Page 2 of
2 A Russia
House on the Indian Ocean By M
K Bhadrakumar
On a practical plane,
Pakistan's geography has been the lynchpin of the
US regional strategies in Afghanistan and Central
Asia, and without Pakistan's cooperation no viable
(non-Russian, non-Iranian) communication link with
those regions is sustainable, which in turn,
jeopardizes the plans for the establishment of a
permanent US and North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) military presence in the
region in the "Eurasian heartland".
Indeed, energy security is the Achilles
heel of Pakistan's political economy, and it
debilitates Pakistan's capacity to develop a
strategic autonomy that safeguards its vital
interests and core concerns and, conversely, the
current level of acute energy
deficiency makes
Pakistan very vulnerable to US pressures.
Therefore, the helping hand from Russia, even if
it is self-seeking, would have serious
geopolitical implications for the US regional
strategies insofar as it results in augmenting
Pakistan's independence and resilience and
creating space for it to navigate its way through
a particularly difficult and dangerous corridor of
time when it is beset with existential problems.
Again, a coming together of the energy
producing and energy consuming countries of Asia
is the ultimate nightmare scenario for the US,
which fears exclusion from the ensuing matrix of
regional cooperation involving countries that
happen to be spearheading the fastest-growing
region in the world economy. The entire US
strategy in the post-Soviet era had aimed at
forestalling such a catastrophic eventuality that
might put paid to the US efforts to get embedded
in the "Eurasian heartland", which includes or
overlooks some of the major regional powers in the
coming decades - Russia, China, Kazakhstan, India,
Pakistan and Iran. (Turkey's admission as a
"dialogue partner" of the SCO - at China's behest
- at the Beijing summit last month further
unnerves the US.)
To be sure, a host of
other issues also arise. The Russian moves in
Pakistan effectively outflank the US' policies to
isolate Iran. If hostilities erupt between the US
and Iran, Washington faces almost near-total
isolation in the region between the Persian Gulf
and Malacca Strait. On the other hand, the IP
project (which seems a priority for Russia and
China alike) would have a devastating impact on
the US' Iran policy, as it would manifoldly
enhance Iran's strategic prowess. The US will
factor in that it is a matter of time before China
gets connected to the IP gas pipeline. These
communication links effectively help China also to
reduce its dependence on the Malacca Strait.
Worst of all, Washington is unsure of
India's approach to the emergent geopolitical
shift that Russia is triggering. India and Russia
have traditionally enjoyed mutual trust and
confidence. India and Iran also enjoy
fundamentally strong ties, which have even
withstood the US pressure. India is independently
working on the normalization of its ties with
China, and the two countries have made appreciable
headway in this direction. (Curiously, the Indian
and Chinese state-sector energy companies recently
concluded a memorandum of understanding agreeing
not to outbid each other in third countries and to
cooperate across-the-board including in the two
countries' domestic sector.)
Most
important, energy security is becoming a gnawing
worry for the Indian leadership as the economy
expands rapidly and the need for assured access to
reasonably priced energy sources is becoming an
all-consuming passion in the country's external
policies. (India's External Affairs Minister S M
Krishna is heading for Tajikistan, which is the
energy source of the CASA project, on Tuesday.)
The US' diplomatic and politico-military
options to counter the Russian moves in Pakistan
would lie principally in the direction of
influencing the policies of Pakistan and India.
The US is pursuing a mixed approach toward
Pakistan, alternating soft signals with a flexing
of muscle that is vaguely assuming threatening
overtones already. At one point recently, it all
but seemed that the US would render an apology of
sorts for the massacre of Pakistani troops in a US
military strike last November on the
Afghan-Pakistan border following which the
reopening of the Pakistani transit routes for the
NATO convoys could be expected within the month of
June.
However, following the
Russian-Pakistani confabulations, the US line has
hardened. Another attack has taken place on Monday
on Pakistani troops (18 of whom were brutally
beheaded) by militant groups of obscure background
operating from "safe havens" inside Afghanistan.
