However, one does not have to read too long the Obama administration’s new document entitled, “Sustained U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21^st Century,” issued today (January 5, 2012) before realizing that there is not much therein.  Its hallmark is the absence of really new ideas.  South Asia and the Middle East continue to be envisaged as “primary loci” of threats to America’s interests (Page 2).  The long-standing promise of the Obama administration that America is a Pacific power was already formalized when President Barack Obama visited the Asia-Pacific last November.  He also formally opened a new military base in Australia during that trip.  In the context of escalating U.S.-China rivalry, that was indeed a major wrinkle.  A number of East Asian nations applauded that move, while China appropriately expressed its annoyance.

The current document further embellishes that development by stating, “U.S. economic and security interests are “inextricably linked to developments in the arc extending from the Western Pacific and East Asia into the Indian Ocean region and South Asia, creating a mix of evolving challenges and opportunities.”  Consequently, the United States’ investment for its prestige, attention, and the focus of its military expenditures emphasizes the role of its old allies, as well as its U.S.-India strategic partnership.  On the latter issue, the Obama administration reiterates its resolve “to support its [India’s] ability to serve as a regional economic anchor and providers of security in the broader Indian region” (Page 8).  Needless to say, this statement would delight India’s leaders.  At the same time, it would also reinvigorate the Sino-Indian naval competition in and around the Indian Ocean.

The new strategic document also restates America’s long-standing gripe that China’s growing military power is not “accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region” (Page 8).  One can rest assured that China will continue to ignore that grumble.

The newly intensified U.S.-Iran rivalry is given its proper space in the new document.  The only added variable is the document’s mention of the increased interactions between the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to contain Iran.  Giving the GCC states a new significance is a deft move in the sense that the Gulf sheikhs and emirs are looking for a pat on the back from Washington, at a time when the long-term prospects of their regime survival appear rather bleak, because of the sustained dynamism of the Arab Awakening (aka the Arab Spring).

Another important aspect of this document is the reiteration of “power projection despite anti-access/area denial challenges.”  The focus of this warfare is the PRC, which has been investing mega-capital in the development of its own asymmetric warfare capabilities against the United States.  In this context, cyber warfare, anti-ship missiles, ballistic and cruise missiles, and even drone warfare have captured major attention of military planners and thinkers in both Washington and Beijing.

What is also important to note is that the U.S. military is fully aware that Iran’s military is also busy emulating China’s asymmetric warfare-related countermeasures either on its own or through secret contacts with the Chinese military.  As was recently highlighted, Iran’s naval doctrine is heavily focused in denying access to the U.S. navy by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

The necessity of issuing this document has a lot to do with the need of the Obama administration to signal to his Republican presidential rivals that he is not about to create a “hollow” military, a phrase that almost invariably comes into vogue during the presidential election campaign.  One can readily recall the spurious “missile gap” between the United States and the USSR, which became a hot issue of debate during the 1960 presidential contest between Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

The bottom line of this document is to assure America’s friends and adversaries that the military is gearing up to doing at least as much in the realm of providing security to the United States as before.  Given its very impressive record of creating new and highly effective warfighting strategies and operational concepts, its adversaries need no further convincing.  China knows that fact only too well and its planners are busy studying the modalities of the AirSea battle concept.

A number of students of global affairs are steadily predicting a power shift from the West to the East and the consequent emergence of a post-American era.[2]  In reality, however, the global power shift might not be from the West to the East, but a multi-directional one, as we also witness the emergence of Turkey, Brazil, and South Africa as new global centers of economic dynamism, along with the PRC and India – two spectacularly rising powers.

Perhaps recognizing that it has long been stuck in the dizzying whirlpool of the Middle East and the need to catch its breath by refocusing on its dominance in the Asia-Pacific, President Barack Obama has already withdrawn America’s forces from Iraq; and has redeployed 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan.  This is part of his promise to bring about complete withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.  However, the United States is opening a new military base in Australia.  By withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, the lone superpower might also be tacitly conceding its defeat.  The politics of Iraq remains as volatile and divisive as ever.  Except this time, along with the explosive Shia-Sunni division, it is also characterized by the growing presence of al-Qaida.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, continues to prove itself to be the graveyard of empires.  As such, the war in that country continues to underscore the mounting power of the Taliban.

The Asia-Pacific, on the contrary, is welcoming the United States’ decision to escalate its presence, with open arms.  China — whose escalating hegemony appears ominous from the perspectives of small nation-states of East Asia – is creating ample apprehension among them.  Thus, these nation-states initiated a policy of “circling the wagons,” and appear determined to balance the power of China by asking for a resurged presence of the old hegemon, the USA, which has an established record of creating a benign hegemony.[3]  Washington could not have been happier.  The East Asian nations’ welcoming of America to their region only complemented the insistence of the Obama administration that America is a “Pacific power.”  President Barack Obama reiterated that resolve during his trip to Australia by stating that “…we are here to stay.”

India and China, the poorest countries of the not-too-distant past, have long passed the label of “rising powers.”  Now, they appear to be the economic power houses, indeed superpowers, of the future.  China is way ahead of India in this race, and thus remains a focal point of America’s attention.  As the foremost rising power of our time, China has the American example of the post-World War II era to follow.  Its rise not only has to be peaceful, but it also should be eminently constructive in revamping the rules underlying the functioning of the premier global political and financial institutions, like the U.N., the World Bank, and the IMF, etc.  Thus far, however, its leaders have not impressed the world by their proactivism or imagination for playing a constructive role.  They are standing on the sidelines, while being critical of the U.S. and Europe for not being “responsible” in their respective economic policies.  In the meantime, China continues to act as a rising power most comfortable in implementing parochial and inward looking policies of currency manipulation, as well as a heavy reliance on pushing its merchandise to the West.  It behaves as if it is only interested in reaping the benefits of appearing to be a superpower of the future without paying the political or economic price for being one.

India is gradually learning to act as a rising power in its neighborhood.  It has enhanced its presence in Southeast Asia by deciding to explore for oil in the South China Sea and in its cooperation with Vietnam, which has been one of the most vocal critics of China’s assertiveness in that region.[4]  India also has escalated its military presence along its border with China by announcing “$13 billion plans to raise a new mountain strike corps and four mountain divisions.”[5]  That was a clear response to China’s reported buildup on the Sino-Indian borders.   However, the jury is still out regarding the future performance of the successors of the Sun Tzu and Kautilyan styles of Realpolitik.

