Prime Minister Modi enthralled US Congressmen with his charm and played on common democratic values, despite being guilty of doing otherwise back home. Standing on the high pedestal of the US-India partnership in the Asia Pacific region and India’s emerging lead-role in the Indian Ocean, Mr. Modi intelligently used the congressmen’s concerns about terrorism to build a case against the “incubator of terrorism in the neighborhood” — a clear reference to Pakistan without, however, naming the latter.
The Indian prime minister is on a very persuasive campaign to induct India as a non-NPT nuclear power into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). He has neutralized Switzerland’s opposition and has won the US’s solid support for India’s entry into the close-club and expected to win over Mexico, while US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Beijing to somehow persuade the Chinese to be neutral. Already, nobody objected to India’s entry into the Missile Technology Control Regime and this raises the probability of India’s admission into the NSG, if China doesn’t veto it.
Perhaps, civilian leadership was summoned to the GHQ to wake up the Foreign Office from its slumber, besides other issues of deteriorating civil-military relations. Acting too late, Pakistan has also filed its application to join the NSG on grounds similar to India while objecting to grant exception to India. This is a valid case that China also supports that either both the non-NPT nuclear powers join or it will not agree to single-country exception.
By virtue of his high growth and high demand of largest middle class market of the world, Mr. Modi has built much closer economic partnerships with the oil-rich Arabs and Iranians, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Europeans and the prominent countries of Asia-Pacific region in partnership with the US to contain China. Indeed, India trails much behind China in terms of trade and investment in all these places and, interestingly, our dearest Chinese friends, unlike us, still don’t see the world from the prism of the US or India with whom they have widest possible economic relationships, despite border disputes.
If we are essentially wrong to see the world from the prism of India, New Delhi is also quite narrowly fixated with its Pak obsession. But, as compared to Pakistan, the Indians are much more successful in winning over our traditional friends and this is bloody economy that is making a big difference. Pakistan has done a lot for the Afghans in the last four decades at an exorbitant cost, yet Modi was welcomed with open arms and heart. We have had placed hope on every horse in Afghanistan’s internecine conflict, but failed to win any friend in Afghanistan. Indeed all our proxies have betrayed us, so will the Afghan Taliban whom we kept in safety in the hope of ensuring our strategic stakes in a country that is an unaffordable burden even for the international community. All the countries of the region cannot afford to pay $12 billion annually, if the US decides to abandon an unwinnable war. The leverage we wanted to have by keeping the Afghan Taliban and other “good Taliban” has now boomeranged on us as they either refuse to listen to us or exploit our hospitality to their advantage at our cost.
Indian and US positions on Afghanistan are getting much closer, even though without Pak help the Americans can’t leave that country in doldrums. The key to stabilization of Afghanistan is still held by Pakistan. The question is how do we use it and to achieve what objective? And on this we are becoming a victim of our muddle-headedness. The Afghan Taliban can never be loyal to us and being Islamic nationalists, they refused to listen to us in the past and are unlikely to follow us. Our problems are brewing up because of our double-dealing and we would be losing the support of the US-led Nato allies, besides earning the hostility of the Afghan government that seems to be allowing Indians to buy cheap Jihadi proxies to pay back us in the same coin that we used across the LoC. To our disadvantage, after winning over the Saudis, Modi has also succeeded in aligning with both Iranians and Afghans because we helped him by annoying both Tehran and Kabul.
Mr Modi has been strategically helped by our maximalist policies to isolate our country. The US has now firmly joined India in the condemnation of the proxies that we have had kept in our stock, as stated in the Indo-US joint statement. What great strategic purpose our proxies would serve is nothing but mind boggling. There is nothing to blame our competent but otherwise worthless Foreign Office or the powerless civilian governments for the consistent failings of our security and foreign policies that are self-defeating and isolationist. We officially claim that we will not allow the use of Pakistani territory for terrorism against any other country yet many terrorist acts in the region emanate from here. This leaves us without credibility even when we rightly say that we are the worst victim of terrorism and that our fight against the menace is unprecedented. The international community knows very well the difference between our fight against the terrorists who challenge our state’s writ and those who operate against our adversaries. This is the duplicity that alienates our allies against terrorism and provides ample ground to Modi to exploit it to his advantage.
We have to admit that we cannot compete with India in the arms race and with this confidence that they would never dare attack us by virtue of our “full-spectrum nuclear deterrence”, even if the US has opened the gates for India’s super militarization to serve their purpose of countervailing China. The nuclear deterrence must be our principal strategic concern for our defence from aggression, and all other concerns are auxiliary. Nothing is more important than the security of our country. The core issue must be our own security not any other issue. Let us keep our support to Kashmiris confined to political and principled grounds and not let it become a source of our destabilization. Above all, we must learn to live within our means and do not stretch beyond our reach.
What must be noted is that there was no reference of Afghanistan in the joint communiqué and that shows we still have a diplomatic room to maneuver. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is right in his regional peace and cooperation initiatives. And the powers that must back him if they want to frustrate Modi’s design to isolate Pakistan. We must ask the Afghan Taliban to come on board or leave and do not let the “good militants” to define our future course. In fact, a communalist Modi reinforces the extremist forces here and we must not let him destabilize us with their help. We must do the opposite of what our adversary wants and, unfortunately, our hawks are playing into the hands of Modi. Yet, we must engage him and disarm him by taking a peace offensive. www.thenews.com.pk/print/126790-Countering-PM-Modis-strategy-to-isolate-Pakistan
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