https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/who-murdered-international-order?utm_source=twitter&s=w

Who murdered International Order?

Or Mystery of the Missing Body

International Order allegedly died at Bucha. It had been tottering over since the day Putin plunged a knife into Ukraine, but to the cognoscenti that knife was one borrowed from the Americans. The blood from their using the knife in Muslim lands had barely dried, when they lent it to Putin. Even as they were drawing blood with that very same knife in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, they set up an ambush using Ukraine as bait. Enticed, Russia took over the knife from the West and set upon Ukraine. So, for sure, we have two murderers: Russia and America. 

But, as commentators remind, both have supporters with bloody hands. While the Americans cobbled up coalitions made of up the West when they went about visibly digging the grave of International Order, the Russians have China holding their back. To the extent the West participated in twisting the knife, it is party to murder. Rumour has it that Putin got a tacit nod from China for sticking the knife into Ukraine when he went over for the winter Olympics. Though China has spooked its neighbours, it is at best accomplice to the crime, not having physically stuck a knife into International Order. Spectators are aplenty, those who might have played a part in staying the slaying. Instead, they either sat on the fence or swayed to one side. In not collectively stopping the murder, together they prospectively make the fourth murderer. 

International Order was killed since it prevented deeds the murderers wished to go about with, without feeling embarrassed about it. International Order valued sovereignty and non-interference, which the West could not see bandied by the countries of the Middle East. It backed status quo in the region based on pro-American authoritarian regimes for the sake of its local friend, Israel. This put out some locals, who ganged up and flew some planes into American buildings, killing many. 

Claiming this to be the first nail into the coffin of International Order, the Americans took the knife to Afghanistan to take out the Arab group that challenged the chaperon of International Order was hiding out. Tasting blood, they then went about reshaping Middle East in their own image, beginning with taking their feud with Saddam to the logical conclusion. They claimed Saddam first challenged International Order by an armed attack on his neighbour, Kuwait, though his armed attack on another neighbour, Iran, earlier had elicited not such complaint. Removing Gaddafi followed and then they overstretched by going after Bashar. The Iranian bomb-in-the-basement kept their knife at bay both from Bashar and Iran itself. 

The Russians – ruing loss in stature as a global power - saw their opportunity to get back at the Americans not only for Americans ambushing them in Afghanistan, but also for what followed: hara-kiri of the Soviet Union. Espying the Russians seeing an opportunity to do them down, the Americans, on their part, tied Russians down with colour revolutions. The Russians put up a fight in Georgia, pulling a Kosovo on the Americans. 

The Americans hit back, setting up Ukraine for an ambush of the Russians. With their Ukrainian client unsaddled by the Americans at the Maidan, the Russians went into Syria to steady Bashar - who the Americans wanted to unseat. Backed by China – that wanted to join the United States as superpower - the Russians punched above their weight. Putin wanted to replay the Soviet past he was loath to see disappear when as its intelligence official he saw it wither and die. 

The Russians were gratified to see the Americans wanting to leave Afghanistan. Taliban, receiving a lifeline through Pakistan, with Iran, Russia and China in the background, outlasted the Americans. The ignominy required Americans to get back at their antagonists. Against Russia, Ukraine provided an enticing killing ground. 

Having spotted an ambush site there in Russian occupation partially of Donbas and incorporation of Crimea into Russia when Yanukovich was displaced, they set about ensnaring Putin. Keeping up a din that he was about to attack, they handed him the knife they’d been wielding elsewhere. Enticed into using it, he stuck it into Ukraine, nailing instead International Order’s other vestment – preserving political independence and territorial integrity from armed attack.  

Pumping in easy-to-use, hand-held armaments for the Ukrainian army and a host of white-supremacist volunteers, the West stopped Putin from twisting the knife. Though Ukraine twists and turns in agony, it valiantly tries to snatch the knife and turn it on Russia. This keeps the two from talking peace, as each tries to bleed the other. The Americans, keeping the Ukrainians on life support and promising rehab, are waiting for Russia to implode. Unbeknownst is that their main adversary, China, is instead in their sights. A weakened Russia helps isolate China. Two birds with one stone, Ukrainians paying a price. 

And Bucha happened. Genocide made its appearance. It’s a vulture that alights when convenient, like in Darfur, but not in Iraq between the wars when 600000 children died from US sanctions. Knife wounds in Ukraine include humanitarian protection and human rights. Somalia, Yemen, Gaza, West Bank, Syria and Afghanistan did not elicit the expulsion of the perpetrator from the Human Rights Council. Libya was ousted the last time, but not the West for what they proceeded to do in Libya thereafter and for eddies across the Sahel. Neither did wars of aggression trigger off the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court stepped up even as the war started, and has begun investigations – happily breaking the jinx that its domain is only Africa. Certain is its proactivism cannot and will not include Israel and the West, least of all the US. That its domain does not yet include the crime of aggression is so convenient. 

Allegedly, International Order lies dead. There is the United Nations Charter in which is written up International Order. The Charter-era world order was instead first made up by the Cold War. The two sides did pretty much as they pleased, with the areas not part of the two sides serving as vent for to keep their warring cold. Once one of the two sides tired and died, the other touted International Order, even as it set about putting nails into its coffin. Resurrecting, Russia joined in nailing International Order. Rising China used International Order, without putting a check on either the West or Russia. Now it’s seeing Russia put the final nail into International Order, so that it can manufacture an International Order all its own when Russia has taken down America. The UN is missing-in-action, merely another forum in which to beat the other side. International Order turned out merely mistress of balance of power. No body found, there was no murder; only murderers left. 

http://www.milligazette.com/news/16633-will-pakistan-be-happy-if-modi-returns-to-power

Will Pakistan be happy if Modi returns to power?

In a campaign speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi thundered that Pakistan would be happy in case he is removed by an electoral verdict from power. As is his wont, he was implying that those who vote against his party are doing the handiwork of Pakistan, an enemy state. They are Pakistani agents, who naturally deserve to ‘go to Pakistan’ for their ‘anti-national’ act of voting against his return to power.

His logic is that since he is strong on defence, Pakistan would not like to see him re-elected, preferring instead traditional pusillanimity in the Indian leadership. A strong man at the helm would deal them the required blows from time to time as Mr. Modi has done with his claim of three surgical strikes – on land, through the air and in space in the form of a deterring anti-satellite (A-Sat) test.

