India is piling on the diplomatic pressure to convince the international community to lean on Pakistan to crack down on Islamist militants blamed by New Delhi for the Mumbai attacks.

According to the Times of India, “India has made it clear to the U.S. and Iran as well as Pakistan’s key allies, China and Saudi Arabia, that they need to do more to use their clout to pressure Pakistan into acting…” The Press Trust of India (PTI), quoted by The Hindu, said India had used a visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal to Delhi to drive home the same message.

As discussed previously on this blog, in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India’s response was to look to the United States to put pressure on Pakistan. It also appears to have won some support from Russia, whose officials said publicly that the attacks were funded by Dawood Ibrahim, an underworld don who India says lives in Pakistan. China, Pakistan’s traditional ally, supported the United Nations Security Council in  blacklisting the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charity accused of being a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba.  China’s Foreign Minister has also telephoned his counterparts in India and Pakistan urging dialogue, according to Xinhua. 

And to complete the tour of the permanent members of the Security Council, Britain blamed Pakistan-based militants for the Mumbai attacks, while France has also called on Pakistan to take action.

That’s a fairly broad consensus in favour of diplomatic pressure. There certainly seem to be more players more visibly involved than in 2001/2002 when India and Pakistan came to the brink of war over an attack on the Indian parliament that India blamed on Pakistan-based militants. You might therefore be tempted to argue that the diplomatic approach is working — and as long as this stands a chance, the prospects of military escalation are slim.

So what is going wrong? Despite the flurry of diplomatic activity, the military tensions are rising.  Pakistan has cancelled army leave and redeployed troops.  The Washington Post said thousands of troops were being redeployed from the Afghan border to the border with India.

Are the two countries’ armies simply making sure they are prepared, just in case the diplomatic efforts fail? Or is there more going on behind-the-scenes?

Will Israel and India – the first the United States’ closest ally and the second fast becoming one of the closest – emerge as the trickiest adversaries in any attempt by the United States to seek a regional solution to Afghanistan?

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama plans to explore a more regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan — including possible talks with Iran.

The idea has been fashionable among foreign policy analysts for a while, as I have discussed in previous posts here and here. The aim would be to capitalise on Shi’ite Iran’s traditional hostility to the hardline brand of Sunni Islam espoused by the Taliban and al Qaeda to seek its help in neighbouring Afghanistan. At the same time India would be encouraged to make peace with Pakistan over Kashmir to end a cause of tension that has underpinned the rise of Islamist militancy in Pakistan and left both countries vying for influence in Afghanistan.

But Israel has already cautioned Obama against talking to Iran, which it said would be a seen as a sign of weakness in efforts to persuade Tehran to curb its nuclear programme. And Obama’s suggestion that the United States should try to help resolve the Kashmir dispute has raised hackles in India, which resents any outside interference in what it sees as a bilateral dispute. That could make the two countries important allies in combating — or at least reshaping — any attempt to remould U.S. strategy. 

India and Israel have already built close defence ties, as underlined by this Times of India article.  And according to this Asia Times article by former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar, India’s growing relationship with Israel, combined with U.S. pressure, is pushing Delhi to break off what was once a strategic partnership with Tehran. “At the root of it lies unprecedented US-Israeli interference in India’s Iran policy,” he writes.

Are we going to see more signs of Israel and India working together — if necessary to resist rather than support U.S. policy? And in an increasingly multi-polar world, will Obama discover that he needs to watch the United States’ friends as closely as its enemies to drive through his plans for change?

Will the United States have to turn to its old nemesis Iran for help in Afghanistan? A couple of articles out this month suggest it will.

In this article published by the MIT Center for International Studies, the authors argue that the hostility between Washington and Tehran has been bad for the United States, Iran and Afghanistan, and played into the hands of the Pakistan military, the Taliban and al Qaeda.