Europe is facing a crisis related to the future of the Eurozone, which was recently depicted as “a crisis of apocalyptic proportion” by Radoslaw Sikorski, Foreign Minister of Poland.[6]  As Europe is standing at the edge of a precipice, Turkey is emerging as the new power center of Europe.  In that capacity, it is implementing a “truly multidimensional foreign policy” in which it secretly conducted a joint air force exercise with China last October.[7]  In economic affairs, Russia became Turkey’s number one trade partner, replacing Germany.

Turkey is playing a similarly spectacular role in the Middle East.  Its intermingling of secularism and Islam is emerging as a popular example for the next corps of Arab leaders replacing the autocrats in the aftermath of the Arab Awakening.  In view of these developments, Turkey is transforming itself from a “peripheral state of Europe” into a “central power” of that region.[8]  Its model of secular democracy is already being emulated in Tunisia; and chances are that it would also be emulated in Egypt, as Islamists are winning electoral majority in that country but promising to opt for a coalition with the secularist parties.

The Arab Awakening (aka Arab Spring) continues to capture the world’s attention.  As the aging dictators fall, Islamists are emerging as some of the most prominent leaders of the Arab world.  The question is not an imminent one, but should be asked:  What is the Arab world going to look like in the next 3-5 years?  Are there prospects for the emergence of democracies, Islamic democracies, or would some of those Arab countries slide under the rule of theocracies?  Three current models of theocracy – Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia – have not made those countries places of economic prosperity, political stability, or the focal point of enlightenment.  If anything, obscurantism is on the rise in Pakistan, and theological autocracy is the order of the day in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

If the convergence of Islam and pluralistic democracy occurs in the post-awakening Arab world, then the opportunities for people of that part of the world are enormous.  There is tremendous human potential waiting to be liberated, educated, enlightened, and to make a dash toward the globalized world from which it was more or less excluded because the autocrats feared progress related to the information age.  And they were right for fearing it, because modernity was bound to become their enemy.  The Arab Awakening arrived in the Middle East and North Africa riding on the shoulders of some of the most recent advances in social/electronic media.  It was the power of social media that the autocratic and archaic control machine could not control, fight, or stifle.

One of the secrets of the Arab Awakening is that it has been an inclusive movement.  Another shocking aspect of it is that there were no leaders who could issue commands for the masses to follow, or whose arrests or assassinations by the ruling autocrats could have seriously undermined the movement.  As liberated Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya are struggling to create a constitutional system of governance, the most important question is whether they will adhere to the principle of inclusiveness, or will they become victims of fissiparous tendencies for which their societies have been notorious?

One has every reason to be wary of the Islamists of the Arab world.  They have spent long years in the dungeons of the autocrats and the Pharaohs.  They have no experience with governance.  They have repeated the slogan, “Islam is the solution,” without having the responsibilities for spelling it out into specific policies.  As they become part of the ruling elites, it will be a test for them.  Their ultimate success may not be that they govern well, even though that would be a wonderful outcome.  Their ultimate success as participants in a democracy is their willingness to accept defeat, if or when they are voted out of office.

One “odd man out” in the rising tide of political change in the Middle East is Iran.  It has increased its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, most ironically, because of the dismantlement of the Taliban regime and that of Saddam Hussein by its arch enemy, the United States.  However, the Green Movement’s abortive attempt to bring about regime change in Iran has left that country exposed to the covert shenanigans of the United States to overthrow the rule of the Ayatollahs.  Iran’s recent capture of the CIA’s, RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone is evidence of that reality.  The CIA’s monitoring of Iran is only the exposed aspect of its covert actions against that country.  The covert actions that are unbeknownst to the theocratic rulers of Iran are likely to hurt their regime the most.[9]  To add insult to injury, Iran’s strong ally, Syria, appears to be the next country to undergo a bloody regime change.  The loss of Syria would also seriously damage Iran’s presence and influence in Lebanon.

However, Iran is not the only country increasingly troubled by the prospects of regime change in Syria.  Israel is equally concerned, because the ouster of the Assad regime promises to bring about the rising presence and clout of the Islamists, who are not likely to loathe the Jewish state any less than the current Baathist/Alawite rulers of that country.

The emerging realignment of power should be worrisome, especially for the great powers of the West, because it is not only aimed at threatening their erstwhile privileged status in the global hierarchy of nation-states, but it also promises to bring to prominence actors and forces that have not been viewed by them as particularly friendly or cooperative.  There are likely to be many uncertainties, even the outbreak of minor or even major military conflicts, before a new hierarchy of nations is formulated.  The emergence of China and India does not promise the evolution of a Sino-Indian condominium of power.  Instead, the two rising powers might be headed toward an era of increased friction and even military conflict, especially on the issue of border dispute.  One minor example of that friction is underscored by the fact that India’s new Agni-V long-range ballistic missile is being dubbed by its defense analysts as the “China-killer.”

The lessening of the economic status of European states and the rising power of Turkey direly requires the emergence of a new set of “rules of engagement,” whereby Turkey can decide whether it is still interested in joining the EU, and, if so, on what terms?  The “sick man” of Europe toward the conclusion of the first decade of the 21^st Century is Europe, not Turkey.  The rising presence and influence of Islam requires a new rapprochement between the Islamists and the secularists for the emergence of Islamic democracy or a new model of democratic pluralism that resembles the Turkish model.  All of these are tall orders.  But they are also in need of acceptance by the powers of the past and the future.

There is little doubt that India is about to face a regime change in the next election.  What is tragic is that there seems to be too much significance given to the leadership of young Rahul Gandhi, who is both brash and inexperienced.  For a country of the global significance of India, it has been showing a serious lack of a corps of sophisticated leaders who can continue the march toward becoming the second superpower of Asia in the coming decades.  One reason might be the dominance of Hindu mythology, which excessively emphasizes the role of heroes (or even superheroes) that can singlehandedly conquer mighty evil forces.  The Hindu books of mythology are full of narratives of such heroes.  Since religious legacies – even the mythical ones – color the frame of reference of ordinary people in all societies, India seems to be enthralled by the idea of “hero-leaders.”  Mohandas Gandhi was certainly one such hero, whose nonviolent ideology turned out to be more powerful than Samson’s “bone of an ass,” which he used to slay “a thousand men.”  

