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Pakistani terrorists may attack an Indian city to provoke a war with Chinese complicity, analyses Gautam Sen.
The Public Affairs Magazine- Newsinsight.net
London, 6 December 2010: An Indian city is likely to suffer a major terrorist assault in the foreseeable future. The most obvious target is Mumbai because a second terror attack against it would constitute spectacular provocation. Other cities which are potential targets for Pakistani terrorism include Bangalore and Delhi: the former because it obsesses Pakistanis, while an assault against Delhi would make a mockery of the constant refrain that India is rising and dramatically highlight its pathetic vulnerability to a Pakistan on the verge of collapse.
Any such terror outrage would constitute a casus belli that Pakistan could not engage in without prior clearance from Beijing. China would need to guarantee intervention to protect Pakistan against Indian ire by at least moving troops towards its border with India. The Anglo-American view of such a situation cannot be confidently anticipated. The British foreign office remains a bastion of unrelenting advocacy for Pakistan and powerful elements within the US, especially within the Pentagon and the US state department, are unwilling to abandon their faithful long-term ally.
China itself now earnestly wishes to precipitate an Indo-Pak war that would derail India's contemporary economic trajectory and its growing international political influence. An India potentially defanged would hardly seem a credible candidate for permanent UN Security Council membership. However, a direct military assault against India by China would be potentially costly, because of the likely Indian response, and it would galvanize opposition to China across Asia as well as alarm other countries beyond it. It cannot be stressed too strongly that Pakistan is entirely a Chinese instrument that has no strategic autonomy and only limited operational freedom. It does, of course, wish to harm India, but the decision to do so, and the modus operandi, will be decided by Beijing. Only cupidity and wishful thinking prevents Indians and their supposedly astute decision-makers from accepting that 26/11 could not have occurred without prior clearance from China since it could have led to a war that Pakistan would not have been keen to fight without full Chinese assistance. Perhaps deep down Indian decision- makers are also fearful of the very thought of such an enormous act of duplicity, though China has given India plenty of reasons to regard it as pernicious and totally untrustworthy.
There are now ample grounds for believing, as I argued in December 2008, that sections of the US administration had more than an inkling that a terrorist outrage would be launched against Mumbai, though even they might have been somewhat taken aback by its scale and impact. It is quite clear that the Americans did not share enough information with India on the looming calamity in order to protect their asset, David Coleman Headley. His US handlers had evidently hoped his credibility would be enhanced with the Pakistani terror organizations he had infiltrated on their behalf once his endeavours facilitated mass murder in Mumbai. Yet such is the extent of American influence in Delhi today that neither the media nor the Indian government are willing to entertain thoughts about US propensity for profound cynicism and bad faith. The imperative to compartmentalize as a one-off the brilliant Indian diplomatic coup of the Indo-US nuclear accord from the long history of compulsive US hostility towards India has not sunk in. The instincts of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, all of whom exasperated the US with their determination to preserve India's decision-making autonomy, have been supplanted by lazy thinking and barely credible confidence in an alleged US need for India in a confrontation with China. Indians may have trouble attaining self-knowledge, but the US is perfectly aware that India will likely refuse US requests for any significant help in such an eventuality.
Indians also need to grasp that it would not serve US interests if Indo-Pak hostility ceased. The harsh truth is that the end of Indo-Pak tensions would quickly truncate US influence in India and persuade Delhi to pursue mutual forbearance with China, rightly in my view if such an option were feasible. In this context, their constant pleading for US chastisement of Pakistan, its major non-NATO ally, is comic. Modern Pakistan is virtually the creation of a US strategic calculus once the British had played the role of midwife in establishing it. Like the Saudis, the Pakistanis, who are both so extraordinarily close in their mutual embrace too, are joined at the hip with the US and destined, for better for worse, to remain so. The Anglo-American problem with India has always been deep racially-fuelled resentment at India's historic determination to preserve its decision-making autonomy, unlike virtually any other developing country. Is this what India will compromise for an outwardly tranquil life of self-abnegation and a US embrace that no other postcolonial country since World War II survived intact? Nehru made his fair share of foreign-policy errors, but preventing India from joining the US dispensation is one of his enduring achievements, something for which his fearless daughter, one of India's great historic leaders, paid for with her life.
India needs to avoid war at this critical juncture in its history even if it means suffering political humiliation and absorbing the human and economic costs of terrorist assaults against its cities. However, that should not mean hoping for the best and tolerating the kind of disgraceful failings that have hitherto characterized official preparedness for the most devastating warfare against India and its people. Clearly, domestic intelligence-gathering and the capacity to respond to terror inside India require a significant augmentation of resources. It also requires the political will to interdict and extinguish terror overcoming narrow and self-serving votebank considerations. The material costs of such purposes are rather less than an aircraft carrier or a couple of squadrons of fighter aircraft. And their necessity is immediate compared to any requirements for an unlikely wholesale military encounter, for which preparation is undoubtedly a legitimate imperative as well. India is not short of resources, but hard-headed decisions and the requisite political will are an urgent obligation.
Gautam Sen taught for more than twenty years at the London School of Economics and recently co-authored Analyzing the Global Political Economy. The views expressed here are those of the author.