Displacing Modi would be music to Pakistani ears and that of its ‘deep state’ constituting the army and the intelligence agency, supported by jihadist formations. To Modi, those who vote against him would please the Pakistani establishment. The subtext is that doing the Pakistani bidding, even if unwarily, would amount to treason – dissent and sedition being synonyms these days – now that Modi has revealed Pakistani expectations.

Is Modi right? Would Pakistani minders be pleased with an election outcome that sees him banished from 7, Lok Kalyan Marg?

Absent a ‘wave’ as in 2014 - observed by the political leader from the Deccan, Asaduddin Owaisi - there are jitters in the ruling party, best evidenced by the two ‘surgical strikes’ – Balakot and the A-Sat test. It also is reason for the polarising rhetoric orchestrated by no less than the occupant of the high prime ministerial office, Narendra Modi. Therefore, it is quite unnecessary to dissect his invective while on the campaign trail, even if the campaign has nothing to do with it since he is a genuine believer in himself, the first bhakt so to speak.

Nevertheless, to fact check Modi is useful, first, to ascertain if his claim to being strong on defence is valid, and, second, if that makes Pakistan quake in its boots.

Modi’s claim to three surgical strikes serves as a starting point. The first one – conducted across the Line of Control in the wake of Uri - was based on two preceding trans-border raids in the north east into Myanmar in 2015 and the following year. The 2015 raid was hyped up and the commanding general was later elevated as army chief. A similar operation the following year was downplayed by the then commander in the east, who was summarily overlooked for the post of chief for his temerity to deny the ruling party an opportunity for grandstanding on security.

Of the operation post-Uri terror strike, it was unnecessary to begin with, since the number of casualties were not a direct result of terrorist action but inflated by a dozen unfortunate soldiers perishing in a resulting fire in their tent. As for the outcome in terms of deterrence for further such terror attacks, the subsequent terror attacks south of the Pir Panjal on military installations and the car bombing at Pulwama in February this year, are testimony of failure of deterrence, the advertised aim of the ‘surgical strikes’.

As for Balakot, whatever the actual result on ground, an Indian general, Ata Hasnain, has admitted in a speech at a London think tank that the Pakistani information warfare got the better of the Indians. Pakistan in any case virtually evened the score immediately thereafter with its aerial strike at Rajouri-Naushera, downing of an Indian plane and capture of its pilot. It also gained an upper hand in the optics by releasing the pilot soon thereafter. The deterrent effect of the Balakot strike will be known in the coming summer and whether India is able to hold the assembly elections in Kashmir without embarrassment on its democratic credentials from the numbers turning out to vote.

As for the third surgical strike, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency has criticized the A-Sat test for the creation of space debris that could impact the international space station. This implies that the A-Sat capability is not usable, in that it has a collateral damage potential that cannot be risked politically. India would end up losing potential supporters in war in case it damages their satellites by taking the war to space. As for usability, China being ahead of India by a dozen years can easily be expected to deter Indian resort to A-Sat warfare. Against Pakistan, it would be useful but Pakistan has no known prowess in space that India needs to take out in war. In any case, today’s technology does not rely on kinetic-kill for such action but on cyber war.

The list could go on and include the down-turn in Kashmir, the hold-up in India-Pakistan relations, the subservience to the Chinese on display in Wuhan, the stench of scandal in defence procurements from the Rafale scam, the status quo on the Nagaland ceasefire, subversion of institutions, the inability to integrate defence acquisitions revealed in the friendly-fire incident in which an Isreali weapon system allegedly brought down a Russian-made helicopter due to incompatible identification friend or foe systems, doing a hit-wicket on India’s position on terror by releasing Hindutva terrorists in many terror cases, and the inability to institutionalise the national security system owing to an over-focus on the personality of its head, Ajit Doval. The list is ended here for want of space.

This survey of the defence side does not indicate any particular merit in the Modi-Doval stewardship of security. This prima facie means that there is no reason for Pakistan to fear a return of Modi to power.

That said, the reverse is more likely truer. Though the diplomat I accosted at the book release function was too professional to let on the Pakistani mind on the issue, it can be hazarded here that the Pakistani deep state would like to see Modi back in saddle. Firstly, as seen, they are not over-impressed by the Indian showing on defence, as to be losing any sleep. Secondly, they are aware of the mess in national security, which even Modi’s famed troll army has been unable to sweep under the carpet.

Finally, and more importantly, another term of Modi at the helm would result in a backlash to the Hindutva project that he seeks to entrench. His resort to all manner of jumlas, surgical strikes, outright lies (that there are no Hindu terrorists (if so, as Siddharth Varadarajan wondered, who, pray, was Nathuram Godse?)) is under-gird by the logic that ends justify the means, the ends being the greater glory of Hinduism as defined by its Hindutva proponents.

Any backlash would not necessarily be from Muslims, who are largely socially ghettoized, politically marginalized and cowed down by micro-terrorism. The Indian liberals are the first line of defence of the Constitution. Then there are leftists, currently down but could reemerge as the corporate-politics nexus under Modi runs aground in rural neglect and farmers’ strife. The entrenching of Hindutva would not result in an imagined homogenous nation in a Vedic-brahmanical frame, but a ‘million mutinies’, to borrow Naipaul’s phrase. The ongoing one is in Kashmir and in the pipeline could well be what might result from the populating of the register of citizens exercise in Assam and sought by the ruling party to be started also in West Bengal. There is, of course, the temple at Ayodhya to be built and ever higher statues that could at best divert attention. The military may be put out by the politicizing attentions of the far-right and their work being put to domestic political utility by the Modi-Shah combine. India’s closer strategic embrace of the United States and Israel would likely end in the same internal effects on polity as witnessed in other states that have been subject to such attention, significantly Pakistan as a US-frontline state. The fallout of this relationship would be in increased pressure from China. A cumulative backlash and a Modi-Doval authoritarian counter would push India back.

