[Reader-list] Barack Obama’s India-Pakistan Mess - Christopher Badeaux

[Kshmendra Kaul]

"Barack Obama’s India-Pakistan Mess"
 
by Christopher Badeaux
 
As an eight year-old boy, I had a handful of treasured possessions: A stuffed dog; a tiny Gizmo who would grow and distort in water (I religiously kept him dry, small, and cute); the first G.I. Joe Snake-Eyes action figure; and a 1983 World Almanac, marked up and annotated with news, trivia, and facts culled from every periodical, TV news program, and library book I could reach. Pretty standard, really. One of the things I did with that Almanac was to map out spheres of influence, American and Soviet, with “American” countries in blue, and “Soviet” countries in red. I’ll never forget pausing as I set to color in India on the multi-colored map with my trusty red pen to think, That doesn’t make sense. Aren’t they a democracy? A tiny bit of research told me that India and China hated each other, the U.S.S.R. and China hated each other, ergo, India and the Soviet Union were allies. Problem resolved, I hashed in India. The concept of
 “non-alignment” — India’s official position — made little sense to me. (Given India’s posturing over the decades of the Cold War, it apparently made little sense to them, too.) 
 
The fall of the Soviet Union is and was the geopolitical event of my lifetime, and thanks enough can never be paid to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II, and so many others (whose names do not rhyme with Forbachev) for that monstrosity slain. Arguably the diplomatic event of my lifetime, until recently, was the American-Indian alliance. It’s a diplomatic earthquake that should have been self-effecting; instead, it represents good policy judgments and hard work by two American Presidents who had at best mixed foreign policy records, regardless of what their partisans might say. It is a diplomatic event that altered the balance of power in Asia, put America on the side of the most populous democracy on Earth, and put America on both the side of angels and its own long-term strategic interests. 
 
It’s a diplomatic achievement being undone by the amateur realists running foreign policy now. 
 
In 1998, the long rest from the end of the Cold War (a rest punctuated by genocide in the Balkans, genocide in Rwanda, genocide in Iraq, ethnic cleansing in Southeast Asia, brush wars in the Congo and far too much else of Africa, the usual round of atrocities in North Korea and China, and scattered wars and violence across the globe) came to an end as India and Pakistan gently let the world know they had functional nuclear capacity, by detonating nuclear warheads for all the world to detect. For a host of reasons too long to explore here, some of which involved Afghanistan, China, and “non-alignment” with the Soviets, the United States had traditionally sided with the dysfunctional, kleptocratic, oligarchic, and sometimes, briefly democratic Pakistan, a failed state in the making basically since its creation, over India, a maturing parliamentary democracy whose legal, cultural, and linguistic ties with the United States for some reason never mattered
 much. In a rare moment of foreign policy clarity and insight, President Clinton set in motion a dynamic change in that relationship. Whether spurred by the fear of nuclear war on the subcontinent, a moral awakening, or the realization that a barely-functional state whose intelligence services tended to hand arms and funding to Islamic terrorist groups had just acquired nuclear weaponry, the Clinton Administration set about forging closer ties with India. 
 
In the wake of September 11, the Bush Administration took matters several steps farther: Joint military exercises, trade agreements, trade promotion, open alliances, and the clear inclusion of India in America’s regional military and strategic planning became the norm. Trade between the two countries boomed, and those of us who rejoice in an American foreign policy predicated on soft global hegemony blended with alliances with democracies and similar powers rejoiced. It is not for nothing that India was at the forefront of the nations of the Earth expressing regret at the departure of the Bush Administration. 
 
The Indian alliance is an almost perfect lynch-pin for American strategy in Asia. India’s population is growing, which means that they will actually be there for decades to come. While hardly Westerners in culture and outlook, they share more in common with the West than do the other regional powers, including even Japan. Its military, while not yet on the level of South Korea’s, is professionalizing and learning the bluewater trade. Aside from a few breakaway regions left to go and the odd round of interfaith violence, India is a fairly stable State beset on its West by a terrorist breeding ground, and to its North by a power-hungry China. In other words, it is an Anglophonic, common law democracy beset by tyrannies and lunatics, and so naturally inclined to ally with other Anglophonic, common law democracies facing the problems attendant with tyrannies and lunatics. American foreign policy has always been about American priorities — and
 rightfully so — but it is a rare and wonderful thing when American Realpolitik priorities and the moral imperative to stand next to young democracies align. 
 
Or rather, it was a rare and wonderful thing. It’s rapidly becoming a fading memory, as the Indians are finding to their dismay. 
 