Jawaharlal Nehru created a similar legacy for himself.  As an astute student of history, a philosopher, and a shrewd politician, he had the makings of a leader that Hindu books of mythologies describe.  But Nehru was not a religious man.  In fact, as a declared secularist, he had little use for religion.  He emerged as one of the leaders of the nonaligned movement (NAM) of the 1950s and 1960s.  That movement played a major role in serving as the conscience of the world in underscoring the immorality of the Cold War.  But Nehru was no vacuous moralist.  He used morality only selectively, and ignored it when it served India’s national interests.  The best evidence of that was India’s strong friendship with the Soviet Union, the leader of the communist camp of the Cold War years.  Nehru played a powerful role in the enduring nature of that friendship.  While he regularly criticized the Cold War, he continued to show preference for the Soviet Union.  As such, India became a major recipient of Soviet civilian and defense technology at a preferential rate.  Nehru also remained a giant in India’s domestic arena.  No one could challenge his leadership.  That leadership became a prototype that no Indian Prime Minister could match.

Nehru’s daughter, Indira, also emerged as a giant of Indian politics.  However, unlike her father, she was quite ruthless and often wrong-headed in dealing with opposition.  She initiated a 21-month-long emergency rule (25 June to 21 March 1977), which is still regarded as a dark spot on India’s otherwise immaculate commitment to democracy.  She asserted a highly controversial policy (aka Indira doctrine) that assigned India to play a central role in resolving political conflicts of South Asia.  For the Indian political culture – which emphasizes more the Gandhian morality than the Kautilyan version of Machiavellianism – that was a gross aberration.  It was under Indira’s premiership that India succeeded in dismantling East Pakistan into Bangladesh.  Those who live by the sword also die by the sword.  Her mishandling of the Sikh movement’s demand for the creation of a separate Sikh state, Khalistan – and especially her decision to send troops inside the holiest of the Sikh shrines, the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) in June 1984 (Operation Blue Star) to arrest Sikh extremists and their leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale – eventually led to her brutal assassination at the hands of her two disgruntled Sikh bodyguards.

Indira was quite clearheaded and resolute about India’s role as a great power during an era when that country was not at all qualified to be labeled as such. However, to the extent that she had no doubts about India’s future potential, she was indeed a visionary.  In that sense, she also possessed the eadership qualities of India’s mythical heroes.

Since Indira, India did not have leaders of mythical quality.  Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was more of a Machiavellian than anything else, in his decision to bring India’s closeted nuclear weapons program into the open by conducting nuclear explosions in 1998.  From India’s strategic perspectives, that was indeed a brilliant move.  The United States – the self-styled policeman against nuclear weapons proliferation – was angry about India’s nuclear weapons test and imposed sanctions, but then got over that anger.  The decision of the administration of President Bill Clinton to conduct strategic dialogues with India in 1999-2000 eventually resulted in the remarkable evolution of the U.S.-India strategic partnership.

India’s emergence as one of the states possessing nuclear weapons should be viewed in conjunction with its economic reforms program that Dr. Manmohan Singh carried out in the early 1990s in his capacity as India’s Finance Minister.  Thus, Prime Minister Vajpayee and Dr. Manmohan Singh together emerged as two technocrats who made major contributions toward India’s emergence as one of the rising powers of Asia.  They hardly possessed characteristics of mythical heroes of the Hindu holy books.  Vajpayee was at times referred to as charismatic, but certainly not Singh.  In fact, Singh is not even a Hindu.

Still, the public quest for another hero-like leader continues.  That quest has a genuine base in India’s political culture.  People love to find heroes in different walks of life. When they find them, they continue to worship them unless they do something awful to dismantle their god-like aura.  The Indian mass media also plays a crucial role by incessantly keeping the notion of mythical heroes alive, as part of public discussion and debate.  Those discussions only become intense when a government in power gives them reasons to argue that its time has passed.  Unfortunately for Dr. Singh – who has the reputation of a brilliant technocrat – such a discussion is becoming voluble with the passage of time.

Given India’s incessant quest for heroes, Rahul Gandhi’s chances of emerging as Prime Minister appear quite bright.  However, not many are willing to take bets about his competence in that office, because he lacks experience.  Despite the visibility that he has been given as a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, he has yet to impress observers with his shrewdness, maneuverability, or craftiness – traits that were part of the political profile of his great grandfather and grandmother.  His mother, Sonia, has also nurtured an aura of a great leader in the past few years.  However, to be fair, Rahul might shock his critics and prove himself when given a chance.  But if he fails, India will move on.  His failure would not be regarded as the failure of a hero.  Heroes never fail; that is the judgment from the holy books.  And India will move ahead in its quest for another hero.

It is India’s obsession with Pakistan that is forcing it to increase its strategic presence in Afghanistan.  India knows that, given the geographic propinquity to Afghanistan, Pakistan will always enjoy an unsurpassable strategic advantage over India.  Still, India has a number of additional advantages.  First, it is a rising economic power and can entice Afghanistan by offering huge amounts for economic development.  As a country whose economy is teetering at the edge of a calamitous precipice, Pakistan has little to offer Afghanistan in terms of developmental assistance.  Second, as a strategic partner of the United States, India is given pretty much a green light by the administration of President Barack Obama to escalate its strategic presence in its immediate
neighborhood.  As recently as only a few days ago, President Obama – who knows as much about the tortured history of South Asia as he does about the convoluted history of Afghanistan – gave Pakistan a public lecture that it should not view India as its “mortal enemy.”  Needless to say, India also believes along the same line.  However, what is more noteworthy is that Pakistan does not.  Thus, it makes a lot of sense for India to persuade Pakistan of that through its foreign policy behavior – its non-threatening posture – rather than a near-obsessive pursuit of enhancing its strategic presence in Afghanistan.

A complete picture of the reality of South Asia is that both Pakistan and India have been behaving obsessively when it comes to Afghanistan.  The darkest days of India’s foreign policy were when Pakistan succeeded in enabling the capture of power by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.  After that, India, along with Russia and Iran, did its best – albeit quite unsuccessfully –
to provide military and economic assistance to the Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Masood in his uphill but enormously courageous military campaign to dislodge the Taliban from power.  The United States succeeded in obtaining that goal where the collective endeavors of India, Russia and Iran failed.  The Taliban regime was dismantled in November 2001 as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan substantially in its quest for “strategic depth,” which was supposed to provide it some advantage over India in future military conflicts.  India, for its part, had every reason to be fearful of the growing power of Islamist extremism in relation to the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, which provided an enhanced strategic advantage of Pakistan.  That advantage was expressed through numerous incidents of terrorism in the Indian-administered Kashmir.