This survey of national security as it stands at the end of Modi’s five years and the possibilities ahead in a possible second term suggests that Pakistan would be quite happy to see Modi return to power. It would turn India into a Hindu-Pakistan and a poor imitation at that, a prospect not unwelcome to India’s antagonists. This would also be at a time when Pakistan for its part imagines it is slowly coming out of the tunnel of obscurantism that it had entered three decades back. For India to rush into the tunnel voluntarily would – counter intuitively – place Pakistan a step ahead, courtesy Modi.

http://thebookreviewindia.org/evolution-of-indias-afghanistan-policy/

BOOK REVIEW

Avinash Paliwal, My Enemy's Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion to the US withdrawal

The title says it all. India’s approach to Afghanistan has little to do with Afghanistan. It has everything to do with Pakistan. This tells us something about India, about how we see ourselves, which is essentially in relation to our Siamese twin, Pakistan. This is not quite how we project ourselves—as a regional power and emerging great power, measuring up against China and a strategic partner of the US. India comes across as just another country attempting to set itself off against its neighbours. Since in our case—and in this case—it is Pakistan, a country perpetually on the brink of failed state status, this is evidence that we are not quite the power we make ourselves out to be. It is no wonder that our Afghan policy—essentially out to sabotage what Pakistan is up to in Afghanistan—is mostly a step behind. Avinash Paliwal’s book tells it like it is: the fragility of thinking in our national security policy making establishment and the dangers that can only accrue.

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Paliwal describes the making of India’s Afghanistan policy as an offshoot of our Pakistan policy. This is of a piece with our Pakistan-centric Kashmir policy. It is also true of our wider defence policy, which while having China in the sights rhetorically, has Pakistan in its cross hairs. What is worse is that this policy does not emerge from—as imagined—from a cool-headed survey of the threats and opportunities in the strategic environment and the geopolitics of the region, but from a political battle between partisan lobbies within the national security establishment. In the case of Afghanistan, Paliwal has it that there are the ‘partisans’ and the ‘conciliators’ battling to control policy.

Partisans are out to wreck what Pakistan has set out to do in Afghanistan. Conciliators for their part are keen to ensure that India’s interests are protected, even if Pakistan gets an edge in the bargain. The partisans appear to derive their angst and passion from their Pakistan animus, while conciliators wish to use Afghanistan as a leverage in their soft-line version of India’s wider Pakistan policy. The outcome of the tussle in the corridors of South Block appears to be dependent on which of the two sides gains an edge in bureaucratic politics, assisted respectively by the internal political configurations.

Paliwal, of course, makes his more-nuanced case soberly and with due regard to theory, relying on the public policy processes’ theory: Advocacy Coalition Framework. The theory has it that core beliefs of participants in the policy making processes influence their policy beliefs. The core beliefs are formed at their formative stage, under the influence of social conditioning beginning from childhood. These in turn form policy core beliefs, which is the basis for their input to policy making. Advocacy coalitions are built up from likeminded policy stakeholders and participants. To Paliwal, ‘policy change occurs when advocacy coalitions (like the partisans and conciliators) with different belief systems and resources interact with each other’ (p. 18).

In order to trace India’s policy in Afghanistan since the end seventies that witnessed the Soviet invasion, he divides the period into several segments and discusses the role of the partisans and conciliators in each duration. The period of the Soviet intervention witnessed a tussle over how critical should India be. Then came the period of scramble for Kabul between the Mujahedeen and the holdover of the earlier regime under Najibullah. The inconclusive debate in India over the levels of support to give Najibullah led to his eventual incarceration in the UN compound after an aborted bid to flee Kabul bound for Delhi. The following period was on whether India should open up lines to the Taliban, the answer to which depended on the perceived (by the two schools) nature of the Taliban’s relationship with Pakistan. Thereafter was the Karzai period with the ‘global’ (read the West’s) war on terror (GWOT) providing context. The period witnessed a return of the Taliban, emboldened by US President Obama’s intent to draw down and withdraw the United States’ (US) forces and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s mission from Afghanistan by 2014. In the event, the International Security Assistance Force continues in Afghanistan with US President Trump upping the ante with his Afghan policy speech of end August. In effect, the tug of war between the partisans and conciliators is set to continue.

This time round it is easy to surmise that the partisans would win. Their core beliefs appear to be shaped by a conservative upbringing that lends itself to nationalist (cultural and hyper) policy prescriptions. The continuing stand-off at a heightened level over the past three years implies a vigorous proxy war, not only in Afghanistan, but—if Pakistan is to be believed—in Pakistan too, with a tit-for-tat rationale from Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir. The dangers are obvious. Paliwal needs being read to reappraise the manner is which policy formulation takes place in New Delhi.

He discerns India’s Afghanistan policy as stemming from the tug of war between the partisans and conciliators over three divergences: striking a balance between Afghanistan and Pakistan, meaning balancing Pakistan’s sway in Afghan affairs; international political environment, such as, at varying times, the GWOT or the Obama exit strategy and determining India’s place in it; and finally, domestic Afghan politics, to include the balance between the Pushtun and non-Pushtun ethnic groups. He explains India’s meander between these shoals along these lines, making for a fascinating reading.

One troubling aspect that nags as one reads along is the lengths to which the side that loses out on policy making subverts the policy in the implementation phase. While the Afghan policy was largely worked by diplomats and intelligence practitioners, and to a lesser but consequential extent Indian military intelligence staffers, there appears to have been a vertical divide between the hardliners and softliners. How much did this influence the implementation phase of strategy is interesting to speculate on. For instance, if MK Narayanan was a hardliner and was at odds with Manmohan Singh’s softline policy, how much does this account for dissonance in India’s Afghan (and at one remove, Pakistan) strategy? Can it explain how the Pakistan policy fell through in the Manmohan years? There was little efficacy in the Afghanistan policy either in the period, since the Taliban resurfaced and has since gained control over some 40 per cent of the territory.

Paliwal’s book justifies the praise on its cover by notable South Asianists. He has brought his earlier experience in journalism to bear recounting India’s participation in the recent moves of the Great Game. His interviews with 65 key players make the book come alive with detail and nuance. Besides there is ample evidence of a sound thesis on which the book is based, including 85 pages of notes and select bibliography. The book is a must-read for the attentive public in South Asia and students of international politics, security and peace studies.

The Usual September Indo-Pak Slugfest

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/5/11831/The-Usual-September-Indo-Pak-Slugfest

Not one to pass up an opportunity for grandstanding, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to skip the annual UN General Assembly session for two years in a row makes some sense in that it deprives Pakistan of an opportunity, when it is its turn at the podium, to take potshots at India’s take in the Assembly. Since India sent its foreign minister instead, its slot has come after the heads of government have had their say. This gives India an opportunity to take potshots at Pakistan.

