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The writer is a former foreign secretary
President Barack Obama is fond of making history. He made history in 2008 when he became the first non-white occupant of the White House. He now makes history again as he became the first US president ever to attend India’s Republic Day parade, a Soviet-style jamboree, an annual show of military might long associated with the anti-Americanism of the Cold War. He was on a highly symbolic three-day visit to India, his second in less than two years, again unprecedented in history, where his host, Narendra Modi, was also making history in meeting Obama for the fourth time in just eight months after his election.
The two leaders met in Washington, DC last September and then again at a G-20 Summit in Australia and at the East Asia Summit in Myanmar, both in November 2014. Obama’s visit also comes less than a year since Washington effectively ended its blacklisting of Modi, who became a persona non grata in the US and the European Union for his role in the killing of more than 2,000 Muslims following deadly communal riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 while he was its chief minister. The two leaders with distinct history on their side and inspired by their common ‘humble’ roots, seem to have bonded well, developing a personal equation which was overly visible in Obama’s unprecedented reception on arrival, by Modi, with an exuberant hug, and in the mutual bonhomie one saw when they talked and walked together in the elegant garden at the Hyderabad House where Modi poured a special cup of tea for Obama. No wonder, according to reports, their talks were cordial and productive covering a whole range of bilateral as well as regional and global issues.
Topping the agenda reportedly were “enhanced military cooperation, bilateral trade, climate change and investments in India’s civilian nuclear sector” on which a deal was struck to break a longstanding impasse over a local law on the liability issue that has long kept foreign nuclear companies from getting involved in the Indian market. Apparently, Modi’s ‘special cup of tea’ worked in extracting Obama’s nod on the deal. Other than a hotline that will now connect Prime Minister Modi and President Obama, one doesn’t see any new groundbreaking outcomes from the Obama-Modi talks. They just agreed to restart negotiations on a pending investment treaty and renewed the 10-year defence treaty signed in 2005. Whatever the worth of these decisions, the two sides were optimistic of their relations moving to “a whole new level”. Obama described the outcome as “powerful symbolism backed by substance”. Elated as they were on their mediocre origins, both Modi, son of a tea-seller and Obama, grandson of a cook, had reason to be euphoric over the outcome of their talks, which they believe will lead to one of the “defining partnerships of the 21st century”.
What an irony that the world’s two largest democracies are starting a ‘strategic partnership’ under a man of Modi’s controversial credentials and a Nobel Laureate US president, who has been justifying wars to make peace. In a glow of bonhomie, the two partners announced plans to unlock billions of dollars in military and nuclear trade as the bedrock of their alliance. Their Defence Trade Technological Initiative involves massive collaboration in terms of joint ‘pathfinder’ projects, including joint production of drone aircraft and equipment for C-130 military planes, cooperation on aircraft carriers and jet-engine technology and increasing upgrading of their joint military and naval exercises.
What a solid foundation for global peace and harmony! Obviously, in building up this new alliance, the US has its own priorities as part of its larger China-driven Asian agenda in pursuit of maintaining its worldwide political and economic power. India on its part is seeking to use this partnership for its own ambitions of gaining a global power status. Based on their respective expediencies, both sides are playing on Kautilya’s game plan to cope with what they both see as the spectre of Rising China. The future of this partnership will depend not on the avowed interests of its signatories, but on how other countries in the region, affected by this worrisome alliance, feel compelled to respond.
Indeed, it is the beginning of another Cold War. The only difference is that this time, India stands on the other side of the pole. The politics of alliances and alignments is back with dangerous implications for peace and security of this region. Actions are bound to provoke reactions. If the turbulent political history of this region had any lessons, the US engagement in this nuclearised region should have been aimed at promoting strategic balance rather than disturbing it. Washington should have been eschewing discriminatory policies in dealing with the India-Pakistan nuclear equation, the only one in the world that grew up in history totally unrelated to the Cold War. But this never happened.
Instead, the US gave India a country-specific nuclear deal with a carte blanche in the Nuclear Suppliers Group for access to nuclear technology. Any measure that contributes to lowering of the nuclear threshold and fuelling of an arms race between two nuclear-armed neighbours provides no service to the people of this region. A stable nuclear security order is what we need in South Asia. Only non-discriminatory, criteria-based approaches would be sustainable. Preferential treatment to India in terms of nuclear technology not only widens existing security imbalances in the region, but also seriously undermines the prospects of India-Pakistan restraint and stabilisation.
Unfortunately, principles of equity and justice today are globally non-existent. Of course, Americans are a pragmatic nation. They understand the worth of obliging India on its nuclear ambitions and quest for ‘great power’ status, and will continue to exploit it for their own ends. We in Pakistan have a long history of lessons learnt from similar alliances. We know such alliances never endure and keep changing as the world and its dynamics do by the inevitable process of change inherent in the rise and fall of power. For now, however, there are ominous security implications for this region.
The international community has an obligation, not only to eschew discriminatory policies in their dealing with the India-Pakistan nuclear equation, but also to take steps that facilitate the prospects of durable peace in this region. Peace in South Asia will remain elusive as long as Kashmir remains under Indian occupation. The world must know that there is but one fair, just, legal and moral solution to Kashmir, which was provided by the UN, and which both India and Pakistan mutually accepted in UN Security Council resolutions.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 31st, 2015.
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A worrisome ‘alliance’ – The Express Tribune
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