After 9/11, Iran cooperated with the United States to hep defeat the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. (Shi’ite Iran has traditionally been opposed to the hardline brand of Sunni Islam espoused by the Taliban and al Qaeda.) So from Tehran’s point of view, the country felt badly betrayed when in return for its help, President George W. Bush labelled Iran as part of the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea. (more…)

Given the focus on U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan since 9/11, it’s easy to forget the regional context. In an article in Foreign Affairs, Barnett Rubin and Ahmed Rashid try to set that right, calling for a regional approach that would take account of the interests not just of Afghanistan, but also of Pakistan, Russia, Iran, India and China.

“Both U.S. presidential candidates are committed to sending more troops to Afghanistan, but this would be insufficient to reverse the collapse of security there. A major diplomatic initiative involving all the regional stakeholders … is more important,” it says.

“No government in the region around Afghanistan supports a long-term U.S. or NATO presence there. Pakistan sees even the current deployment as strengthening an India-allied regime in Kabul; Iran is concerned that the United States will use Afghanistan as a base for launching ‘regime change’ in Tehran; and China, India, and Russia all have reservations about a NATO base within their spheres of influence and believe they must balance the threats from al Qaeda and the Taliban against those posed by the United States and NATO,” it adds. (more…)

Does the financial crisis mark the beginning of the end of American global dominance? And if so, what would the decline of American power mean for Afghanistan and Pakistan? It’s early days yet, but here are a few themes that are emerging from the maelstrom.

If you put aside the many arguments over whether the Americans were, or were not, guilty of latter-day imperialism, you can find consensus on two main points: that the U.S. model of free-market capitalism has been sorely challenged by the financial crisis; and that America’s reputation as a military superpower has been tarnished by its less-than-successful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In this respect, there are obvious parallels with the collapse of the British empire after World War Two, starting with its departure from India in 1947. Although Britain likes to think it won the war, its postwar situation carried all the hallmarks of defeat. It was virtually bankrupt and with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942 it had lost the myth of invincibility that allowed it to rule an empire on which the sun never set.  With neither the money, nor the credibility, to hold India by force in the face of a powerful Indian independence movement, it mustered as much dignity as possible for an emperor stripped of his clothes and left abruptly, partitioning the subcontinent into India and Pakistan on its way out.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this analogy works for the United States, and that it too begins to draw in on itself. The lessons of British imperial history suggest that when empires collapse, they do so not gradually, but in big leaps that create chaos for those left behind (for example in the estimated one million killed at Partition).

In an analysis in TomDispatch.com, Aziz Huq writes about how Britain, even after being forced to withdraw from India, only properly realised the limitations of its power in 1956, after its hopelessly miscalculated attack on Egypt following the nationalisation of the Suez Canal. “The country’s monetary weakness led directly to its military collapse in the crisis,” he writes. ”The Suez fiasco … also marked the end of British imperial ambitions.”

This is not to suggest that the Americans are about to suddenly abandon Afghanistan and Pakistan.  In the short term, both U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are committed to stepping up the campaign in Afghanistan. At the same time, Western leaders are already lowering their sights on Afghanistan, according to this analysis from Reuters Kabul correspondent Jon Hemming. In a country that is ”famously unforgiving to foreign forces”, this may well have happened even without the financial crisis.

But it does suggest that whatever the next U.S. President decides to do about Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is unlikely to be smooth.

Now add into this mix the growing power of Afghanistan’s neighbours — Iran and Russia, traditional U.S. rivals buoyed up by petrodollars and so likely to benefit from the clipping of America’s wings that they have been dubbed along with Venezuela as a new “axis of oil“. Both Iran and Russia, along with India, supported Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban Northern Alliance when the Taliban were in power in Kabul, and are seen as likely to resist any attempt by the United States to seek reconciliation with the Taliban as a face-saving way out of the Afghan quagmire.