The India-Pakistan slug fest that develops in the august chambers of the General Assembly, indubitably hyphenates India with Pakistan, even if India gets the better of Pakistan with its choice of phrases.

This time round the speech of foreign minister Sushma Swaraj was overshadowed by India’s rebuttal made by its very able first secretary, Eenam Gambhir, to the speech by Pakistan’s stop-gap prime minister, charactering Pakistan as ‘terroristan’. Gambhir had shot to fame last year with her phrase characterizing Pakistan as the ‘ivy leagues of terrorism’ in her exercising the right of reply to Nawaz Sharif’s speech at the Assembly chamber.

That speech was useful cover for India to launch its ‘surgical strikes’, multiple raids across a wide front on terror camps across the Line of Control (LC). Pakistan for its part had struck a military installation in Uri just prior to the General Assembly meeting, so as to draw attention of the gathering to the instability in Kashmir, setting the stage for Pakistan’s India bashing.

Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif was doubly required to indulge in this then, since only earlier in the month last year, a media report had exposed a rift in Pakistan ruling elite, between its civilian government and the army, on its India policy. That the media report was close to the truth was soon made clear by the hounding of a leading columnist for Dawn, Cyril Almeida, who did the expose. In the event, Sharif hued closely to the script, authored by the army, making most of the unrest in Kashmir last year that has followed the killing of Burhan Wani.

This time round, while mostly-ailing, Swaraj’s performance bears her usual work (wo)manlike stamp, the saving grace has been in Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi tripping up in her invective, flashing the wrong picture to embellish her case against use of pellet guns in the Valley. The cacophony in the usual circles in India over this gaffe does nothing to obscure the tragedy brought about by the use of such weaponry in the Valley. So, Lodhi’s is not quite the hitwicket it is made out to be amongst the converts.

However, the Pakistani side had something notable to show for its US visit, liable to be lost in the orchestrated chorus over Maleeha Lodhi’s going ballistic in the Assembly chambers.

Of significance was Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, statement at an engagement at the think tank, Council on Foreign Relations. He said, “As far as tactical nuclear weapons (are concerned), we do not have any fielded tactical nuclear weapons. We have developed short-range nuclear weapons as a counter to the 'Cold Start' doctrine that India has developed. Again, those are in the same command-and-control authority that controls the other strategic weapons."

The importance of noting this is that it sets at rest the debate surrounding what Pakistan intends to do with its short range ballistic missile system, the Nasr, unveiled in 2011. Nasr’s warhead was taken to be a tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) and its utility for Pakistan, as admitted to by Abbasi, was to stymie India’s cold start offensives. The debate in India – carried further into the august pages of the leading international relations journal International Security – was that since the TNW numbers required to stop Indian mechanized offensives would be numerous, Pakistan would be self-deterred from using it in a low-threshold early-use mode. It also did not have the Nasr system in sufficient numbers to be able to stop such offensives.

As it turns out from Abbasi’s statement, this is a misreading of Pakistani intent. Even when Nasr made its debut, the Inter-Service Public Relations press note had it that it was part of the strategic deterrence capability of Pakistan, with the short range missile complementing the longer range missiles in its inventory. This was glossed over in Indian strategists rush to prove the offensive and aggressive intent of Pakistani nuclear first use. Also, self-servingly they had it that since Pakistan could not dare use it in the numbers required as it would lay waste to Pakistan itself over which Indian offensive columns would be advancing, India could afford to go down the cold start option of proactive operations.

Indian strategists needs revising this expectation. Reading the Indian debate and hoping no doubt to bolster its ‘full spectrum’ deterrence, that includes pulling the deterrence cover down over the conventional level also, the Pakistanis appear now to have clarified that the Nasr is a strategic weapon, even if of small yield. This is in keeping with theory in that the aim behind a weapon’s use would determine the type of weapon it is. For instance, in case a small yield nuclear bomb is dropped on an urban area, it is a strategic use of the weapon. Thus, all small yield weapons are not TNW.

Pakistan thus has clarified a strategic utility to the Nasr. It is not so much intended to stop India’s integrated battle groups or strike corps in their tracks, as much as to raise the ante to a level as to ensure culmination of international pressure in favour of escalation control and conflict termination. Its use would be akin to a ‘shot across the bow’.

This has two implications. One is that the recently advertised readiness of India for cold start offensives needs to be tamped down. The army chief acknowledged cold start doctrine in his first meeting with the press on the eve of the Army Day early this year. He has recently twice voiced the army’s readiness for a two front war, with this doctrine informing the strategy on the western front to quickly knock off Pakistan. In this context, Abbasi’s statement should be taken as a timely warning that the expectation of a high enough nuclear threshold to permit cold start offensives might be unwarranted.

Second, are implications for India’s nuclear doctrine. Abbasi’s statement suggests a lower order nuclear first use. India’s professed nuclear doctrine has it that it would take out Pakistan in case of any manner of nuclear first use on its part. This doctrine would be ‘unimplementable’, to borrow the phrase made famous by Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat in a different context.

India needs revising its nuclear doctrine accordingly to enable multiple options of retaliation, including quid pro quo, in such a case. Thoughts of first strike – entertained by former national security adviser Shivshankar Menon – need to be abandoned forthwith, since there is no call to invite a second strike – of which Pakistan is quite capable – just to get a Nasr or two readying for discharge. India must admit to the state of Mutual Assured Destruction prevailing in the subcontinent.

The India-Pakistan September exchange has acquired the status of a yearly fixture on the strategic calendar. The last year it was ‘surgical strikes’. This year it is about the nuclear prospects that such strikes can well set off, as would surely, their elder brother, cold start offensives. However, it is best that exchanges – howsoever charged up - are in fora such as the General Assembly rather than on the battlefield.

Another India-Pakistan Upswing In The Offing?