As the Islamist groups inside Pakistan turned against their own government in the first decade of the current century, and as the U.S.-Pakistan ties remain under enormous stress, the shoe is on the other foot.  India is exploiting the situation to enhance its strategic presence in Afghanistan.  The recent strategic partnership between New Delhi and Kabul, which might turn out to be not worth the paper it is written on – is a persuasive example of that reality.  There is little doubt that it is aimed at undermining the strategic advantage of Pakistan, the strong denials of India and Afghanistan to the contrary.  In that sense, those ties remain the legitimate target of Pakistan’s own future endeavors to undermine them.

One wonders how much of this egregious reality of South Asian power politics President Obama knows, understands, and internalizes, when he stood atop his soap box and started lecturing Pakistan that India is not its mortal enemy.  If the United States were not embroiled in finding a political solution to the war of Afghanistan – a war that it seems to be losing at present –  it may have played a role in bringing the two South Asian arch-rivals together.  However, upon reflection, India is not at all perturbed that the United States is too busy with the war to be playing such a role.  In fact, India is of the view that its best interest will be served while the United States plays no such role, for it is afraid of losing its strategic advantage in its negotiations with Pakistan; negotiations that are not really aimed at resolving anything.

Pakistan, for its part, knows that it does not have much of a strategic advantage over economically powerful and politically resourceful India.  So Pakistan seems to be operating on a slightly different version of the old adage: “The strong do whatever they will, and the weak suffer what they must.”  Pakistan’s version of that adage involving India seems to be “weak will do unto the strong whenever they can.”  Afghanistan serves (and will continue to serve) as an ideal place for Pakistan, regardless of whether the United States stays or leaves that country.  Since it considers that country as a legitimate part of its sphere of  influence, Pakistan regards the “encroachment” of India in that country as a serious “offense,” which deserves an appropriate response.  Thus, and sadly so, the unending Indo-Pak rivalry in Afghanistan promises to be both brutal and bloody.

One relevant example of urging an ally to acquire the leadership role was Washington’s advocacy that Japan should emerge as a “normal” military power.  That was a euphemism for the remilitarization of Japan, at least as envisaged by the PRC and South Korea, two countries that still nurture horrible memories of Japan’s “rape” of their polities when it occupied them.  One wonders how much thought the United States gave to the Chinese and South Korean reactions to a potential emergence of a militarized Japan.  Alternatively, the U.S. suggestion might also be part of its strategic maneuvers to put pressure on China in the same manner in which Richard M. Nixon decided to develop a strategic nexus with the PRC in 1972, to put pressure on the Soviet Union.  Another example of such an advocacy was the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s advocacy during her latest visit to that country that it is time for India to act as a leader in South Asia and in the Asia Pacific.   That advocacy, though genuine, is highly controversial and may not be welcomed among the countries of South Asia.

The fact that the United States will be lowering its military profile in Afghanistan in the near future has become a major source of apprehension for India.  It knows that the immediate outcome of that development will result in an instant heightened presence of Pakistan in Afghanistan.  And India is as opposed to an increased presence and influence of Pakistan in Afghanistan as Pakistan is about a similar development involving India in that country.  Even if one were to temporarily ignore the Indo-Pak loathing of each other’s increased role in Afghanistan in the future, an important question is what exactly does the United States want India to do in Afghanistan?  Should it become an occupying force in a manner similar to that of the United States or should it become a peacekeeper?  Both of these alternatives are highly untenable.  Keeping these facts in mind, one wonders how much time the United States has really spent in thinking about the issue of India’s leadership in Afghanistan.

A possible alternative for India to consider in Afghanistan is to establish some sort of a nexus with Iran and Russia to minimize the chances of the emergence of al-Qaida as a major force.  Even on this issue, a lot depends on what kind of a compromise the United States would be able to reach with the Taliban of Afghanistan before pulling out of that country.  If there is even a remote possibility of the Taliban’s emergence as co-rulers of Afghanistan, any emergence of an India-Iran-Russia nexus influencing the internal power dynamics of Afghanistan is entirely out of the question. Moreover, given the intense antipathy that Iran and the United Sates hold toward each, it is highly unlikely that Washington would endorse any political compromise that would enable Iran to escalate its power and influence in Afghanistan.

In the Asia-Pacific region, on the contrary, India has a good chance of exercising its leadership.  The ASEAN countries have been quite receptive, indeed some of them have been eager about, India’s increased leadership role in their region as a balance against the PRC’s rising influence.  India has been quite successful in building on that support by becoming a member of the East Asia Summit in December 2005 and by signing free trade deals with the ASEAN countries in 2009.

India as a naval power (it has world’s fifth largest navy) also has a great potential in cooperating with Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in conducting joint patrolling of the Strait of Malacca, through which more than 80 percent of China’s oil supplies from the Middle East and Africa passes.  Indeed, India has been involved with the U.S., Japanese and Australian navy in conducting joint naval exercises in that region, much to the chagrin of the PRC.  India has also been conducting joint naval
exercises with Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.  India’s Andaman and Nicobar tri-services Command has a potential of playing a major role in India’s naval maneuverings in Southeast Asia.

One Indian maneuver vis-à-vis China in the South China that is worth making a mention is the evolving Indo-Vietnamese strategic ties.  Operating on the axiom that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, India has been seeking increased strategic cooperation with Vietnam, which also includes gaining access to the Cam Ranh Bay naval and air base. Even though Vietnam has been reluctant about granting India access to that facility, the Vietnamese-Indian strategic partnership remains a work in progress.  The worsening of Vietnam-China ties in the future would make rulers in Hanoi reconsider India’s sustained interests in the Cam Ranh Bay base.

Even though India’s immediate neighborhood in South Asia does not appear promising about its emergence as an effective leader, leaders of that country can still work on most challenging aspects of creating a rapprochement with its arch adversary, Pakistan.  Such a development—even though it remains hard to develop—would open up considerable opportunities for India’s exercise of leadership in South Asia.  In the meantime, Asia-Pacific holds enormous opportunities for India.  It should work on equally proactively to foster them.  It behooves India to remember that its greatest challenge in the Asia-Pacific is coming from China, which regards that region as its area of special (if not “core”) interests.

In fact, there is hard evidence that those schools are still playing a crucial role in promoting militancy, sectarianism and Jihad in Pakistan. According to a recent news dispatch, “financial support estimated at nearly 100 million USD annually was making its way to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in south Punjab from organizations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ostensibly with the direct support of those governments.” What makes this report credible is that it was part of a cable sent by a U.S. government official, Bryant Hunt, to the Department of State in 2008. The same cable also describes the intense competition and an attendant high degree of hostility between the Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith schools versus the Barelvi schools. The Barelvi schools are dominant in south Punjab, while the Deobandi and Ahl-e- Hadith schools are dominant in the NWFP and the FATA regions of Pakistan. The competition is about the expansion of the respective sects represented by those schools, and the focus of competition is families with multiple children, with severe financial difficulties.