It doesn't need much ingenuity to work out that
the US forces in Afghanistan prefer to look away
from what these militants are doing right beneath
their nose. (Curiously, these militant "safe
havens" also happen to be in the region through
which the CASA transmission lines from Tajikistan
will have to pass.)
At any rate, on
Wednesday, the US' commander in Afghanistan, John
Allen, came down to the Pakistani army
headquarters in Rawalpindi to propose to the
Pakistani army chief Parvez Kayani that the two
sides could undertake "joint operations" against
the militants operating along the Afghan-Pakistan
border.
This is indeed going to be a
cat-and-mouse game. The signs are ominous. The
relentless drone attacks through the recent months
have destabilized Pakistan's tribal areas adjacent
to the border with Afghanistan. The drones are
causing a lot of civilian casualties, so much so
that the United Nations officials begin to wonder
if these wanton killings would constitute "war
crimes".
The drone attacks infuriate the
people who live in the tribal areas and in turn
are fueling anti-government sentiments, while
Islamabad looks helpless in stopping the US from
violating the country's territorial integrity.
Quite obviously, Pakistan is hunkering down, and
the US won't allow that to continue. The
indications are that the US will step up pressure
on Pakistan and escalate the tensions in a
calibrated way.
A paradigm shift
The heart of the matter is that Pakistan's
"strategic defiance" has taken the US by surprise.
The US always counted on the perceived comprador
mentality of the Pakistani elites and has been
somewhat thrown off balance in discovering that
those very same elites (the military leadership,
in particular) are no longer what they were
supposed to be.
Of course, this is a
flawed perspective and at the root of it lies
Washington's unwillingness to countenance an
honest appraisal as to why this paradigm shift has
occurred at all. The US doesn't have to look far
to realize the complexities. The latest survey by
the Pew Global Attitudes Project, released on
Wednesday, shows that 74% of Pakistanis "hate" the
US and hold President Barack Obama in
exceptionally low esteem. Interestingly, the most
popular Pakistani politician today is Imran Khan
(70%), whose main plank is that Pakistan should
pull out of the war in Afghanistan and demand that
the US troops should pack up their gear and leave
the region for good with their war machinery.
The US faces a more complicated challenge
with regard to India. Washington has audaciously
complimented New Delhi recently by naming India as
the "lynchpin" in its Asia-Pacific strategies. But
to the discomfiture of the US, India's response
has so far been one of deafening silence, while
demonstratively distancing itself from any
perceived "ganging-up" against China. On the other
hand, a crucial mass is steadily accruing in the
Sino-Indian normalization. Equally, India has been
carefully sequestering its dialogue process with
Pakistan from the chill and vagaries of the
US-Pakistan standoff. Even with regard to Iran,
India has drawn a bottom line and made it clear
that it won't be pushed around - and the current
signs are that Washington has finally got the
point.
Having said that, the US will
endeavor to butt into the India-Pakistan dialogue
and try to turn its focus away from a broad-based
approach in a constructive spirit to the highly
emotive issues of Pakistan's support of terrorism
and the fidayeen attacks on Mumbai in November
2008, which deeply scarred the Indian psyche and
still arouse Indian suspicions regarding Pakistani
intentions.
With regard to energy
security, the US has encouraged Saudi Arabia to
offer a big hand to India, with the hope of
encouraging it to reduce its dependence on Iranian
oil and in overall terms to wean India away from
the IP gas pipeline project. Ideally, Washington
would seek a cozy three-way embrace between the
US, India and Saudi Arabia, which would keep the
Indians away from the alluring thoughts of an SCO
energy club.
But the US is unsure, as the
Indians also have their preferences and a passion
for keeping their thoughts to themselves while
making independent choices about how to go about
realizing their national objectives in a
complicated regional scenario.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His
assignments included the Soviet Union, South
Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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