The Public Affairs Magazine- Newsinsight.net
London, 6 December 2010: An Indian city is likely to suffer a major terrorist assault in the foreseeable future. The most obvious target is Mumbai because a second terror attack against it would constitute spectacular provocation. Other cities which are potential targets for Pakistani terrorism include Bangalore and Delhi: the former because it obsesses Pakistanis, while an assault against Delhi would make a mockery of the constant refrain that India is rising and dramatically highlight its pathetic vulnerability to a Pakistan on the verge of collapse.
Any such terror outrage would constitute a casus belli that Pakistan could not engage in without prior clearance from Beijing. China would need to guarantee intervention to protect Pakistan against Indian ire by at least moving troops towards its border with India. The Anglo-American view of such a situation cannot be confidently anticipated. The British foreign office remains a bastion of unrelenting advocacy for Pakistan and powerful elements within the US, especially within the Pentagon and the US state department, are unwilling to abandon their faithful long-term ally.
China itself now earnestly wishes to precipitate an Indo-Pak war that would derail India's contemporary economic trajectory and its growing international political influence. An India potentially defanged would hardly seem a credible candidate for permanent UN Security Council membership. However, a direct military assault against India by China would be potentially costly, because of the likely Indian response, and it would galvanize opposition to China across Asia as well as alarm other countries beyond it. It cannot be stressed too strongly that Pakistan is entirely a Chinese instrument that has no strategic autonomy and only limited operational freedom. It does, of course, wish to harm India, but the decision to do so, and the modus operandi, will be decided by Beijing. Only cupidity and wishful thinking prevents Indians and their supposedly astute decision-makers from accepting that 26/11 could not have occurred without prior clearance from China since it could have led to a war that Pakistan would not have been keen to fight without full Chinese assistance. Perhaps deep down Indian decision- makers are also fearful of the very thought of such an enormous act of duplicity, though China has given India plenty of reasons to regard it as pernicious and totally untrustworthy.
There are now ample grounds for believing, as I argued in December 2008, that sections of the US administration had more than an inkling that a terrorist outrage would be launched against Mumbai, though even they might have been somewhat taken aback by its scale and impact. It is quite clear that the Americans did not share enough information with India on the looming calamity in order to protect their asset, David Coleman Headley. His US handlers had evidently hoped his credibility would be enhanced with the Pakistani terror organizations he had infiltrated on their behalf once his endeavours facilitated mass murder in Mumbai. Yet such is the extent of American influence in Delhi today that neither the media nor the Indian government are willing to entertain thoughts about US propensity for profound cynicism and bad faith. The imperative to compartmentalize as a one-off the brilliant Indian diplomatic coup of the Indo-US nuclear accord from the long history of compulsive US hostility towards India has not sunk in. The instincts of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, all of whom exasperated the US with their determination to preserve India's decision-making autonomy, have been supplanted by lazy thinking and barely credible confidence in an alleged US need for India in a confrontation with China. Indians may have trouble attaining self-knowledge, but the US is perfectly aware that India will likely refuse US requests for any significant help in such an eventuality.
Indians also need to grasp that it would not serve US interests if Indo-Pak hostility ceased. The harsh truth is that the end of Indo-Pak tensions would quickly truncate US influence in India and persuade Delhi to pursue mutual forbearance with China, rightly in my view if such an option were feasible. In this context, their constant pleading for US chastisement of Pakistan, its major non-NATO ally, is comic. Modern Pakistan is virtually the creation of a US strategic calculus once the British had played the role of midwife in establishing it. Like the Saudis, the Pakistanis, who are both so extraordinarily close in their mutual embrace too, are joined at the hip with the US and destined, for better for worse, to remain so. The Anglo-American problem with India has always been deep racially-fuelled resentment at India's historic determination to preserve its decision-making autonomy, unlike virtually any other developing country. Is this what India will compromise for an outwardly tranquil life of self-abnegation and a US embrace that no other postcolonial country since World War II survived intact? Nehru made his fair share of foreign-policy errors, but preventing India from joining the US dispensation is one of his enduring achievements, something for which his fearless daughter, one of India's great historic leaders, paid for with her life.
India needs to avoid war at this critical juncture in its history even if it means suffering political humiliation and absorbing the human and economic costs of terrorist assaults against its cities. However, that should not mean hoping for the best and tolerating the kind of disgraceful failings that have hitherto characterized official preparedness for the most devastating warfare against India and its people. Clearly, domestic intelligence-gathering and the capacity to respond to terror inside India require a significant augmentation of resources. It also requires the political will to interdict and extinguish terror overcoming narrow and self-serving votebank considerations. The material costs of such purposes are rather less than an aircraft carrier or a couple of squadrons of fighter aircraft. And their necessity is immediate compared to any requirements for an unlikely wholesale military encounter, for which preparation is undoubtedly a legitimate imperative as well. India is not short of resources, but hard-headed decisions and the requisite political will are an urgent obligation.
Gautam Sen taught for more than twenty years at the London School of Economics and recently co-authored Analyzing the Global Political Economy. The views expressed here are those of the author.