Then there is China, sitting on $2 trillion of foreign exchange reserves.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari just visited China to seek help to bail out Pakistan’s economy, in a trip that also marked out his independence from the United States. China has yet to fully show its hand in how far it intends to use its new-found economic might to exercise global political power.  But it’s worth remembering that the United States, when it rescued Britain from bankruptcy after World War Two, insisted on an end to British imperialism and a withdrawal from its overseas colonies. We don’t yet know what China will demand.

Does anyone want to hazard a guess how all this will play out? America’s status as the lone superpower looks vulnerable; Iran and Russia are loudly assertive, and China is quietly buying up the world’s economy.  Personally, I think there are so many variables that we can’t possibly know yet; but whatever happens, it’s likely to catch us by surprise.

The debate about the fate of Pakistan and Afghanistan is getting noisier by the day.

According to this McClatchy report, a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate — reflecting the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies — has described Pakistan as being “on the edge”.

“A growing al Qaeda-backed insurgency, combined with the Pakistani army’s reluctance to launch an all-out crackdown, political infighting and energy and food shortages are plunging America’s key ally in the war on terror deeper into turmoil and violence,” it quotes the soon-to-be completed U.S. intelligence assessment as saying. It also quotes a U.S. official as summarising the NIE’s conclusions about the state of Pakistan as: “no money, no energy, no government.” (more…)

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  will be in New Delhi this weekend to celebrate a hard-fought nuclear deal that to its critics strikes at the heart of the global non-proliferation regime by allowing India access to nuclear technology despite its refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT)  and give up a weapons programme.

China and Pakistan are not amused although both stepped aside as they watched an unstoppable Bush administration push the deal through the International Atomic Energy Agency and then the Nuclear Suppliers Group in one of its few foreign policy successes.

A commentary in the state-controlled Beijing Review says Pakistan has reason to worry about the deal and recalls a statement put out by the Pakistan Army last month that warned of negative implications for strategic stability in South Asia. It would have been better if the United States had considered a package approach for both India and Pakistan, which conducted its first nuclear weapon tests two weeks after India, the magazine said, quoting the Pakistan Army statement.

China’s own stand, it said, was that all countries are entitled to make peaceful use of nuclear energy and that bodies like the NSG must address the aspirations of all parties. But it described the India-U.S. deal as a turning point which in the long run would have have a profound impact on international non-proliferation efforts. 

“Countries on the nuclear threshold might be tempted by the potential rewards of the Indian approach and pursue their nuclear weapon programs with renewed vigor,” it said. “This new perspective might also affect negotiations over the North Korean and Iranian nuclear issues. ”

Within hours of the U.S. Congress clearing the deal by an overwhelming vote, Pakistan’s prime minister was demanding a similar agreement for his country

“Pakistan will also now make efforts for a civil nuclear (deal) and they will have to accommodate us,” Yousaf Raza Gilani said.

And I could’t help thinking about Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s oft-repeated  remark way back in the 1960s that Pakistan would eat grass  if it had to in order to fund its own nuclear weapons should India go nuclear. 

And that’s the way it turned out eventually with the foes developing nuclear weapons programmes that ended in the tests of 1998 that shook the world. 

So is Pakistan in a position to embark on a similar project to develop its nuclear capabilities now that it sees its core national interests are again at threat from a nuclear India, backed ironically by its ally the United States?

Pakistan, says former foreign secretary Tanvir Ahmed Khan, needs a coherent strategy and maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent will clearly be a part of it especially if New Delhi now proceeds to build an oversized nuclear arsenal.

And is America’s new nuclear partnership with India going to add another complication to an already difficult engagement with Pakistan? Or will Pakistan, given the multiple pressures it faces, have to live this time with an India that has just won a seat on the nuclear high table ? 

Among the more daring recommendations in a new report by the Pakistan Policy Working Group, a bipartisan group of American experts on U.S.-Pakistan relations, is that the United States should eventually reconsider its opposition to a proposed Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project.