Saturday, March 19,2016

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/5/7183/Another-India-Pakistan-Upswing-In-The-Offing

The meeting on 17 March in Pokhara between Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and foreign policy advisor 

to Pakistan’s prime minister, Sartaj Aziz, filling in as Pakistan’s foreign minister, heralds yet another prospective 

upswing in the relations between the two states. Swaraj accepted the Aziz conveyed invite for Mr. Modi to visit

 Islamabad for the SAARC summit in the later part of this year. The two prime ministers could meet even earlier,

 at the Nuclear Security summit in Washington D.C. The joint investigation team into the Pathankot airfield terror

 attack is set to begin work by month end.

Relations appear to be back on track after being derailed by the terror attack in Pathankot. However, in light of 

the earlier flip-flops in India’s Pakistan policy - characterized by one perceptive observer as ‘manic pirouetting’ -

 Mr. Modi’s trip to Islamabad is not a done deal yet.

As at previous junctures, this one too shall attract speculation as to whether this is a sustainable upswing or 

yet another mirage. Influence of internal politics with elections looming in Assam and Bengal is a candidate

 line of inquiry.  Deeper still is whether Hindutva philosophy contaminating strategy today can at all countenance

 equable ties with Pakistan. However, a robust answer will likely prove elusive.

For a better understanding of India’s Pakistan policy, there is one almost forgotten vantage point: the

 9 August ‘Press Statement on India-Pakistan Relations by Members of India’s Strategic Community’. 

Forty one denizens of Delhi’s seminar rooms signed up to a statement brokered by the Vivekananda 

International Foundation, headed then by current day National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval.

The statement had put paid to Manmohan Singh’s dream nurtured since his UPA I stint of making a 

path-breaking trip to Pakistan. UPA II, already in doldrums by then, preferred not to chance the forthcoming

 elections on the altar of India-Pakistan relations.

The statement if not quite Mr. Doval’s brain child, had him signing off on it. As India’s national security minder 

and old Pakistan hand, India’s current Pakistan policy therefore can be credited to him. What he endorsed then

 therefore affords being dusted up for review to see if it might have clues as to his mind. His policy advice 

then was:

India should show no anxiety to hold a dialogue with Pakistan, keep a steady focus on the issue of 
Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in any conversation that takes place, abjure language that equates our
 problems with terrorism with those of Pakistan, and take Siachen out of the basket of issues …

The logic given was that Pakistan’s military held the reins, even if there was a new placatory civilian government

 in place headed by Nawaz Sharif. India consequently was better advised to – in the words of the signatories 

– ‘impose a cost on Pakistan for its export of terror to India, and thus change the cost-benefit calculus of these 

policies and actions.’ Towards this end, a ‘proactive approach’ was thought as able to ‘yield us much better 

results than those garnered by policies of appeasement which have regrettably been pursued by us for years.’

This amounts to a blue print for the still-young Modi era. India has indeed been ‘proactive’. Diplomatically, it has 

reached out to Nawaz Sharif, best exemplified by the invite to Mr. Modi’s swearing in and Mr. Modi’s dropping in

 at Sharif’s Lahore farm house last December. The National Security Advisers have met twice over. Pakistan has

 been kept off balance with foreign secretaries meetings also having been either cancelled or postponed twice

over too. The sole agenda in the stillborn dialogue is terrorism, as anticipated in the statement.   

Militarily, India upped the temperature on the Line of Control since October year before last. With the message

 hitting home, it has wound down the pressure lately, though the heads of military operations have yet to meet as 
thought up in the Ufa meeting between the two prime ministers. On the intelligence front, the ‘game’ is clearly on, 
with India – if Pakistanis are to be believed - giving as good as it receives both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.  

The idea appears to be to soften up Pakistan’s military, expose it to its own underside and the age old dictum:

 those who live in glass houses must not throw stones at others. Alongside, the line of strategy directed towards 

Nawaz Sharif is at best to incentivize Pakistan and at worst to divide its national security elite.

Since this dual pronged strategy is in play with the hard and soft lines alternating, it is confounding to Indian

 observers, predicating their analysis on the values of predictability and consistency. For its part, Pakistan’s 

decision making elite at the receiving end appears unfazed. It is making gains in its counter terror operations.

 Its proxies the Taliban have reemerged in Afghanistan. It is able to launch pin prick terror attacks against India 

at will. Its nuclear trump card is well into three digits in terms of warheads. It is heartened by India’s foreign

 minister - sensibly - ruling out war as an option. The military is not averse to using Sharif as foil.

It is unlikely that India’s hyper-nationalism inspired strategic community would find these comfort levels of 

Pakistan at all enthusing. It spells that Pakistan’s military has not been sufficiently battened down nor a 

division created within Pakistan into pro- and anti-India camps. Consequently, Mr. Modi’s pirouetting can 

be expected to continue under direction of Chanakya II, Mr. Doval himself.

The problem – nay, danger – with the strategy is that it has not thought through what it considers sufficient

 punishment of Pakistan. Hindutva infected, it would unlikely settle only for appeasement by Pakistan, when 

only Pakistan’s capitulation or going under will do. Clearly, the strategic ‘community’ needs to once again get

 together to draft a fresh statement to help bail Mr. Doval out. 

India-Pakistan: Ties Finally Looking Up?         http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/12/09/india-pakistan-ties-finally-looking-up/                                                                       The joint statement of the National Security Advisers (NSA) of India and Pakistan at the end of their secret meeting in Bangkok on 6 December has buoyed expectations. Not only does it closely precede the visit of India’s foreign minister to Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan this week, but it also heralds the visit of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Islamabad for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit.

The initiative was result of the short informal meeting between the two prime ministers at the climate change summit in Paris. It retrieves the ground lost since the last minute cancellation of the NSA meeting in August over a disagreement on whether the agenda should include Kashmir or be restricted to terrorism. Pakistan wanted to undo what had been agreed at the meeting in Ufa, Russia, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) between the two prime ministers reflected in the joint statement of the two foreign secretaries that left out mention of Kashmir. That both terrorism and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) were discussed at Bangkok shows the two are beyond this particular hurdle.

The canceled meeting of August was in wake of two terror attacks that were taken in India as the Pakistani army’s manner of registering its disapproval of its government’s agreement to an agenda without Kashmir. Pakistan soon thereafter replaced its national security adviser with a former military man. This switch incentivized India in that it could now consider dealing with a credible interlocutor.