When President Obama was elected, there were cross-currents in the American and Indian press and blogospheres about the implications for the young alliance. Many felt that Obama’s greater focus on Afghanistan would necessarily draw the United States back into Pakistan’s orbit. Candidate Obama’s focus on the al Qaeda and Taliban presence in the now-famously lawless northern provinces of Pakistan, his Vice President’s famous opinion on convenience stores, the particular brand of realism the Democratic Party was embracing, and the candidate’s mockery of Hillary Clinton for her support in the Indian-American community (“D-Punjab”) and proposed intervention in Kashmir did nothing to allay this. Others, pointing to all of the reasons why we had so closely allied with India in the first place, scoffed at the idea. The President-elect’s own messaging on the matter was not a model of clarity, so the question remained open: Would Obama side with
 India, or Pakistan? 
 
The answer, from the Obama Administration, appears to be Yes, we can. 
 
No, you can’t. This is one of those unfortunate rules of modern international relations: Great powers cannot be neutral arbiters between India and Pakistan. There is too much bad blood between them, too many disparate alliances, too many emotionally charged, unsettled issues. President Obama learned this when protests from India forced him to withdraw Kashmir from former AIG board member Richard Holbrooke’s diplomatic portfolio. 
 
Much as with Obama’s turn at “Make Peace In The Holy Land” (a game American Presidents play too often as if the Israelis are unhelpful opponents instead of an old, democratic ally), Obama’s India policy has all the signs of being confused, amoral fantasizing disguised as hard-nosed realism. On the one hand are repeated, pointless sleights, like not calling the world’s largest democracy after being elected; neglecting to include India in Hillary Clinton’s first trip abroad as Secretary of State; and subtly letting India know that the Obama Administration sees India’s nuclear development as out of place in the world. On the other hand are gentle — ultimately probably futile — attempts to have Pakistan divulge detail on which faction of its intelligence services perpetrated the Mumbai massacre. 
 
All of that show is the worse for the substance: When he finally deigned to turn his attention to that part of the region which does not exclusively end in –istan, the President sided with Pakistan and called for the two countries to engage in “effective dialogue” to resolve their generations-old hostility. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has bothered to watch the area since 2004 — instead of, presumably, running for President — Pakistan was overjoyed. That rookie error did more damage to our relationship with India than all of the failed telephone calls imaginable, India’s PM’s recent show of ebullience at the mere sight of Obama notwithstanding. 
 
While I recognize that the President believes that enough jaw-jaw will not merely forestall, but make pointless war-war, even jaw-jaw requires some understanding of the area. For five years, India has shut down “effective dialogue” because the dialogue turned out to be not-so-effective, not least in failing to deter Pakistan’s ISI from its ongoing shadow war against India. Pakistan liked the dialogue because it provided a veneer of legitimacy to that failing state, and made any move by India to forcibly resolve issues look evil and ill-considered by definition. In other words, whether he realizes it or not, President Obama just sided with Pakistan and against India, and put America’s foreign policy position on the side of a country that is sheltering al Qaeda. The Obama Administration has sided with the tyrant to the North and the terrorists to the West. The Indians have noticed. 
 
All of these concessions and wasted opportunities would be brilliant maneuvers if they actually yielded anything; after all, the point of Realpolitik is to get the most from other countries while giving the least from one’s own. It’s all right to give as long as you get. Instead, the story of the early Obama Administration’s foreign policy is one of apologies and concessions for nothing in return, as others have noted. Pakistan and Afghanistan are merely pointless fronts in this aggressive policy of preemptive surrender. 
 
Indeed, the remarkable thing is that not only is Obama not winning ground for traditional American foreign policy, he is not doing all that well for his stated goals either. Any reasonable observer, two months gone, having listened to the candidate’s, President-elect’s, and President’s speeches on the subject, would have said that Obama had three foreign policy goals for the region: First, win the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan, when he focused on the topic); second, shore up the global economy there with his emphasis on government spending; and, finally, bringing China and India on board with a global carbon emissions scheme. 
 
Today, Obama is negotiating with warlords with $25MM bounties on their heads in Afghanistan and, in an unsurprising move, disavowing “victory” there; giving up fiscal stimulus to bow to the developing world’s demands for handouts; and, oh yeah, China and India have rejected any carbon limitations scheme. In the interest of charity, I won’t dwell on the fact that the stepped-up military operations in Pakistan – that’s the Pakistan with whom Obama has thrown in America’s lot – are less than wildly popular there, nor that Pakistan is spending U.S. aid money paying off the fanatics running the regions being hit by American strikes, nor that the next indictment of Administration lawyers will likely come from Islamabad. 
 
This is not a foreign policy, it is a mess. It is not realism, but a resignation to the way the world wants to go, a rejection of the idea that America can influence it. It is a destruction of years of bipartisan effort to align democracies with common interests against failed states and rising tyrants, from which no good is coming. 
 
It is a failure. God help us – and God help India – if that failure lasts four more years. 
 
Christopher Badeaux is a Senior Editor of The New Ledger.
 
http://newledger.com/2009/04/obamas-india-pakistan-mess/