In its desperation over the American shift from Pakistan as the centre-point of its alliance in South Asia to a policy of wooing India in meeting the challenge of China, Islamabad has lost its sense of proportion
The sharp reaction from Pakistan over US President Barack Obama’s visit to India and his support to our country in several crucial areas, including membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group and a permanent seat for New Delhi in the UN Security Council, can only be traced to the refusal of Islamabad to give up its India-centered obsession in foreign as well as domestic policies.
As various Western analysts have noted, Pakistan just cannot reconcile itself to the fact that India gets world leaders’ serious and friendly attention based on its political and economic strength in the emerging Asian and world geopolitics. Meanwhile, Pakistan with its internal contradictions and bomb-happy jihadists, holding the state to ransom, is marching backwards.
In the early post-war years, Pakistan cosied-up to the US Cold War policy to gain leverage against a non-aligned India. Pakistan benefited when, in the post-Soviet era, struggle in Afghanistan, the religion-based terrorist organisation with Al Qaeda as its core, gained ascendency in the Government in Kabul. The Pakistan Army, always the final decisive power in the Pakistani politics, now saw the Taliban regime in Kabul as a ‘defence-in-depth’ ally against India.
The Islamabad Army-led foreign policy’s base collapsed the moment the Al Qaeda ensconced in the Kabul’s Taliban regime overplayed its hand by staging the World Trade Centre destruction. With US President George W Bush threatening to “bomb Pakistan to stone age” if the military regime in Islamabad under General Pervez Musharraf did not cooperate in destroying the Taliban regime in Kabul, Islamabad had to agree to support the very regime it had assiduously built up in the Afghan capital as an extension of its own anti-India policy.
As Pakistan’s importance as a Islamic power among the Muslim-majority countries and especially in the Organisation of Islamic Countries shrank with repeated military coups and mutual terror strikes within Muslim communities, the inner strength of India as a plural democracy and economic power was rising. The 21st century has a new geo-political scene with China emerging as a challenger to the US hegemony. The civilian nuclear deal that the US offered to India in 2008 heralded the recognition of the Indian inner strength.
The incumbent US President’s visit to India as the chief guest at the Republic Day parade and his open declaration of support for Indian demand for a permanent seat in the Security Council and full membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group without New Delhi signing the non-proliferation treaty, completes this process.
President Obama has underlined the end of Washington treating India and Pakistan on par by not visiting Pakistan after his India visit. That is particularly galling for the policymakers in Islamabad, particularly the Army which has consistently rejected the advice from its long-term friend America to give up making India baiting the fulcrum of its existence.
In its desperation over the American shift from Pakistan as the centre-point of its alliance in South Asia to a policy of wooing India in meeting the challenge of China in the continental geo-politics, Islamabad’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz seems to have lost all sense of proportion. He is seeking to block the declared American support for India’s entry into a reformed Security Council as a permanent member by raising the human rights record of New Delhi.
That seems almost funny, coming from a country which has a long death row of people accused of blasphemy, when all they did was to spite a local rival in a mutual dispute. Mr Aziz’s claim that Indian entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group would have “detrimental impact on deterrence stability in South Asia”, is another expression of this desperation.
In the context of continued dependence of Pakistan on annual American largesse for its economic survival, Mr Aziz’s threat to ‘reserve (its) right to safeguard its national security interests’ in response to the US support for India’s full membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group and permanent seat in Security Council, should be laughed at.
The nations of the world, not excluding its long-time benefactors like America, are not blind to the influence India exerts as a nation of a billion and more people of great diversity pursuing democracy for seven decades now. The two-trillion dollar Indian economy is set to reach $10 trillion, says the International Monetary Fund. It might even surpass China in its growth. The Chinese themselves, after extracting from Pakistan territorial concessions in northern-most Kashmir and a naval facility near Karachi, are now warming up to the commercial advantage that India offers as the trade between the two has crossed $60 billion — and it keeps rising.
Though Beijing too has expressed concern over the US support to India for entry into the NSG, it has couched the concern in subdued language which is not usual for the party in power in that country. China’s statement merely expresses its belief that this inclusion of India “should be conducive” to NPT regime and calls only for decision after consensus.
If Beijing as been more circumspect despite Chinese President Xi Jinping failing to crown his visit to New Delhi with concessions he wanted on the border discord and Tibet, it is because he has seen the larger benefit for China in a populous India. Obviously, the fact that India has a development budget of over a trillion dollars for the next few years, and that South-East Asian nations look to India for safeguarding their freedom as Beijing in the north bears down on them, would not have escaped the Chinese. Even to China, in the context of Indian geo-political prominence in the region, there are limits to its pro-Pakistan tilt.
The world leaders are playing along much to the chagrin of the leaders of its neighbor that analysts describe as a failed state. Pakistan’s NSA in his despair remarks admits as much. Pakistan has been a client state of America all these decades and received the treatment due to a vassal. India on the other hand has talked with the US on equal terms.
One must recall that Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister refused President Bill Clinton’s request to come to Washington to negotiate with Mr Nawaz Sharif in 1999. The Pakistani Prime Minister was in the US begging to persuade India to compromise on Kargil and save his face. Recall also that Indira Gandhi, in Washington in 1971, refused to toe then US President Richard Nixon’s line on Bangladesh and later ignored the US threat in sending its nuclear warship to the Bay of Bengal to threaten India into submission on the issue.
Both Mr Clinton and, before him, Richard Nixon, as American Presidents, did not succeed despite trying to force India into doing their bidding. It seems Mr Aziz, who asserts Pakistan’s capability to defend its self-interest, has not studied his history.