This particular finding undermines, if not negates, the result of the aforementioned academic study. The religious clerics of the Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith schools promise to the families that they would find those children “…employment in the service of Islam,” which invariably means “martyrdom.” According to Hunt’s cable, “Local sources claim that the current average rate is approximately Rupees 500,000 (approximately USD 6,500) per son.” Mind you, those figures are about three years old, and the chances are that they have gone up on 2011. Since the poor families are the chief targets of extremists’ campaign, poverty remains a variable on which the government of Pakistan must focus its attention.

In this maddening race for militancy, the two main political parties of Pakistan—the ruling PPP and Pakistan Muslim League (N) are equal culprits purely for selfish reasons. Neither party is interested in taking bold stand against the religious fanatics for the fear of offending them. However, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has been attempting to portray itself as an entity opposing Islamic extremism to the U.S. officials. Unfortunately, General Pervez Musharraf’s PML (Q) was using the same deceitful stand toward the Bush administration throughout his rule. The good news is that the administration of President Barack Obama is no longer buying that fake bill of goods. That is just one reason—in a long list of numerous other reasons—why Pakistan and the United States are having trouble in getting along.

One cannot dismiss the findings of the aforementioned academic study. At the same time, the news dispatch of this essay is also correct. Pakistan does need the U.S. economic assistance. However, the brunt of that assistance ought to be not in the realm of building its military muscles. Rather, that aid should go for building the economic institutions, civil society, civilian infrastructures, and renovating the quality of modern educational institutions and curricula of Pakistan, to name a few. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s Army does not see it that way. It has been focused more on its military competition with India, even though it cannot afford to pay for the ever-escalating cost of that competition. The reality faced by that country is that, while its economic power is eroding on a sustained basis, its appetite for becoming a military equal of India is not.

Another related question is whether there are any chances of the development of political realism inside Pakistan whereby its Army would be willing to assign its horrendous appetite for building its military muscles a secondary or a tertiary significance while its civilian leaders are given a decent interval to build the economic power of their country. The short answer to that question is no. Consequently, the future of Pakistan as a modern, stable and a democratic state with a viable economy appears quite dim for the foreseeable future.

The fact of the matter is that Pakistan is duplicitous, but so is the United States and so is India. As long as the United States has remained in Afghanistan (November 2001, to be precise), it is acting like a novice about the bloody strategic affairs of that region. In case President Barack Obama is interested, let me spell out a few things here for his edification, because either his South Asian advisors are not providing him with ample doze of realism, or they are not being comprehensive enough about their own grasp of South Asia.

First, India and Pakistan hate each other’s guts. India’s decision to acquire nuclear weapons and emerge as a major military power has a lot to do with the shellacking its armed forces received at the hands of China in the 1962 border war between the two. Similarly, Pakistan’s decision to emerge as a nuclear power has a lot to do with India’s sole participation in the dismantlement of East Pakistan.

Second, Pakistan, like Israel, has never internalized the fact that it will be around as long as other nations. Except in the case of Israel, there is no power in the Arab Middle East that can seriously pose an existential threat to Israel. Pakistan, on the contrary, is a lone wolf. It has no friends. Only China comes close to being called “an all weather friend.” However, there is no country in the world that is as pragmatic as China when it comes to international relations. What that means is that China would abandon Pakistan’s side in a heartbeat if or when it finds it appropriate to do so.
Third, thus, Pakistan has to depend on its own nuclear deterrence. However, in the aftermath of 9/11, one often hears Pakistan’s sustained fear that the United States and/or India would be highly interested in depriving it of those weapons. Whether such a development is possible is entirely different matter. But any scenario of a non-nuclear Pakistan also means a supplicant of India. And no Pakistani government would allow the materialization of that scenario.

Fourth, in the post-9/11 era, Pakistan is watching with ample dismay (or even with horror) the growing strategic relationship between the rising India and declining hegemon, which is desperately looking for strategies to have an upper-hand over China. While the raison d’être of that partnership is focused on China; Pakistan is envisioning it exactly in the same manner as India would if the shoe is on the other foot.

Fifth, as the U.S.-India strategic partnership becomes increasingly comprehensive, Pakistan envisages its own strategic options shrinking palpably. For instance, that partnership has a lot to do with India’s boldness about escalating its strategic presence in Afghanistan, a place where Pakistan has long committed itself in the name of seeking “strategic depth.” Because of that development, Pakistan finds itself relying on its age-old tactic of relying on its Islamist card to terrorize India in Afghanistan, a tactic that it has long used in the Indian-administered Kashmir.
However, the Afghanistan of 2011 is not the same place that it was in the 1980s, when General Zia Ul-Huq declared his own doctrine of strategic depth. There is a new Sheriff in town called the United States, which thinks it can change the bloody rules of South Asia. Whether it can or not is not relevant. The fact that it thinks it can is emboldening India into escalating its strategic profile in Afghanistan. India news of today (June 1, 2011) reports, “At a time when Pakistan is constantly attempting to increase its presence in its western neighbor, India Wednesday committed itself to the capacity-building of Afghanistan’s armed forces by promising to continue training the country’s security personnel.” Thus, the chances are high that the politics of Afghanistan involving India and Pakistan will be bloodier in the coming months.
For Pakistan the toughest aspects of its agenda is how to avoid becoming labeled as a “pariah” or a “rogue” state by the United States. And the only reason it has avoided that potential is because the lone superpower needs Pakistan’s logistical help in providing the war-related supplies to Afghanistan. However, Obama, unlike his predecessor, has bought into the Manichean view of his Vice President Joe Biden, who fancies himself as some sort of South Asia expert. Thus, Pakistan is constantly being given a heavy dose of “hard love” in America’s insistence on starting a bloody war with the Taliban of Pakistan, eradicating the “Quetta Shura,” eradicating the Haqqani group, etc. as a quid pro quo for continuing economic assistance under the Kerry-Lugar legislation. In the meantime, it is watching the rising strategic profile of India in Afghanistan, while it volubly complains about India’s own alleged complicity in the destabilization of Baluchistan, which India readily denies. However, from Pakistan’s point of view this is the same India that gleefully presided over the dismantlement of East Pakistan. As India’s strategic profile in Afghanistan escalates, Pakistan’s fear of India’s role in escalating upheavals inside Pakistan also rises.

