Barack Obama is not new to delicate situations. There is a gem of a story how after being elected as Illinois senator in 2004, he chose to pay a respectful initial courtesy call with a welcoming, forgiving face, on the United States Senate elder Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who in an earlier phase of his life used to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
During the fortnight ahead, there will be ample scope to bring into play the virtuoso’s skills to ease jealousies and defrost interlocutors. How the secretive charismatic seduction works on the inscrutable South Asians embedded deep in their ancient culture with their own secret weapons makes it an engrossing conundrum.
Obama gently scratched the surface on Wednesday afternoon when in a carefully choreographed diplomatic gesture, he “unexpectedly” turned up at the meeting of the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue – co-chaired by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Obama formally broke the “news” that his itinerary of South Asia tour in early November will not include Pakistan. However, he added, he would undertake a separate visit to Pakistan in 2011 and he’d host the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Washington.
The US administration estimated that it killed two birds with a single shot. The Indians would have the satisfaction that Obama hasn’t “devalued” his forthcoming “historic visit” to New Delhi by stringing along a Pakistan chapter. The US’ “hyphenated" foreign policy toward India and Pakistan is a touchy issue for the Indians.
The US administration probably expected the Indians to feel elated at the special attention. At the same time, Islamabad would feel heartened that Pakistan is also getting the honour of a “stand-alone” visit and feel assured it was not being relegated to the backburner. Washington seemed to have done a superb balancing act.
That is, if only things were that simple. What is palpable is that there is hardly any enthusiasm visible yet in New Delhi regarding Obama’s forthcoming visit. This was certainly not how New Delhi’s Purana Quila (Old Fort) got decked up by the city elites for the visit by George W. Bush. Plainly put, the rhetoric is, so far at least, all by the American side.
The White House readout on Obama’s meeting on Wednesday with the Pakistani delegation (which included the powerful army chief General Pervez Kayani) underscored that the two sides “agreed on the need for regional stability and specifically on the importance of cooperating toward a peaceful and stable outcome in Afghanistan.”
No matter what Obama had in mind, the fact remains that the Pakistanis have total clarity of mind what they mean whenever, wherever they speak about the “need for regional stability.” They mean one little word – Kashmir. The Pakistanis are consistent in their belief that enduring regional stability is possible in South Asia only with the resolution of the Kashmir problem, and they want the Americans to broker peace with the Indians.
To link regional stability with the “importance of (US and Pakistan) cooperating in the stabilisation of Afghanistan” becomes the ultimate horror as far as New Delhi is concerned.
According to the local grapevine, as the US diplomats were negotiating the itinerary of Obama’s visit to India, they put forth a Quixotic idea that the US president could address a public meeting at the Wagha checkpost in the northern Indian state of Punjab on the tense India-Pakistan border with the leaders of the two countries watching him holding forth eloquently as the guardian of peace in the subcontinent. The Indians apparently point-blank shot it down as a bizarre thing to do.
The point is, Obama’s mediatory instincts vis-à-vis the India-Pakistan contentious issues are somewhere there. That apart, despite the present hiccups in US-Pakistan ties over the control of the Afghan peace talks, no one is in any serious doubt that Washington can do without the cooperation of the Pakistani military in putting together any form of workable settlement in Kabul. Equally, New Delhi is aware that the clock has begun ticking and that time is in favour of the Pakistanis as pressure mounts on the Obama administration to show “results” in Afghanistan.
The Obama administration will feel the compulsion at some point to accommodate Pakistan’s “wish list”. The bitter truth is that the US has been all through in a mood of appeasement of the Pakistani military. During the period since the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Washington has supplied Pakistan out of its own funds maritime patrol aircraft, anti-tank and anti-ship missiles, artillery surveillance radars, self-propelled howitzers, missle frigate, etc. No one in his proper mind in New Delhi would believe that such weapon systems are needed to hunt down Osama bin Laden.
The current session of the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Washington has come up with a fresh 5-year military aid package by the Americans worth 2 billion dollars. This is on top of the 6 billion dollars in development aid and the 8 billion dollars that the US has defrayed Pakistan in cash as “reimbursements” for undertaking operations against al-Qaeda. Indeed, above all this munificence comes the 7.5 billion economic aid package for Pakistan approved by the US Congress last year.
What worries the Indians is that the massive US aid works as budgetary support for Pakistan to procure arms from China and other western countries as well. Whereas, the Americans would have the Indians believe they aren’t upsetting the region’s strategic balance.
The US Central Intelligence Agency is estimated to provide one-third of the entire budget of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The policymakers in New Delhi have a problem digesting the US contention that it will ensure the Pakistani military (or ISI) doesn’t use its new capabilities against India. History proves otherwise.
Meanwhile, more details emerged last week regarding the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008. The disclosures show: a) The US had much more detailed information regarding an impending terrorist attack on India by the Lashkar-e-Taiba than they were prepared to share with India. b) The ISI and serving officers of the Pakistani military were “deeply involved” in planning the terrorist strike but there is nothing India can do to bring them to trial.
New Delhi has wisely kept its fury under check. But in the public perceptions in India, despite the enormous American penetration of the Indian media and think tanks in the recent decade, the impression has gathered that the US is an unreliable partner.
Also, the Indian security agencies have been made to look very foolish and inept and this is bound to affect the transparency of the US-Indian cooperation in counter-terrorism.
And, as the Afghan peace talks proceed, it will be a bitter pill for the Indian security agencies to swallow when the Americans finally compromise – the incipient signs are already there – on the Pakistani demand to accommodate the extremist Haqqani group, who staged repeated attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul, killing diplomats.
For sure, Obama will speak about the two democracies working together and all that but, as a senior Indian editor wrote, “New Delhi would be mistaken if it thought that there was an identity of interests and mutuality of obligations between us (US and India) right now.” The fat cats in the pro-US lobby in India made a heroic attempt to whip up Sinophobia and to hoist it as a leitmotif of US-Indian strategic partnership. But it didn’t work. In fact, New Delhi will be receiving Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
Having said that, there is a great deal of potential in the US-India relationship. Simply put, the Indian economy is galloping at 8-9 percent growth and the market offers enormous business opportunities for the US to generate tens of thousands of jobs for its ailing economy. The US may finally dismantle remaining restrictions – the Indian version of Jackson-Vanik amendment – on the flow of “dual use” technology to India, which were imposed by a strange coincidence also in 1974. The two sides are negotiating hard to match their respective interests. The prospects look good and in all probability, there will be tangible outcome of Obama's visit.
What is absolutely certain, though, is that Obama would have had a far easier time with Senator Byrd, according to biographer David Remnick. Byrd described his past sins as “the cross around my neck” and Obama soothingly responded: “If we were supposed to be perfect, we’d all be in trouble, so we rely on God’s mercy and grace to get through.”
