: neither hi-technology cooperation nor an effort to ensure that the Indian military be given access to sufficient equipment in order to maintain parity with an expanding PLA.

Now, the choice of a career foreign service officer, Nancy Powell, as the new U.S. ambassador to India underscores the fact that President Obama has left U.S.-India relations with the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while he focuses on the far more consequential relationship between China and the U.S.

In Beijing, Gary Locke (a former Cabinet-level official known for his antipathy towards Delhi and sympathy for Beijing) has a direct channel of communication with the White House, unlike Powell, who on occasion may find it difficult even to reach Hillary Clinton, given her relatively modest status in the ranks of power players in Washington.

During Powell’s stint in Islamabad, the soft-spoken envoy became very close to President Pervez Musharraf and her “See-No-Evil” reporting ensured that the Bush administration saw both Musharraf and the Pakistan military as reliable assets of the U.S. in the region. She believed that the Pakistan army could be relied on to faithfully implement the policies cooked up in the Departments of State and Defense, and raised very few red flags. So complete was her trust in the suave commando whom she clearly admired, the coup-leader who became the President of Pakistan.

It is no secret that decision-makers on the South Block (location of the Ministries of Defense and External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office) share with the North Block (the Home Ministry) a deep distrust of the Pakistan military, especially the army. Administrations in India have not seen any improvement in the ground situation, where irregular elements continue to infiltrate the Line of Control in Kashmir, besides entering India via road from Bangladesh and Nepal. During her period in Islamabad, Powell almost totally ignored such ISI activities against India, concentrating on the situation in Afghanistan and satisfying herself (after briefings from President Musharraf) that Pakistan was fully on board as a major non-NATO ally of the U.S. Doubts about such an assessment began only long after she left her post in Pakistan’s capital. After that, she moved on to Nepal, at a time when the Maoist groups were gaining in strength, thanks to the short-sighted policy of the former monarch in clandestinely backing them against democratic forces in Nepal, whom King Gyanendra regarded as a bigger threat than the Maoists.

Although in the course of her career in the State Department, Powell has had the distinction of being ambassador to both Ghana and Uganda. Her preferred region of interest has remained South Asia, where she evolved a distinctly Pakistan army-centric view of the overall situation. Not surprisingly, her appointment as envoy to India has been welcomed by U.S. experts such as Steven Cohen, Michael Krepon, and Teresita Schaffer. All three of them have vigorously praised the Pakistan army in the past, including the military’s quest for a resolution of the Kashmir issue on lines favorable to itself. In an op-ed in a newspaper in India, Shaffer has called Hillary Clinton’s choice “admirable”. No doubt President Musharraf too would agree, given his close personal friendship with the diplomat. Certainly, he will be ready to proffer her advice on how she should go about her task, something that he is known to do whenever he visits Washington.

Although some within the strategic community in India have delusions of grandeur about the role played by Delhi in the Obama calculus; the Powell appointment has once again shown up the differential treatment between approaches towards China and India. While the first country is a personal priority of President Obama, such that he closely monitors policy to that emerging superpower, in the case of India, Obama confines himself to mere words. The actual policy is left to Hillary Clinton who seems to regard Europe (and in particular the U.K. and now France) as not merely experts on India, but as useful interlocutors. While the expertise of the Secretary of State is most pronounced in the matter of specialty restaurants at the Maurya Sheraton hotel in Delhi (her favored haunt while visiting the country), she has very definite views on India’s role. It is that Delhi needs to behave in the manner that the U.S. and the EU decide is proper for it and forget about seeking parity with China. In that sense, the Powell appointment illustrates the much lower position of India in the strategic calculus of the Obama administration, as compared to China which has always had high-powered envoys, beginning with George H W Bush.

Nancy Powell knows the Pakistan military well and she has kept up her contacts with top generals in India’s western neighbor. However, she has cultivated far fewer links with the Indian establishment, except at the formal level. While key elements of the strategic community in India would like the Obama administration to give up its Euro-centric view of India (as a country that needs to be guided and led by the hand, in the manner of a frisky adolescent), such a development seems remote under Powell’s watch. She has been steeped in the State-Defense culture of seeing India near-exclusively from the prism of India-Pakistan relations and can be expected to follow Hillary Clinton’s instincts and insert herself into the subject almost from the day she assumes office in Delhi from Peter Burleigh, the acting envoy, who too shares with Nancy Powell close ties with the U.S. intelligence community and is a distinguished professor at the University of Miami, which has one of the best International Relations programs in the U.S.