The secret meeting also shows a shift in India’s strategy. The early promise of the Modi government of better India-Pakistan ties, evidenced by Modi’s invite to Nawaz Sharif to attend his swearing in in May 2014, was dissipated in the cancellation of foreign secretary talks soon thereafter in August of the same year.

India kept up the pressure with partial activation of the Line of Control by fire assaults by India, seemingly in response to spurt in infiltration bids from across. These duels spread to the international border sector also. This year has seen India exercise elements of all three of its geographic field armies facing Pakistan, including two strike corps. There were also insinuations in Pakistani media of covert Indian assistance to dissident militant groups in Pakistan.

This phase of strategy can now be seen to be shoring up of its fences by the new Indian government before it ventured to mend these. The idea appears to have been to go in for talks from a position of strength. For its part, Pakistan has gained confidence in setting back, through military and ranger operations in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and in Karachi,  elements it alleges have had Indian intelligence backing and gains the Taliban, allegedly with its backing, have made in Afghanistan.

The very fact that the talks have taken place in secret and outside the region suggests that even a conservative-realist government in Delhi needs to tread pragmatically. While the talks have been a step ahead, it is only the first. The vision of the two prime ministers for a ‘peaceful, stable, and prosperous South Asia’ requires many more steps to follow.

What should these steps be?

The first steps would necessarily be on atmospherics. The visits by the foreign minister and prime minister in quick succession can revise the tone of the relationship. Since the Pakistan army appears to be on board this time, India has the assurance that there would not be another Kargil-on-the-make as was the case last time when the last BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee went to Lahore to fix the relationship in 1999.

A resumption of cricketing ties, awaiting a green light from India’s foreign ministry, can now be expected. The two teams have been poised lately to play a short one-day series, but in Sri Lanka.However, on atmospherics, the more important front is to manage the internal perceptions of the ‘Other’ state.

In Pakistan, the extremist leader Hafeez Sayeed has already chipped in with his criticism. In India, the Congress opposition, while overall supportive of improved ties, has registered its reservation on the unpredictability in the government’s Pakistan policy.

More significant in India are the voices in the government’s own camp that require managing. Lately, there have been several statements by right wing politicians dragging Pakistan into their point-scoring against India’s largest minority, its Muslims. This has prompted the ongoing ‘intolerance’ debate in India.

From the ‘intolerance’ debate, the prospects of this do not appear bright since Modi has chosen not to rein in the cultural nationalists, his support base. It is possible he might choose to keep silent, since it would also enable him an alibi against moving further than he might like on repairing fences with Pakistan.

Among the final steps figures a return to the start point made available by the back channel in the first tenure of the predecessor government of Manmohan Singh. The memoirs of Pakistan’s foreign minister in the period, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, reveal the possibilities. However, ‘resolution’ along those lines, may not be the destination either Modi or his National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, have in mind. As hardliners, they may believe that India does not need to make any concessions to buy peace, preferring Pakistan fall in line overawed by India’s rise.

In the interim, both governments would likely consolidate the beginning made. At a minimum, India would be looking to keep a mega-terror attack from diverting its economic trajectory into a conflict with nuclear portents. Pakistan for its part would like  India to ease up on intelligence, diplomatic, and military pressure. That the two foreign secretaries were also present at Bangkok suggests a broader agenda than merely security.

Therefore, it is clear that Modi’s next, if yet-to-be-announced, foreign stop Islamabad would likely be his most important. It remains to be seen if, as has been his wont in using his numerous foreign visits for positioning India favorably, he is able to finesse Pakistan.

An agenda point for the foreign secretaries

Kashmir Times

published 6/16/2011 9:49:00 PM by ALI AHMED

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The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are to meet this month to review progress made so far in the various strands during this ‘getting restarted’ round of dialogue. It would set the stage for the foreign ministers meeting, due next month. That this round has taken place itself being an achievement, it would be churlish to point out to no gains being made. However, if the foreign ministers’ meeting is not to prove a replay of last July’s Islamabad meeting, then there needs to be more on the agenda. This article makes a suggestion in this regard.

That no headway was intended by either state owes to both following a ‘wait and watch’ policy. They await Obama’s speech that is to bring out his design for ‘AfPak’, in particular if the nature of the impending drawdown in troops is to be symbolic or significant. If the former, it would gladden India; if the latter, it would gladden Pakistan.

Pakistan is waiting to encash on its relationship with the Taliban, nurtured assiduously over the past decade despite intense US pressure. It would prefer a negotiated end to the conflict to its north. Once its allies are ensconced in some kind of power arrangement there, it could turn its attention once again towards the west, assured of ‘strategic depth’ to its rear and the vitality of its ‘strategic assets’.

India for its part is aware that, to an extent, the return to ‘normalcy’ in Kashmir since 9/11 owed to Pakistan’s preoccupation with its western front. It has taken advantage of the benign fallout to firm in and rests content that a falling back to the troubled years is unlikely. It would prefer to see western presence in Afghanistan till as long as a verifiable promise of moderation is not extracted from the Taliban. It has played hardball with Pakistan so as to keep up the pressure to this eminently reasonable end.

Given that the Taliban has managed to whittle the west’s appetite for nation building, for the west to be looking for an exit is understandable. Towards this end, Obama would progress the political prong of strategy, even while keeping the military prong on course for a while longer. US military presence would therefore continue, but its combat role may progressively be less visible. This means that Pakistan’s significance to the end game in terms of delivering a moderated Taliban increases even while India is not entirely disappointed.

What emerges is that both states have handed over the course of the region’s future to the US. While this may have been sensible in light of the post 9/11 vigour of the US in hunting down the terrorists in their havens, the circumstance has changed a decade on.  Should the two self-regarding states in the region be waiting for hand-outs as they are? Should they not instead be shaping the region’s future?

An argument would be that since they cannot together shape the region’s future, they are realistically hoping to make the best of what emerges from the impending changes in US course in the region. This is typical of a conflict management approach, beloved of realists. The belief is that with Pakistan busily proceeding downhill, there is no need for India to be overly concerned. Pakistan would be less able to impose on India’s interests.

The current ‘wait and watch’ policy has an underside. Pakistan may yet engineer a return of the Taliban to Kabul, taking advantage of the US desire, brought on by exhaustion of its European allies and a strained economy, to leave. Protecting India’s interests and its Afghan friends means ensuring that a civil war does not resume on US draw down. This can be done by the two regional powers networking with each other. This way the region’s future gets written in the subcontinent.