Given these type of developments, Pakistan has attempted to explain its American interlocutors the modalities of its security concerns. However, the naiveté that is so idiosyncratic of Washington’s involvement in South Asia is keeping it from completely understanding Pakistan’s security concerns. While it is perceived as being ignored by the United States, Pakistan is using the typical South Asian logic of doing unto your enemy before it does unto you.

Regarding Pakistan’s ISI, the chief reason why it is adamant about not buying the constant American pitch to demonize it is because that entity played an awesome role in creating the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the mid-to-late 1990s. Once the United States leaves that country, Pakistan’s top military brass envisions their ISI to play a similar role. The much-talked about “rogue” elements of the ISI can be controlled when the Pakistani Army wants to do so. Right now it has no interest in upsetting the applecart of ISI when the American’s own role in Afghanistan appears so “iffy.”

Bottom line, given the kind of cards the ever-changing strategic affairs of South Asia are dealing Pakistan, it is acting like a highly rational actor. It knows that, in the final analysis, it has to rely on its own self. It is doing its best in that regard. And in that role, Pakistan is second to none.

Sunil Dasgupta and Stephen P. Cohen, “Is India Ending Its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?” and

C. Christina Faire, “Under the Shrinking U.S. Security Umbrella: India’s End Game in Afghanistan?”

Sunil Dasgupta and Stephen P. Cohen, “Is India Ending Its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?” http://www.twq.com/11spring/docs/11spring_Dasgupta_Cohen.pdf.

I read with interest your coauthored essay, “Is India Ending Its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?”  What you call strategic restraint has been most appropriately described by George K. Tanham as labeled as India’s inability to think strategically.  The reason for that has less to do with India’s social divisions (as wrongly argued by Peter Rosen) and more with the continued inability of India’s strategic thinkers to come up with original ideas about how their country ought to adopt a more militaristic (as opposed to militant) policies, as Mao did about the PRC.  I really cannot think one strategic thinker from India that has captured the attention of his own countrymen.  Mr. K. Subrahmanyam bemoaned the inability of Indian thinkers to think strategically at least in two long conversations that I had with him in New Delhi.  Even Jawaharlal Nehru’s “visionary” leadership was characterized by a more than a heavy dose of anti-military proclivities.  Today’s India continues to suffer from the legacy of that thinking.

India developed its nuclear weapons, but then its nuclear doctrine, to the best of my knowledge, has remained only in a draft form.  The reason for that may be because India does not think that is has to focus too much on developing a proactive nuclear doctrine.  India may be partially right on that point.  Regarding China it might not have to worry about a potential nuclear conflict.  I am not sure the same is true when it comes to Pakistan, especially as the gap between the conventional power of India and Pakistan is widening so steadily in favor of the former.

What India should have done since becoming a nuclear power is to do some systematic thinking on conventional warfare and asymmetric warfare.  Considering that the Naxalite problem is almost as old as the insurgency in Kashmir, I often wonder what is wrong with India’s strategic thinking.  Even in Kashmir, India acts more like a police state in suppressing the insurgency instead of developing some version of American military’s “hearts and minds” campaign.

The 9/11 attacks on the U.S. homeland, in my judgment, turned out to be the best development for India’s turbulent experience with the Islamist insurgency in Kashmir.  It is the United States’ pressure on Pakistan in the post-9/11 era that is serving as a saving grace for India’s continued failure to develop a military doctrine to deal with Pakistan.

I was originally impressed with the thinking behind the Cold Start Doctrine.  It got the attention of the Pakistani Army.  However, it was pathetic watching the systematic endeavors of India’s Army brass and top Indian security officials to belittle that promising doctrine by labeling it as merely a concept.  I also read articles by some credible Indian analysts, who maintained how silly that doctrine really was given the poor readiness shape of the Indian military.  So much for telling the enemy where your weak points are.  Indians should re-read the Kautilya’s Arthashastra, and, of course, the writings of Sun Tzu!

C. Christina Faire, “Under the Shrinking U.S. Security Umbrella: India’s End Game in Afghanistan?” http://www.twq.com/11spring/docs/11spring_Fair.pdf

I read with interest your essay, “Under the Shrinking U.S. Security Umbrella: India’s End Game in Afghanistan?”  The best part of that essay is your analysis that questions the relevance of de-hyphenation, which I always envisioned as a development that did not complement America’s interests in Afghanistan.  Besides, looking at India’s preoccupation (some say obsession) with Pakistan from inside India, one would think that the de-hyphenation policy never happened.

I was interviewing a China specialist on the campus of JNU in November 2007.  We were immersed in discussing the intricacies of Sino-Indian relations.  All of a sudden he stated that the chief problem with India’s China policy is our obsession with Pakistan.  Surprised at his digression, I wanted him to elaborate.  He said, given the size and strategic insignificance of Pakistan compared to China, we in India spend way too much time on Pakistan.  And our China policy suffers because of that.

Granted that it may be dismissed as one man’s opinion, it proved my own long-standing observation of India’s foreign policy.

Interestingly enough, I had held a half day seminar at the Observer Research Foundation during the same trip.  I met two full-time Pakistani analysts in that outfit.  I don’t know how many China specialists are working there.

Ashley Tellis’ advocacy for de-hyphenation, which you characterize as having “logical eloquence,” may also be described as verbose partisanship.  Luckily, he was able to sell it to the Clinton-Bush administrations.  Like everything else regarding South Asia, America’s de-hyphenation is proving to be least relevant for the reasons that you have thoughtfully articulated on pages 188-189 of your essay.

Even a casual observer of South Asian affairs knows that Pakistan is sinking into a cesspool of miasma of shame. One can spend a lifetime giving reasons for that sad state of affairs. Only one will be identified here because it is both long-standing in duration and overarching in scope.

Pakistan made a decision many years ago that it will use the Islamist groups as a tool for its foreign policy. That tool was used frequently, though not successfully, against India, in order to keep the Kashmir conflict in the forefront of world attention. Before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. homeland, Pakistan’s use of terror as a tool for its foreign policy was largely ignored by the international community. After the 9/11 attacks, the United States suddenly realized the commonality of interests (or a shared sense of victimhood) and kept insisting that that country take corrective measures. That development turned out to be a serious setback for Pakistan, since it had become quite comfortable in using the “Islamist card” against India and denying its use at the same time.

