Pragmatic Euphony  

Let us wait and watch before reacting to political rhetoric.

Barack Obama has won the race to be the next President of the United States of America. Congratulations are in order. However there is a little worry on the minds of many Indian commentators. This consternation has been caused by this statement from Obama, made only a few days before he won the Presidential elections.

We should probably try to facilitate a better understanding between Pakistan and India and try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants.

And then he further expounded on that theory with a suggestion that Bill Clinton could be a special envoy for the Kashmir crisis.

[BO] …Working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve, and Kashmir, crisis in a serious way. Those are all critical tasks for the next administration. Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation where that is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically. But, for us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on messing with this? To make the argument to the Pakistanis, look at India and what they are doing, why do you want to keep n being bogged down with this particularly at a time where the biggest threat now is coming from the Afghan boarder? I think there is a moment where potentially we could get their attention. It won’t be easy, but it’s important.

[Q] Sounds like a job for Bill Clinton.

[BO] Might not be bad. I actually talked to Bill, I talked to President Clinton about this when we had lunch in Harlem.

The Acorn has taken offence to this, dismissing it as an old idea that harks back to US positions of the previous century and is unlikely to work in the present scenario. C Raja Mohan also argues on the same lines suggesting that –

India has never been comfortable with third-party mediation in Kashmir, and will not embrace the idea of a high profile Special Envoy, even if the job goes to a friendly Clinton.

Raja Mohan also lists out the fallouts of Obama’s Kashmir Thesis–

If Obama’s Kashmir thesis becomes the policy, many negative consequences might ensue. For one, an American diplomatic intervention in Kashmir will make it impossible for India to pursue the current serious back channel negotiations with Pakistan on Kashmir, the first since 1962-63.

India and Pakistan have made progress in recent years, because their negotiations have taken place in a bilateral context. Third party involvement will rapidly shrink the domestic political space for India on Kashmir negotiations.

For another, the prospect that the U S might offer incentives on Kashmir is bound to encourage the Pakistan Army to harden its stance against the current peace process with India.

Finally, the sense that an Obama Administration will put Jammu & Kashmir on the front burner would give a fresh boost to militancy in Kashmir and complicate the current sensitive electoral process there. Kashmiri separatist lobbies in Washington have already embraced Obama’s remarks.

It is indisputable that biggest gains in the Indo-Pak peace process were made in bilateral talks, in the last few years, far away from the glare of international attention and high-profile special envoys. Minor violations apart, the ceasefire on the Line of Control, a result of bilateral negotiations, has sustained since November 2003.

But there is another way to look at Obama’s views. Lalit Mansingh, former Indian Ambassador to the US has a different perspective of Obama’s views.

He [Obama] has been saying that he would like to see India and Pakistan get together and resolve the issue of J&K. A lot of people say that this might bring in a more intrusion, a more direct role for the Americans, which we will not welcome. I have seen nothing in what Obama has said which would take American policy back to what it was 10 years ago. What we have seen 10 years ago is a dramatic reversal of their earlier policy on J&K. it has started with Bill Clinton and has continued ever since. I do not think Obama is going to reverse this policy and certainly not go against the legacy of Bill Clinton. So, I do not see that as a serious issue.

Lalit Mansingh makes a valid point. More than Barack Obama, Indian commentators are in the danger of reverting to their behaviour of 10 years back — petulant and over sensitive to any talk of external mediation in Kashmir. External mediation by the US in Indo-Pak relations has taken place even earlier and mostly it has been in India’s favour. The last two examples being the end of Kargil conflict in 1999 and détente on the Indo-Pak border after the attack on Parliament.

Moreover, unlike Clinton, Obama has not identified Kashmir as a nuclear flashpoint — the most dangerous place on the planet, but brought it up in the context of his real focus: Afghanistan and bordering areas of Pakistan. It is precisely the reason Pakistani commentators have also not welcomed Obama’s idea.

Obama would at best be somewhat proactive but to imagine that he would pressure New Delhi to settle the issue that takes into account the aspirations of the people of the state would not be logical from the standpoint of US national interests. The power equation in the sub-continent and the US growing economic stakes in India would not admit of that.[Nation]

But before someone in Islamabad gets excited about this, Mr Riedel – and now his boss – are basically talking about ending Pakistan’s excuse of the lingering dispute of Kashmir which stands in the way of accepting Washington’s desire to see India walk all over Pakistan, open direct trade links to Afghanistan and central Asia and play a major role in securing Afghanistan and the region in the face of Russian and Chinese influence.[The News]

Commentators on both sides of the border should recognise that there is a huge difference between pre-election rhetoric and Presidential policy. Barack Obama’s case is bound to be no different. K Subrahmanyam has rightly counselled that India should not overreact.

Obama is a flexible intellectual. Let’s wait and watch.

His Vice President, Joseph Biden is an experienced hand on international affairs and is likely to have a major say in shaping the contours of Obama administration’s foreign policy. In 2001, Joe Biden, as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to President Bush asking for lifting of American economic and military sanctions imposed on India in 1998 for its test of a nuclear weapon. He, however, was not prepared to go along with a similar request for Pakistan.

In November 2006, Biden, as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was the driving force behind the US Senate’s overwhelming adoption of the enabling legislation to facilitate the US-India civilian nuclear agreement. Some extracts from an interview given by Joe Biden at that time make his position on India and Kashmir very clear.

…two of the three or four pillars upon which security for the world will be built in the 21st century are India and the United States. My dream is that in 2020 the two closest nations in the world will be India and the United States. If that occurs, the world will be safer.

… India lives in a very rough neighbourhood. So the idea that India, with China to its north and Pakistan to its west, would not become a nuclear power is just not a reasonable expectation.

I would not bring that [Kashmir issue] up without consultation with India first. If our good offices are sought we should be prepared to provide them. But I don’t think we can determine — we, the United States — (how it should be resolved). We should use whatever positive pressure we can to move in the direction (Indian Prime Minister Manmohan) Singh is moving, to get some accommodation. But that (issue) is not ours to solve.

On the face of it, Biden’s views elucidate Obama’s Kashmir thesis and should reassure the Indian commentators, who see a grand design to make US success in Pakistan and Afghanistan contingent on resolution of Kashmir issue. US desperately needs Pakistan’s help to avoid a humiliating failure in Afghanistan. It is, however, also seeking a strategic partnership with India (exemplified by the US-India nuclear deal) to deal with an increasingly powerful China.

President Obama will have to tide over this dilemma as his administration focuses its energies on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Prudence dictates that he will soon realise that Indian and US interests are closely aligned over Afghanistan and Kashmir is nothing more than a red herring — a Pakistani spoke in the wheel, designed to derail a successful Indo-US partnership. Let us wait and watch before overreacting to political rhetoric of an election campaign.