As a self-confessed regional power India needs taking charge. Here the suggestion is for Pakistan and India to arrive at a modus-vivendi. India wants Pakistan to re-examine its Kashmir obsession. Pakistan, beset as it is by the terror blowback, wishes to remain on even keel. India could permit increased political space for Pakistan in Afghanistan, while Pakistan could turn away from Kashmir.

That India has influence in Afghanistan can be seen from the manner Obama tried to include India into the remit of the now deceased Richard Holbrooke. India has fought that off. India maintains that there is little to link the end-game in Afghanistan with the solution to the conflict in Kashmir. At best, it does not want a resumption of training for terrorists there and an influx of Afghan terrorists into Kashmir.

This position owes to it not wanting Pakistan to use its ‘gun to its own head’ strategy to bring US pressure on India for ‘concessions’ on Kashmir. Pakistan would like take back something for its cooperation on enabling an honourable exit to the west from Afghanistan. The west seeking exit would bring pressure to bear on India to be responsive. India is wary of this since it is uncertain of Pakistan keeping to its share of the bargain in light of its earlier record.

The idea here is that India could use the opportunity of the squeeze on Pakistan, currently culminating, to induce a change of course in Pakistan. The coming talks between the two foreign secretaries can be used to discuss a trade-off. Specifically, it would mean assuring Pakistan of India’s support in its delivering the Taliban to the table. In return, Pakistan would require assuring India that any return of the Taliban to a share of power in Kabul would not be at the cost of India or its Afghan allies. More importantly, Pakistan needs to follow through on its oft-repeated intent of not allowing its soil for use by anti-India terrorists. The two foreign ministries can usefully use the two opportunities coming up to flesh out the idea.

In the realist world view there is no necessity for this since Pakistan going downhill can only pose a diminishing threat, easily manageable by increasing the power asymmetry between the two states. This is fair enough on realist terms. Bestirring to preserve neighbours from continuing instability is not persuasive for realists.

A counter question could well be why will Pakistan bite? In this view, increasing reliance of the US on it to influence the Taliban would bring it back into the reckoning. Therefore, it does not need India. India at best has obstructionist potential. Pakistan can go it alone. It is precisely for this reason that India needs to pre-empt the future. It would do itself the favour of timely preventive action in keeping Kashmir from being singed by the outcome. In doing so it would think and act like a regional power it claims to be.

It is not for ‘AfPak’, but Kashmir and its own wider social harmony that India needs to act. Now!
(The author is Research Fellow, IDSA)

India-Pak: Justifiable Pessimism

by Ali Ahmed

April 19, 2011

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/04/19/india-pak-justifiable-pessimism/

Superficially, it would appear that Kashmir is at the ‘core’ of the problem between the two states, India and Pakistan. Other candidate areas of lesser significance figure in the basket of issues tackled earlier by the ‘composite dialogue’ in the peace process between the two states. That the process shows signs of resumption after a few false starts since Mumbai 26/11 is heartening. Making headway would be dependent on recognizing the real problem. This article argues that the problem lies in the ambitions of the two states. While India is in search of prestige, Pakistan seeks equalizing power.

India sees itself as a regional power and on route to great power status. It has the second largest population, making it the largest democracy. Its fast growing economy is set to overtake the middle powers over the decade. A recently released report of one of India’s think tanks places it fifth in terms of power. It was a leading power earlier in the NAM and is now one in the G20. Its position is consequential for climate change negotiations, trade regimes and on non-proliferation. Its current tenure in the UNSC is being taken as a precursor to its gaining a seat at the high table as a permanent member. These cumulatively give it an understandable self-image as the leading regional power.

All its neighbors have acquiesced in this, but not Pakistan. Since Pakistan has a praetorian military, it determines Pakistan’s India policy. The military, as is the wont of militaries elsewhere, sees the world through a realist lens. It privileges power, power play, and balance of power. This has been accentuated by two factors. The first is the association over the years with the US and, more narrowly, with its military. Second is the army’s experience of 1971, in which India was able to leverage its power even as the US and China did not help Pakistan out. Pakistan therefore has set about to even the power equation seen as in India’s favor by both external and internal balancing.

The result is a contest of power between the two states. In wake of 1971, India was the reigning power in South Asia. It departed from the Nehruvian world view in favor of the new Indira doctrine of regional ascendance. It went in for the nuclear explosion and started a military modernization program involving mechanization of its military. The aim was conventional deterrence through counter offensives in case of Pakistani attempts to wrest Kashmir by force, as was attempted by that state in 1965. Pakistan for its part was by the end of the seventies, back under a military regime and at the center of the Cold War as a ‘frontline state’. This enabled it to checkmate India’s moves on the conventional plane by going nuclear covertly and by launch of proxy war first in Punjab and then in Kashmir in the eighties.

Through the nineties, both states were constrained by economic circumstances. India, when faced Pakistani irredentist pressure in Kashmir, was unable to respond conventionally. The recessed nuclear deterrence in place and a turn to economic liberalization made India’s military option recede. Nuclearization by both states in quick succession in May 1998 transformed the strategic scene. India’s Lahore peace initiative was rendered still-born by Pakistan in its launch of the Kargil intrusion. The war was soon followed by the Kandahar hijack at the end of the year, and the terror attack on India’s parliament a year later. Even while India edged closer to the US through the Talbott-Jaswant talks, 9/11 brought Pakistan back into the reckoning as the central actor in the region for the US. This has enabled Pakistan to rely on both the US and its perennial friend, China, to offset India’s growing economic and military power.

India has attempted to make its power count by going in for an offensive conventional doctrine, colloquially dubbed ‘Cold Start’. This recreated the conventional space to hit back at Pakistan for its proxy war provocations while remaining within the nuclear threshold. Pakistan has responded by increasing its nuclear capability to ‘edge’ past India’s by the end of the decade. Cognizant of India’s possible military reaction, it has taken care not to repeat 26/11. It has lent itself as a site for Chinese containment of India in the larger Sino-Indian power play on the wider chess board of Asia. India for its part has inclined towards the US thereby affording the superpower an option for offsetting the challenge posed by China at the global level.

The aim of this brief survey of realpolitik was to point out that with increasing Indian power over the future and declining power of an internally-beset Pakistan, the future may end up quite like the past.