The post-9/11 era was also a period when the U.S.-India strategic partnership was steadily developing. Even though the reason for that development did not have a major focus on terrorism, that issue also became one more reason for convergence of interests between Washington and New Delhi. Consequently, the United States intensified its pressure on Pakistan to stop using the Islamists to terrorize Indian-administered Kashmir.

However, from Pakistan’s perspective, the use of the Islamists was much more complicated than abandoning that tactic merely because the U.S. was demanding it to do so. Pakistan used its Islamist fighters even in the first war that it fought in Kashmir in 1947. However, as Islamization became a major feature of its domestic policy starting in the 1970s under the dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq, the Islamist groups emerged as an important tool for Pakistan’s policy of dealing with India. Islamization itself — whereby Islamic extremism was deliberately allowed a key role in the central arena of politics of that country by Zia — turned out to be the cancer that has been steadily eating up the body politics of that country ever since. When the United States came to Islamabad in the early 1980s to use the doctrine of militant Jihad to defeat and expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, Zia could not have been happier. That American resolve to use Jihad against the Communist superpower was like Manna from heaven for him.

While Zia was busy offering his country as a conduit for America’s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, he also saw that as a perfect opportunity to announce the doctrine of “strategic depth” as an important driving force for Pakistan. The palpably heavy American reliance on Pakistan to defeat the Soviet Union made him quite brazen about recalibrating his country’s foreign policy toward Afghanistan and India. He announced, in no uncertain terms, that Pakistan will “never” allow an unfriendly government to remain in power in Afghanistan. Of course, he was referring to India’s own strategic maneuvers to develop a nexus with the Afghan government. From his point of view, such a development had no other purpose than to destabilize Pakistan. Every Pakistani ruler since Zia not only firmly believed in that doctrine, but used the brunt of its involvement in Afghanistan to minimize the influence of India. In that policy as well, the Islamists played a very important role.

What is hurting Pakistan’s armed forces is the fact the Islamism — as opposed to the professional competence of soldiers, sailor, and airmen — has become an important aspect of their ability to go through the ranks. When ideology is substituted for professional competence, no military worth its salt can claim any level of competence as a fighting force. The best example of that fact was envisaged by the late Deng Xiaoping, who, in 1978, decided to remove ideology as a litmus test for being a professional military person. That decision has played an extremely crucial role in the PLA’s commitment to become a competent fighting force. As close as Pakistan is to the PRC, it is about time that it immediately incorporates that lesson in escalating the professional competence of its armed forces.

As it now stands, the Pakistani Army — since the Army is the most dominant military service of that country — is heavily infiltrated by the Islamists. The level of infiltration in its armed forces, even though it cannot be fully substantiated, because the Army refuses to tackle it directly, and the mere fact that its Army and other services are coming under frequent attack by the Islamists, is a good indicator that those terrorists are being trained by the rogue elements of Pakistan’s military. The rising competence of the Islamists in attacking and destroying the military assets of Pakistan is a menace that its military cannot afford to neglect.

Before incorporating an immediate and intense program of professionalization of its military, the Pakistani Army leadership has to convince itself that its armed forces has a serious problem related to Islamist fanaticism. Then, it should proceed to root it out boldly and massively, starting from senior leaders all the way down to young recruits. In fact, it ought to closely examine the criteria of selection of young military personnel and avoid recruiting those who show proclivities toward religious extremism. There are easy-to-conduct psychological tests to determine that.

A related aspect of the modernization of the Pakistani Army is that it should, once and for all, abandon the use of Islamists as a tool for its “fight” with India, directly or indirectly. An important part of that policy is that it has to accept the fact that the Kashmir conflict is already RESOLVED. No Indian government can give “an inch” of territory under its current control and stay in power even for one day. All Pakistan has to do is to examine the long history of the Sino-Indian border dispute in which Beijing has made suggestions on numerous occasions for a territorial swap. The Indian government is famous for its sustained lack of response to such suggestions. The Pakistani Army has to emerge from the fool’s paradise that makes it believe that the Kashmiri conflict is resolvable through the use of military power that would lead to any territorial exchange between it and India. That type of realization will compel it to seek a new basis for rapprochement with India.

India has always had a qualitative advantage in the realm of conventional warfare capabilities. It has been wisely using its economic rise to ambitiously build its military muscle. As was well-documented in the May 21, 2011 issue of the Economist, the conventional fighting power of the Indian military is growing by leaps and bounds. The most important figures, according to that source, are the differences between the GDP of those countries ($8.2 billion for India versus $2.8 billion for Pakistan) and the size of the defense budget ($38.2 billion for India vice $5.2 billion for Pakistan). As much as Pakistan has been unable to close the conventional qualitative edge with the Indian military, it has foolishly believed that it can emerge as India’s “equal” merely by building a large inventory of nuclear weapons. The nuclear option was never a “winnable” one for either of those countries, because of the high population density between the Indo-Pak borders. So, why continue its march along that dead-end path?

The real and ultimate source of Pakistan’s humiliation is the Islamist framework that has been guiding its domestic and foreign policy since the 1970s. The driving force of that paradigm is the strange version of Islamist purity whose hallmarks are obscurantism, intense use of violence, and the frenzied notion of superciliousness that is hyperactively judgmental about who is a “true Muslim” is and who is not, and then proceeds to eradicate those who fail its demented litmus test. It is that framework that is destroying that country’s capabilities to emerge as a modern state.

Even as a home for Muslims on the subcontinent, it was never meant to become a combination of Lebanon of the 1980s armed with the Wahhabi mentality that had always given high priority to death and destruction over moderation and peace – which are also some of the noteworthy features of Islam. If the secular perspective of its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, were allowed to evolve uninterruptedly, Pakistan would have been at least as developed as Turkey is today. In the 1970s, Bhutto’s foolhardy policy of envisioning Pakistan as part of the Middle East and not South Asia played a crucial role in developing the Islamists’ maniacal commitment to death and destruction. Zia took that idea to an extreme. No time is more suitable than the present for Pakistan to publicly renounce that framework and take countermeasures to become a place of religious moderation and tolerance. In order to do all this, Pakistan, following the most famous Pogo comic strip quotation, has to unequivocally announce to the whole world: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

One is often dazed by the bewildering pictures that it presents.  There are palpable promises of success, yet there are also ugly faces of reality in the form of obdurate poverty and graft that forces one to question whether India really is marching toward greatness or it is merely a façade in a shiny wrapper.