It is no secret that the road map of the Indian-strategic community in Afghanistan and Kashmir is very different from that of the Pakistan army. Seeking to bridge this gap has been a task that Powell’s admirers in the U.S. academic community have been trying for decades to accomplish. In the final year of his present term in office, President Obama’s most urgent priority seems to be an orderly retreat from Afghanistan. Powell is among those who have long regarded it possible to enlist the Pakistan army in such a mission, if only India were to make enough concessions. Her task in Delhi may be to follow the example of another Clintonite envoy, Frank Wisner, who spent much of his tenure seeking to persuade India to make concessions on Kashmir.

Although there will be the obligatory cheers of welcome for the Powell appointment, deeper than the manufactured headlines and the anodyne statements, there is resentment that President Obama has distanced himself from the longstanding U.S. policy of sending distinguished Thought Leaders to India, rather than career diplomats such as Frank Wisner and Nancy Powell. The omens for a true India-U.S. alliance remain bleak, given Obama’s handover of India policy to his Secretary of State and her favorites. Where is the “change” that we were promised, Mr. President?

You seem to have gone back to Bill Clinton’s policy, of seeing India only within the prism of relations with Pakistan.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Knocking on APEC’s Door

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India’s absence from APEC is a serious omission for the organization. Its entry should be on the agenda of the upcoming APEC Summit in Honolulu.


apecHaving made the calculation that America’s security and prosperity would be enhanced by partnership with India, the United States over the last decade has promoted New Delhi’s admission into global governance structures. For the Bush administration, this meant doing the heavy lifting required to enroll India into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, an informal cartel governing the global nuclear regime whose original purpose of existence was to exclude New Delhi from its ranks. The Obama administration similarly helped usher India into the Group of 20 forum on the international economy and, most recently, endorsed its long-standing bid for permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council.

The time has now come for Washington to sponsor New Delhi’s entry into another international institution from which it has been barred for much too long.  India for decades has desired formal involvement in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which engages over half of world gross domestic product and a large fraction of global trade. But its application has continuously been passed over due to a lack of consensus inside the grouping, which currently numbers 21 members. Some APEC countries have expressed concerns that the institution is too unwieldy as it is and cannot accommodate India or the dozen other interested countries lined up at its door. Others argue that India is not really a Pacific Rim country and is therefore outside of APEC’s geographic parameters.

But with India poised to become one of the world’s top economies in the years ahead, its absence is a serious lacuna for the organization. New Delhi already participates as a full member in regional leadership groups like the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum, both important venues for political and security discussions. It is also a full ASEAN dialogue partner.

Southeast Asia has historically been an area of deep Indian trade and cultural influence but was neglected diplomatically during much of India’s independent existence. Seeking to make up for lost time, New Delhi launched the “Look East” policy in 1992. It has proved to be a very successful initiative, paving the way for significant and rapidly-growing economic and diplomatic linkages in the region. The ten member-countries of ASEAN now constitute India largest export market. Southeast Asia takes in more than half of Indian exports, up from around 40 percent just a decade ago.  Indeed, India’s total trade volume with East Asia now exceeds that with the United States or the European Union. And New Delhi’s trade diplomacy has been on a tear recently in Asia, with major economic agreements being signed with Japan, South Korea, ASEAN, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. It has commenced negotiations with Indonesia to boost the $12 billion in trade the two countries conducted in 2010.

India has also emerged as a major security player in East Asia and is fast becoming a key factor in the region’s geopolitical calculus. A landmark India-Japan security accord was signed in 2008, and important strategic partnerships have been established with Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore. Indeed, Tokyo and Singapore lobbied for New Delhi’s membership in the EAS, over Beijing’s objections, in order to counterbalance Chinese influence in the organization. The United States and India now hold regular consultations on Asia-Pacific policy and a trilateral US-India-Japan security dialogue will be instituted next month in Tokyo.

The Indian navy has been conducting exercises with its U.S. and Japanese counterparts for a number of years now in the Pacific Ocean, and as the brief encounter two months ago between the INS Airavat, an amphibious warfare vessel, and the Chinese navy off the coast of Vietnam demonstrates, the navy is becoming a regular presence in the region’s waters.

APEC’s membership moratorium expired last year. With Washington currently holding the forum’s chairmanship, the Obama administration should be preparing the diplomatic groundwork to place India’s admission on the agenda of the APEC Summit that will take place in mid-November in Honolulu. To avoid interminable negotiations about whether other countries should be let in at the same time, the U.S. might repeat its persuasive line about New Delhi’s entry into the global nuclear order: India is simply so important that it merits a special dispensation.

As a previous post argues, New Delhi’s membership in APEC should be part of an overall agenda for advancing US-India economic engagement. But it would also pay major strategic dividends. In his address to the Indian parliament last November, President Obama urged India not only to “look East” but also “to engage East” for the sake of enhanced security and prosperity throughout Asia. Secretary of State Hillary Rodman Clinton underscored this theme in her visit to India two months ago. Speaking in Chennai (formerly Madras), a port city that has significant economic ties with Southeast Asia, Clinton urged India to take on a larger role in shaping the regional architecture for the Asia-Pacific. Reiterating Mr. Obama’s formulation, she stated that “we encourage India not just to look East, but to engage East and act East as well.”