Currently, in India’s prescription, a move towards democracy in Pakistan would result in democratic peace breaking out. India has fitfully attempted to foster this by reaching out to Pakistan intermittently over the years in the hope that this would foster a democratic peace constituency and restrict the political space of the Army and anti-India forces. The Pakistani Army has successfully stymied these measures to preserve its institutional interests and for using the Indian ‘Other’ for purposes of national cohesion, both vertically and horizontally.

India cannot indefinitely rely on Pakistan reforming itself. The expectation that India can ‘manage’ Pakistan in the interim may, in the event of a militarized and nuclearized future crisis, end up disrupting India’s economic growth. India must therefore work towards an outcome getting Pakistan on the bandwagon. The strategy must be to dilute military power as an ingredient of prestige. This implies shifting the definition of prestige in favor of other prestige-imparting factors, such as improved social indicators.

This is unlikely to happen in a polity with a center-right center of gravity. Additionally, there is a nationalism informed by ‘cultural nationalism’. There are also institutional and sectional actors advantaged by India’s ascending military graph. The ‘solution’ in terms of redefining India’s ambitions appears a non-starter.

It seems that crisis must first give way to conflict before the nuclear portents compel a brighter future.

India-Pakistan: Nothing in the offing

by Ali Ahmed

March 1, 2011

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/03/01/india-pakistan-nothing-in-the-offing/

After the Thimpu talks between the two foreign secretaries, India and Pakistan stand at yet another beginning. As in the middle of last year, there is little indication that this time it the real thing. The earlier two beginnings, specifically Vajpayee’s reaching out of April 2003 that culminated in the Islamabad joint statement of January 2004, and Manmohan Singh’s UPA I initiatives that energized the ‘back channel’, had greater promise. This time round the little political investment in the initiatives indicates that these are but diplomatic procedures churning on.

That the Pakistani foreign minister has not been appointed yet after the reshuffle indicates reservations on the Pakistani side. The Army that calls the shots on the Kashmir front is unlikely to want any movement since Pakistan’s present position is one seeming disadvantage. It has lost its terror leverage in Kashmir, even though it has managed to change the strategy from a militant stand off to a more people-centered, intifada-like, one.

India, for its part, is best poised to ignore any pressures for concessions to Pakistan. Its defense budget having gone up three times over the past decade, it is better positioned to ensure deterrence of Pakistani provocations. In case this fails, it will be able, unlike in the aftermath of 26/11, to react militarily. The lower profile accorded to Cold Start of late, and the shift in emphasis on ‘proactive operations’, implying an ability for selective strikes, gives it little incentive to compromise.

In other words, very little on the positive side can be expected externally on the Kashmir front.

The three interlocutors appointed for progressing the political prong of strategy have promised viable recommendations. With their credibility at stake, their report can be expected to be innovative. However, in the absence of any political exertion to create the ground for accepting any far reaching suggestions it might have, there is unlikely to be any consequential follow up. Preparing the ground prior is useful not only in Kashmir but in the rest of India. That public opinion is not been conditioned means that as with other reports, this one too will be subject to India’s time-tested practice of putting off action. The Srikrishna report on Telangana is example.

With the police gearing up to take on agitations expected over the summer, the government can afford to be complacent. The Arab uprisings have little to offer in terms of tactics and inspiration for Kashmiri agitators because they have already been on this route for three years now. Admittedly, a reaching out to the people has been underway by the Army in particular. Recruiting rallies, cricket tournaments, human rights seminars, etc., are some such measures. Propping up of erstwhile Ikhwanis as a political force is being done to further restrict the space for separatists. The central government has Omar Abdullah as buffer in case a scapegoat is required. The beginning of talks with Assamese insurgents enables something to show on internal security. A government on the back-foot for charges of corruption cannot in any case open up another front in the form of ‘concessions to separatists’ for the opposition to take advantage of. Therefore internally too there is unlikely to be any movement.

What this means for Kashmir and the Kashmir question is yet another ‘dot’ year. What are implications for the future?

Both India and Pakistan await the outcome of the US exit strategy in AfPak. It is fairly clear that the Europeans are exhausted and that servicing the US fiscal deficit calls for retraction in its external wars. Pakistan would like to retain even keel till the future is here. India, for its part, would prefer the same, but is not averse to the opposite.

The latter explains the circulation of ideas on balkanization and intervention in Pakistan to save nuclear crown jewels in support of US and Israeli action. The logic presumably is that an unstable Pakistan would be inwardly looking and therefore less Kashmir obsessed. In any case, by middle of the decade with increasing power asymmetry between the two states, India would be better positioned to take on any Pakistani strategy. Yet the hope is for a stable Pakistan able to overcome its internal contradictions with external help of the US and thereby better able to go beyond Kashmir.

Given such analyses, suggesting change is to be unrealistic. At best, what can be done is to recommend better management of both the external and internal dimensions of the Kashmir issue. The government is, in any case, set on this course. It hopes to manage internal security through better policing, and, externally, the agenda of meetings is set till July.

To suggest that this approach does India’s great power ambitions and regional power status an injustice would be a wasteful exercise. But it needs be said that India is indeed being a free rider. It is doing little to bring about the change it seeks in Pakistan. A strategy needs to be envisaged and implemented to bring about the change. The argument that India does not know with whom to network or interface in Pakistan is a trite rationale.

What needs to be done?

India needs to make Pakistan an offer it cannot refuse. It needs to extend the erstwhile ‘Gujral doctrine’, of non-reciprocal opening up, to cover Pakistan also. India’s rising economic tide must be made to lift all regional boats. This implies energizing the economic prong of strategy, perhaps through the aegis, if required for massaging Pakistani sensitivities, of the SAARC. This would ensure Pakistani stability, preempt instability in the region, and bring to fore the constituencies in Pakistan that are not averse to engaging with India. It would enable Pakistan to non-militarily roll back the extremist tide.

A policy alternative is available. India’s unwillingness to countenance this can be ascribed to its inability owing to both political and policy deficiencies. Yet, it can certainly be reckoned to have arrived as a power in case it was to operationalize this policy alternative. It would be a pity were South Asia to find itself at mid-decade facing a worsening regional reality due to realist power play or confidence infirmities of today.