Today’s India is very different from what V. S. Naipaul described many years ago in his book, India: A Million Mutinies in the Making.  Yet one can still discern glimpses of that description in another type of intense activity.  India is now embroiled in a maddening race on the part of millions of its citizens to become a part of the middle class.  In the 21^st Century, Indian mutinies revolve around the conspicuous consumption of its middle class, while its government’s commitment toward becoming a major economic power is becoming stouter with the passage of time.

The government announced recently that it is targeting an economic growth of 9 to 9.5 percent. But the success of India’s economic progress will depend upon its ability to enable its masses to achieve their dreams of economic prosperity.  That, indeed, is a tall order because poverty continues to show its face in India even in its most prosperous parts.  The government of
India presents a glossy figure of 37 percent of the people living under the poverty line, while two other reports proffer 77 percent for that category.  It is interesting to note, on this issue, that China and India face similar problems.  Except that a
potential failure for China to lower the level of poverty might bring about its implosion, while a similar scenario for India would only result in governmental changes.

There are, to be sure, some old style “mutinies” in India’s Eastern part from a number of secessionist forces, including the Maoists, the Naxalites, the Nagas, and the Kashmiri Muslim separatists in its bordering state with Pakistan, but none of these movements poses a serious threat to its survival as a nation-state, despite the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh couched the threats to its security from the Naxalites in an alarmist phrase in 2008.

Speaking of threats to India’s security, the one that might be least understood and often becomes a victim of propaganda wars between it and Pakistan is the rising tide of instability and vengeful Islamism in Pakistan.  I say vengeful Islamism because it is becoming so intense in hating Muslims who do not follow its extremist frame of reference and is busy destroying everything that has been the legacy of the moderate aspect of Hanafi Islam – the madhab (school of law) of 90 percent of Muslims in the entire subcontinent.  This Islamism seems to be eating away at the very capability of the government of Pakistan to survive.  And an increasingly unstable Pakistan poses a major threat to the security of India.

In fact, visiting a mostly serene India and contrasting it with a generally angry Pakistan, I wonder what will become of the two countries if the Islamist surge is not stopped.  The Pakistani Army has used the Islamists to destabilize India’s side of Kashmir in the past.   Even now, a large part of Pakistan’s senior Army leadership envisions the Islamist card as a still “playable” one against India – if not through a repeat of the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2009, in which it says it did not participate – in order
to deter its growing diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.

Visiting India also underscores the significance of America’s presence in the South Asia.  While it is desperately trying to win the war in Afghanistan, it is faced with two other political battles: one with Pakistan, in order to gain its support for its war in Afghanistan, and one with both India and Pakistan.  The second battle is least understood by the administration of President Barack Obama, even though, I am sure, it has ample coterie of experts helping it decipher how the power game is played in South Asia.

While visiting India, it dawned on me that what Pakistan really needs is the import of India’s formula of economic success in order to fight its own revengeful Islamist forces.  Pakistan is an economic basket case.  It is headed by a President (Asif Ali
Zardari) who epitomizes what is wrong with the civilian government.  Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Yousuf Gilani, is no less corrupt than Zardari.  Pakistan’s leader-in-waiting, Nawaz Sharif, may best be described as a “thief-in-waiting.”

Even the game of cricket – which is the “secular religion” of millions of citizens of India and Pakistan – is not free from showing its strikingly different faces in those two countries.  While India’s cricket players earn millions of dollars as rewards for excellence, a number of Pakistan’s prominent cricket players have been accused of match-fixing and have been banned from playing in foreign countries.  Because of an attempted terrorist attack on the visiting cricket team of Sri Lanka to Pakistan in March 2009, no cricket team is willing to visit Pakistan.

There is another remarkable contrast between India and Pakistan that once again became a recent focus of attention.  While the U.S.-India strategic partnership is developing steadily, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, caused considerable controversy on April 19, 2011, by stating that some members of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) have “long-standing relations with the Haqqani militant group.  That group is accused of carrying out terrorist attacks on the U.S. and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan.

While Washington and New Delhi seem to have found a powerful basis for cooperation, Washington and Islamabad are
struggling perceptibly to find a similar arrangement.  The reason for this remarkable contrast is India’s emergence as an economic power, which is also effectively invested in its emergence as a regional military power.  Pakistan, on the other hand, remains a near-failed state.  Still, America’s interest in Pakistan is based on its dire need to win the Afghan war, without necessarily offering Pakistan what it really wants – to be treated as India’s equal.  At the same time, Pakistan wants the United
States to help curb India’s diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, a presence that Pakistan regards as aimed at increasing its instability in areas such as Baluchistan, by supporting the insurgent forces in that province.  The Obama administration, for its part, continues to attach a low priority to Pakistan’s interests and preferences involving India, while it solely concentrates on extracting cooperation from Pakistan to fight terrorism.  Pakistan, however, is not willing to play ball with the United States on these terms.

Still, all is not as black and white as that – nothing in South Asia is.  The Pakistan Army has been providing intelligence data for the U.S. drone attacks on its border areas where al-Qaida and Taliban leaders and forces are reported to be hiding.  Yet, after every drone attack, it makes a point of protesting it, especially when such attacks result in the death of civilians.  Pakistan’s cooperation in providing information on drone attacks makes it an indispensable actor for President Obama’s reelection, which is very much dependent on demonstrating to the American voters that he indeed is winning “Obama’s war” in Afghanistan.

This cooperation between Washington and Islamabad faced a serious setback as a result of the so-called Davis affair.  Raymond Davis, a CIA functionary operating in Pakistan, allegedly shot and killed two ISI personnel.  He was arrested and, despite U.S. demands for his release, he was questioned by the ISI.  Even though he was let go after $2.3 million in “blood money” was paid to the families of the murdered Pakistani personnel, the ISI-CIA ties experienced a new low.  To add further
fuel to the fire, the ISI’s chief, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, visited Washington and demanded a major reduction in the size of American personnel in Pakistan.  He also wanted the American drone campaign stopped.  It is reported that the
Americans are no longer sharing intelligence with the Pakistani authorities on how they were selecting targets.  More important, the United States has unilaterally extended the drone operations to the Khyber area close to the city of Peshawar.

These intricacies notwithstanding, there is a slim chance that America would do much to significantly alter the dynamics of
its strategic ties with Pakistan, especially if that means alienating India.  India has entered an era when its importance to America is likely to be judged through the prism of U.S.-China ties, not on the basis of Indo-Pak ties.  In this sense, India is in the process of joining the great power league, which it always envisioned as a natural arena for itself.  Pakistan, although it remains an important actor in South Asia, it is not likely to enter that league anytime soon.  That fact might be the ultimate point of contrast between India and Pakistan.