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.)

India-US Relations Blog

The Voice of the Majority – 3 – Religion & Government Legitimacy

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Our second article in this series was based on the proposition that:

  • A regime that is seen, felt and recognized to be respectful and supportive of the majority religion tends in turn to be supported by the majority of the people.

In this article, we examine the related hypothesis:

  • A regime that is seen, felt and recognized to be disrespectful and unsupportive of the majority religion tends to be opposed by the majority of the people.

Think back to America in 2008 and 2009. Remember the 2008 election and the now famous quote of Candidate Obama about people in small towns “clinging to their religion and guns”? Though denied and explained away, this quote lives on as one of the more visible symbols of disrespect of religion and belief systems of the American majority.

The early policies and the tone of the Obama Administration persuaded the American majority that its core belief systems were being trampled. The result was the rise of the Tea Party, a movement that sprung like a geyser from the core of the American majority. The American Elite derided the Tea Party as backward, uneducated, right wing, prejudiced and overtly religious. That did not work.

The emotional and loud protest of the Tea Party culminated in a sweeping victory in the 2010 mid term election. The 2010 victory cooled down the temperature of the country. Gone are the rallies, the placards and the hot emotion that bubbled in 2009 and 2010.

This is why America is a shining validation of our hypothesis. On the other hand, India represents a seemingly perfect counterexample.

Last month New Delhi, India’s capital, witnessed a vicious attack in the dead of night by hundreds of baton charging policemen on a crowd of 50,000 people sleeping peacefully. This crowd had gathered to support a fast until death by Baba Ramdev, an Indian Guru with a national and international following. His fast was a protest against the deep corruption that has reportedly engulfed parts of the Indian Government including Cabinet Ministers.

Unlike another protest by Anna Hazare, a secular “Gandhian” activist, the protest by Baba Ramdev, the Indian Government believed, could become a religious “Hindu” movement. And, based on the 60-year track record of the Congress Government, a “Hindu” nationwide protest was deemed intolerable by the Congress Regime. And so the Indian Government behaved exactly like the minority Bahraini Government and launched a vicious night attack on a large group of peaceful, non-violent sleeping protestors.

This brings to fore the decades long suppression of core Indian belief systems by the Indian Elite. Much like American Elite Liberals, the self-proclaimed “modern”, “secular”, “progressive” Indian Elite have waged a coercive battle against India’s “Hindu” majority. This suppression of India’s majority is organized and planned with the full resources of the Congress Regime. The list of other deliberate legislative, executive acts against India’s majority religion would fill several such articles.

This might surprise many but the American and Indian people are very similar in their belief systems. Both societies are deeply religious and spiritual. In contrast, European and Asian societies are not. Both American and Indian societies are multi-religious, multi-ethnic and tolerant at heart. But their belief systems run deep. This is why foreign films, books and culture do not make inroads into these societies. This is why global Hollywood has not been successful in making inroads into India and US TV Networks have to create purely Indian channels to become financially successful in India.

Then, unlike the American majority, why does the India’s majority tolerate the trampling of its religion and belief systems by its governing regime?

  • One reason is that India’s majority has been under the rule of India’s minority religions for the past 1,000 years. So the behavior of the Congress regime is a continuation of the British and Mughal Regimes.
  • Secondly, India’s majority is totally focused on raising its economic standards. That is today’s top priority for the Indian people. So all other issues are being put aside. But they are not ignored.

But the calm you see on India’s surface is covering up the deep anger within India’s majority. Jim Yardley of the New York Times used the term “visceral rage” to describe the sentiments of India’s Middle Class. This Middle Class is the new factor in Indian society, a factor that will come to dominate India’s Society, Government Policy and its relationship with America in years to come.

India’s middle class is becoming broader, richer and more secure in demanding its rights. It is also much more religious and conservative than the Indian Elite who run India’s Government, NGOs and Media. It is beginning to feel confident in expressing its views in the terms and framework of its religion, culture and belief systems. This will put it in direct conflict with the self-proclaimed mission of India’s Elite to suppress India’s majority religion at the altar of a “modern, secular, progressive” culture.

As we saw in its reaction to the attack on Baba Ramdev, the Indian-American community is beginning to participate in the struggle of the Indian Middle Class. And this community understands the lessons of America’s Tea Party.

Will the Indian-American community succeed in helping India’s Middle Class attain the confident fighting spirit of the American majority? Will India’s majority and its driver, the Indian Middle Class, succeed in changing the regime of India’s Ruling Elite? The answers will drive both India and its relationship with America.