US-Pakistan relationship – Closing the growing chasm
Every nation in the world has its own set of concerns, where national concerns coincide, individual nations find it momentarily expedient to develop a mutually harmonious relationship in supersession of lesser concerns that may be diametrically opposite in perception. The US and Pakistan do not live in Utopian isolation of the rest of the world, as disparate nations their priorities coincided till very recently, making it mutually convenient to have a close association. Pakistan was the recipient of economic and military largesse for the better part of 40 years, the maximum aid flow being in the last decade.
The greatest US priority post-World War II has been to contain the spread of capitalism’s greatest nemesis, communism. The US entered two unwinnable land wars in Asia to contain communism, losing a fair amount of their young men (where have all the flowers gone?) in conflicts for which they had ambiguous motivation. While the war in Vietnam may not have been won by the US, communism had a Pyrrhic victory, losing the eventual economic battle.
As a geo-political equivalent to a land-based aircraft carrier, Pakistan served as a cornerstone of US policy in the Middle and Near East. With India leaning heavily towards the Soviet Union, Pakistan also served as a US counterpoint to long-term Soviet intentions in the region, a crescent of association formed with the Baghdad Pact which turned into the now-defunct Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) comprising of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.
With clear backing from the Soviet Union in 1971, India triumph in 1971 set off a chain of ethnic and social detonations that has seen strife spread over South Asia, with bigger conflagrations in Kashmir, Khalistan (Indian Punjab) and Sri Lanka. The US had backed India in 1962 after it got a bloody nose in its Himalayan adventure against China. Aircraft and ship-loads of US arms and equipment flowed into India, though even the US balked at the shopping list which included submarines to fight the mountain war! The US soon got a short shrift in its new found relationship for India as the Indians soon turned back to their traditionally close relationship with the USSR. Pakistan, totally dependant on US military aid, was left high and dry when the US imposed an arms embargo on both India and Pakistan in 1965 while India’s traditional Soviet source of supply remained open. After Pakistan’s temporary eclipse in 1971 and India’s explosion of the nuclear bomb in 1974, Pakistan was reduced in geo-political importance. Eventually, Pakistan’s reported intention to produce an atomic weapon to have a nuclear detente with India caused concern, quote former Pakistani PM, late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, “we shall get the bomb even if we have to eat grass,” unquote. Things further deteriorated till the low point of the relationship in 1979 was reached with the hanging of Mr Bhutto.
With the economic situation in virtual shambles and the military unable to find the finances to replace its obsolescent weapons and material of the 60s, Pakistan was in dire straits when the Soviets blundered into Afghanistan and the US got an heaven-sent opportunity to fight a proxy war in Asia in reverse against the Soviets. The principal US prop in Asia, the Shahanshah of Iran, had been removed by a popular movement in 1979 with Iran turning from close US ally into an implacable foe. Frankly it also served Pakistan’s interests to have the US again as an ally while serving as a frontline state/conduit for western military aid to the Afghan rebels. Pakistan desperately needed western economic and military aid, while we willingly gave succour to the Afghan refugees there was no way we could have stopped them coming across in droves. Whether we liked to or not, we had become a front line state/conduit, it was beneficial for us to get aid from any quarter. That it came from the US, EEC and friendly Arab countries all together was a great boon. True, we got the Drugs and Kalashnikov culture into our society as a part of the cost but speaking pragmatically, with the guerilla war on in Afghanistan, could we manage to stop infiltration across our porous borders? The backlash of the war in Afghanistan saw the eventual disintegration of the Soviet empire and the Soviet Union itself. The west can now exult that the cold war has been won but can they forget the bridges they had to cross for their triumph, the ones they have left frayed at the foundations? On the face of recent developments this would seem so and thus the deepening chasm between the US of A and Pakistan.
