Barack Obama should negotiate with Osama bin Laden!

How does it sound, stupid? Well, that’s exactly how America sounds when it advises India to negotiate with Pakistan. What al-Qaeda is to the United States Pakistan is to India. If only Americans could understand this simple fact, negotiations would be much simpler for Indo-US relations. Probably the US policy makers don’t care about India’s concerns, in which case why should Indians care either? In any case in the next few decades, Americans would just have to learn to respect India and its opinions. India is going to be the largest economy on planet earth by 2050 and a very significant military power as well. This is not my wishful thinking but an undisputed reality. A country of 1.2 billion English speaking people can not be wished away! By 2050 a democratic India might have a population of 2 billion people with a middle class of 600 million. It would be the biggest consumer market in the world with a much smaller China playing a second fiddle to its size and influence. The Indian subcontinent might have a population of 3 billion people in its 1200 districts. India would have strong presence in all twelve hundred districts, including the area now called Pakistan. China and Pakistan both need to THINK seriously about future!

President Obama keeps sending Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy to AfPak, to the area again and again to report on the ground situation. Pakistan refuses to let him visit the affected areas with the excuse of security concerns. Holbrooke in turn reports to Obama whatever the Pakistanis tell him about the actual progress. Obama also persists with roping in India about a dialogue with Pakistan and India keeps turning down the request by Richard Holbrooke on his behalf. This chicken and mouse game is going on and on for the past 6 months. I wonder how long Richard Holbrooke would subject himself to such humiliation! The fact that India is actively supporting the Afghan government with development projects should have been enough for Washington to keep away from the Kashmir fiasco. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article, “India Befriends Afghanistan, Irking Pakistan”, that explains the reason why the US keeps pushing India with no possible outcome. Holbrooke also keeps pushing Pakistanis to keep the pressure on Taliban and not let their guard down. An article in The New York Times, “US Presses Pakistan on Taliban”, suggests that Americans are not likely to persuade the generals in Pakistan to give up their terror instruments of foreign policy. America’s Pakistan policy lacks intellectual honesty. Some very talented people are being wasted on a twisted vision!

AfPak should be quarantined by US-NATO forces

President Barack Obama needs some informed advice on his AfPak (Afghanistan-Pakistan) policy! Contemporary crop of Democrats is the last group of people that he should depend on, including vice President Joe Biden. Obama needs advice from people like former ambassadors Robert Blackwill and Wendy Chamberlin to keep his administration in tune with ground realities. Both of these diplomats have spent time in India and Pakistan respectively. There are others working for the American think tanks who have comprehensive knowledge of the area. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke appears to be either out of touch or just following the administration instead of leading it. This is becoming an alarming situation by the day. Increasing America’s military footprint in the region would probably back-fire in the medium term. It is better to quarantine the AfPak region to contain the spread of Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Any spill over into Kashmir, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan could be catastrophic. Mercifully, Iran could take care of itself in that region.
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The evolution of India’s foreign policy – Part XII

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was perceived by Indian voters as a strong and decisive leader in 1998-99. His 13 month long second term plus 6 months as ‘care-taker prime minister’ convinced the people that the country would be safer in his hands. General Elections were held in India from September 5 to October 3, 1999, a few months after the ‘Kargil War’. The BJP-led NDA had won 303 seats in the 543 seat Lok Sabha, thereby securing a comfortable, stable majority. The coalition government that was formed lasted its full term of 5 years – the only non-Congress government to do so. On October 13, 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee took oath as Prime Minister of India for the third time. Just a day earlier, General Pervez Musharraf, Chief of Pakistan Army and the main architect of the ‘Kargil War’, seized power in Pakistan in a bloodless coup from a democratically elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. He probably found public support because of the ‘Kargil’ humiliation. This was bad news for India! On December 24, 1999, an Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked from Nepal by 5 Pakistani terrorists. The hijackers held 189 hostages and demanded the release of 3 dreaded, including Maulana Masood Azhar (founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed), Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (the killer of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl) from the Indian prison. Once a hostage was stabbed to death, Government of India capitulated under public pressure and released the terrorists in exchange for the hostages. India and the world is still paying the price for that error of judgment! The crisis ended on December 31, 1999.

President Bill Clinton visited India from March 19 – 24, 2000. His was the first state visit to India by a US President in 22 years. He became the first President of the United States to visit Bangladesh on March 20, 2000. Clinton also visited Pakistan for a few hours on his way back home. Obviously he had very little interest in Pakistan sponsored terrorism and the spread of Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Instead of chasing around the Islamic terrorists in a distant Indian subcontinent, he decided to chase ‘white-bimbos’ right at home in Washington DC. America and the world had to pay a staggering price in blood and treasure just 18 months later on September 11, 2001. Now in 20-20 hindsight, it appears that Vajpayee Administration, Clinton Administration as well as the Bush Administration, all of them failed to see the looming catastrophe in Af-Pak. Aside from terrorism, Clinton-Vajpayee dialogue proved to be a watershed in Indo-US relations. India did not look back till 2008 US elections!