After the collapse of communism, USA’s primary national concern has turned to nuclear proliferation followed by drugs and terrorism. From the status of a favourite friend, we are rapidly degenerating into a low-life category. As regard drugs are concerned, the US and Pakistan are successfully collaborating in its eradication and interdiction of traffic, but it is in regard to the terrorist category that we are becoming increasingly vulnerable. The uprising in Kashmir is indigenous and the freedom fighting militants are increasingly successful against great odds but with a number of enthusiastic armchair guerilla flexing their muscles this side of the disputed border, India has a vast media advantage in propagating that the Kashmiri freedom fighters are Pakistani-trained and armed. Guerilla warfare can seldom be sustained without outside help but it is also true that even with outside help, movements that do not have grassroots support seldom succeed. Similarly in Khalistan (Indian Punjab), the Sikhs are successfully waging a home-grown struggle but Pakistan is also being tarred and feathered as a conduit for arms and succour to the Sikh freedom fighters. In this respect, the strong Indian lobby in US Congress spares no opportunity to represent lies in the face of the obvious truth, that the freedom struggles are not simply terrorist aberrations but a genuine revolt against Indian repression.
Pakistan’s primary concerns are Kashmir, the Indian nuclear capacity and their conventional weapons capability, all three complicated by known Indian expansionist aspirations as so eloquently expressed by a major Indian political party, the BJP. At the same time, Pakistan’s historical ties with Iran, considered in the west as a fundamentalist nation with aims and objectives to spread such teachings in the region, tends to act as a matter of concern to the US.
While Pakistan may be guilty of nuclear aspirations, this is only a genuine self-defence mechanism against the known Indian capability, its aggressive intentions repeatedly on military display in this region belying its democratic peaceful image. Given such an implacable foe, how can anyone ask us to disarm unilaterally in the nuclear field? The key to Pakistan’s nuclear disarmament does not lie in Pakistan but in India, if Pakistan has convinced India that will not opt for nuclear weapons and is assured a security blanket thereof, there should be no reason for Pakistan to persist with atomic ambitions. Recently US President Bush has publicly been spurned when he asked India to go the route suggested by Pakistan, a FIVE-nation summit on South Asia’s nuclear disarmament. The intransigence is thus clearly India’s.
Given that the Pressler Amendment presently discriminates against Pakistan, its genesis was a mechanism to allow US aid to flow to Pakistan in the 80s. Whatever the provocations, Pakistan lost a golden chance in talking to Senator Larry Pressler at the highest level and changing some of his perceived views, particularly about the nuclear question and Kashmir. Dialogue never hurts anybody, sometimes it leads to chalking out common ground to build future consensus on. Foreign policy cannot be governed by emotions alone, it needs a pragmatic thick hide to absorb views considered irrational and turn the arguments on their head by the force of reason and logic.
The American psyche is programmed towards fairplay and a natural affiliation with the underdog. Pakistan’s oft repeated willingness to sign the NPT, if India also agrees to do so the same, shows good faith while India’s refusal to do so on grounds of false principles and flimsy excuses shows bad faith. India has consistently pursued Anti-American policies for over four decades in support of the now defunct Soviet Union. Though the Indians backed a loser, US foreign policy has to take into account India’s size and geo-political position. However, it would be unfair if future US relationship with India discriminates against a tested friend who stood side by side in the free world’s last (and successful) military stand against the ambitions of Communism (in Afghanistan).
Pakistan being a Third World country cannot afford to turn its back on the only remaining Superpower in the world. The Gulf War has shown that advanced state-of-the-art weapons have a lethal tendency to turn the tide of battle in favour of smaller, better armed forces. The US has repeatedly shown considerable interest in providing Pakistan with equivalent military parity in terms of sophisticated arms and equipment to overcome India’s conventional military superiority and offset the nuclear advantage. If this is just a bluff, why not call this bluff? If the US can guarantee a nuclear umbrella as well as conventional arms wherewithal to stem any Indian adventure, maybe the time has come to have a pragmatic approach to the nuclear option.
Critical military spares vital to our defence needs are currently held up while we muddle through a confused debate on available policy options. We cannot afford to lose out on conventional military parity with India, if we delay in our decision we will find ourselves out in the cold and up the creek without a paddle. On the contrary, let us force-multiply the effect by making pragmatic choices that will put the ball firmly in the US court. Nuclear potential has two aspects, knowledge and material. Material has been unsuccessfully denied to us in the past and nobody can take our knowledge away. It may be difficult but we can always return to the nuclear option if promises made to us are found to be false.
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