President George W Bush took office on January 20, 2001. He came to power with a soft-corner for India! We thought it was because of Condi Rice, that eventually proved to be a myth. George Bush considered China to be a rival and not a partner. He believed that an alliance with Australia, India, Japan and Singapore would be in the best interest of US national security. He was in the process of developing a consensus for this alliance within his administration when suddenly 9/11 happened. The world changed that day and with that India’s foreign policy became hostage to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. President had little time for any other issue. He became a war-time president. India had no choice but to adjust to the realities on the ground. Vajpayee was the first head of the state to call President Bush and offer assistance. Bush appreciates that gesture till date! As if this was not bad enough, a group of masked terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament on December 31, 2001. The terrorists managed to kill several security guards, but the building was sealed off swiftly and security forces cornered and killed the men, who were later proven to be Pakistan nationals. Although the Government of Pakistan officially condemned the attack, Indian intelligence reports pointed the finger at a conspiracy hatched in Pakistan. Prime Minister Vajpayee ordered a mobilization of India’s military forces, and as many as 500,000 servicemen amassed along the international border. Pakistan responded in kind. The Indian subcontinent was heading towards a nuclear exchange!

From Community Organizer to Commander-in-chief…

It’s a long road! President Barack Obama has a heart of a liberal and a head of a moderate. Which of the two would eventually prevail? His economic team appears to be leaning towards increasing public spending in the hope of jolting the economy. Only time would tell as to who is right and who is wrong. What should be of greater concern is the amount of borrowing that is involved in this contraction. If history is any indicator, America must look at the example of the British Empire after the Boer Wars of 1880-1902. The Empire was broke but refused to admit and kept borrowing from the emerging United States of America. When ever the US economy rebounds, it is unlikely to achieve 4-5 percent growth rate that is required to balance the budget in future. Alternatively, it will have no choice but to raise taxes quite substantially!

Since January 2008, America has been pre-occupied with its internal affairs. In the meantime, there is a vacuum developing in the global leadership. European Union has tried to fill in for the United States but with little success. China is in no position to lead anytime soon. Global trade investment and even security has suffered for the past 12 months. This is not a happy situation. President Obama is looking more like a community organizer than a Commander-in-chief! He is making all the scripted noises but very little substance. There appears to be no major preparation for the upcoming G-20 meeting on April 2, 2009. If this G-20 meet fails like the last one, the ‘Doha Round’ of international trade would collapse. This would signal a covert trade-war and that would plunge this contraction into a possible global depression.

International terrorism is not some distant distraction. A Democratic President tends to take the war and peace as an abstract concept. America can not afford to be a soft-state. We anticipate the draw-down in ‘Iraq War’ and rightly so. What is not being contemplated is the growing menace of terror outfits in Pakistan and the failed ‘African States’. Obama keeps talking about Afghanistan-Pakistan problem and has even appointed high-profile diplomats to diffuse the situation. Diplomacy is not the language that Al-Qaeda and Taliban understand. My concern is not the usual threat of terror by these two bad-boys of the past. The bigger problem is the growing confidence of Lashkar-e-Taiba and ISI combined with not so tacit support of the D-Company. These are major terror organizations and could plan and execute something bigger than 9/11! Just learn from the Bombay terror-raid.

Mr Obama is enjoying being the President of the United States of America and there is nothing wrong with that. Bill and Hillary Clinton did the same. Now that the Obamas have experienced the ‘Air Force One’ and ‘Marine One’ and have spent a weekend at ‘Camp David’, it is time to THINK of the tasks ahead not only as a community organizer but as a Commander-in-chief as well. Nobody wants him to be another George W Bush but President Obama has to lead from the front and not just follow his much-experienced advisers! He needs to engage the world leaders himself.

The Open-Door Bailout By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

A divided government is a better government!

“Buy American” and loose the world!

The finest democracy on the face of this earth!

The United States is a saturated market!

The writing is on the wall for Pakistan!

Pakistan has been ‘calling the wolf’ for the past 60 years and that too quite successfully. Time seems to have run out on this silly ritual. Whenever the United States of America confronted Pakistan with a complaint they always pointed fingers at India and the so-called ‘Kashmir Dispute’. It has worked quite well for them all these years, of course with American connivance. Things have changed since 1998. India and Pakistan became declared nuclear powers and therefore a major concern for the ‘Western World’. Pakistan interpreted this paradigm shift as salvation from the ‘Big Wolf’ on their eastern front but India had other ideas!

The Indian government of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a long-term strategy in mind. They had calculated the fall-out from the defiance of the western world in general and the United States in particular when the decision to go nuclear was made. As expected, India faced the full fury of a jilted Clinton administration and their lap-dogs around the world. The long and protracted negotiations between Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh followed. This dialogue between India and America is well documented in a book ‘Engaging India’ by Strobe Talbott himself. The Indo-US relationship was changed profoundly. India has never looked back.

Pakistan decided to take a completely different route. It tried to grab Kargil by force but invited the wrath of America instead. Humiliated, the Pakistani Army staged a coup and imposed the military rule for the next 8 years. Pakistan has since used its nuclear capability to blackmail India with little success. Frustrated by the outcome, Pakistan chose terrorism as an instrument of its foreign policy. It encouraged Taliban to take-over Afghanistan and used Al-Qaeda to destabilize Jammu & Kashmir in India. This resulted into completely unintended consequences. Al-Qaeda planned and launched the 9/11 attack on the United States, from the Pakistani soil.

The past 8 years have been a nightmare for Pakistan. It has a fragile civilian government as a show-piece, a belligerent military mired in the FATA region, a rouge ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) freelancing, the entire Pakistan occupied Kashmir and NWFP in control of dangerous militants and terrorists, a failed economy and a desperate population of 170 million people. Who would have an appetite to even look at such a mess? Fortunately, America has as much a stake in Pakistan as does India or Afghanistan. This imperative has prompted Barack Obama to appoint Richard Holbrooke as a special representative to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

Charlie Rose – a conversation with Richard Holbrooke