The suggestion, aimed at building peace between India and Pakistan, is well hedged. The report says it does not expect the long-delayed project to happen any time soon because of instability in Pakistan and U.S. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. But it is one that could ultimately be very significant not just for Pakistan, but also for Iran and India. As this Reuters story says, Iran sees energy-hungry India as one of the most promising markets for its huge natural gas reserves.

The report argues that U.S. pressure on Pakistan to end support for the Taliban in Afghanistan must be combined with diplomatic efforts to build peace and economic ties across the region so that Pakistan stops feeling its security is threatened. The long-term aim, it says, would be to ensure that Pakistan no longer sees a need to use Islamist militants as proxies against its much bigger neighbour, India.

India has long accused Pakistan of sponsoring militants fighting in Kashmir and of backing the Taliban to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan. Although Pakistan denies this, the view is gaining currency in the United States, but with the caveat that only by reducing tensions between Pakistan and India can Pakistan be persuaded to drop its dependence on militants. ”The U.S. should seek to adjust Pakistan’s cost-benefit calculus of using militants in its foreign policy,” the report says.

“To encourage better ties and more robust economic linkages between India and Pakistan, the U.S. should eventually reconsider its opposition to the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline project,” it says. ”Assuming that the situation in Pakistan stabilises, and the U.S. determines that the IPI would not undermine international efforts to dissuade Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons programme, the pipeline could help to stabilise the region over the longer term by providing Pakistan and India with a mutual economic interest.”

Do read the whole report (The Council on Foreign Relations provides a link to the PDF document here). It is remarkable for its candour about Pakistan’s complex relationship with Islamist militants. But it is also impressive in its reach in the way it ties Pakistan’s fate to the policies of other players in the region — for example it calls for a National Intelligence Estimate on Pakistani support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and an “in-depth assessment of the activities of other regional actors in Afghanistan such as Russia, Iran and India”.

Is this a sign of things to come, heralding a much more sophisticated approach to U.S. foreign policy? And after years of oil and gas being seen as a cause for war, can they also become a reason for peace?

1. It’s early days yet, but people are already trying to work out what any Israeli attack on Iran would mean for Pakistan. (The idea that Israel might attack Iran to damage or destroy its nuclear programme gained currency this week when former U.S. ambassador John Bolton predicted in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that it would do so after the November U.S. presidential election but before the next president is sworn in.)

Pakistan defence analyst Ikram Sehgal paints an alarming, and perhaps deliberately alarmist, picture in The News of what this could mean for Pakistan: ”Could Israeli or (US) planners afford the risk of leaving a Muslim nuclear state with the means of missile delivery intact if there is war with Iran? Can they take this calculated risk in the face of a possible Pakistani nuclear reaction because of military action on a fellow Muslim nation and neighbour…?” he writes. ”Should one not be apprehensive that India as the ‘newly U.S. appointed policeman of the region’ takes the opportunity … for launching all-out Indian military offensive….?”

Sounds like a prescription for the Apocalypse? Maybe, but perhaps worth taking apart to see whether this is a serious risk for Pakistan.

The nightmare scenario would require that Israel really was capable of taking out Iran’s nuclear installations and it is by no means clear that its air force has the size and reach to deal with Iran’s dispersed and well-hidden defences and targets.  The Americans, with their huge air strike capacity and firepower could have a go, but even then this would just give an excuse to Iran to leave the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and embark on a crash course to develop the bomb. (Both India and Pakistan developed their nuclear weapons while refusing to sign the NPT.)

You would also have to build in the fact that India has a ‘no first strike’ policy and that Pakistan has made clear it will use its nuclear weapons only if it feels its very existence is threatened. Pakistan also has a history of difficult relations with Iran, driven in part by rivalry over Afghanistan, by Sunni dominance over Pakistan, and by the sheer competitiveness of two countries which see themselves as the standard-bearers of Muslim glory in an earlier era. So it is not obvious that Pakistan would come to the rescue of Iran even if it were to be attacked by Israel.

Perhaps the fall-out of the sabre-rattling over Iran will be more mundane.

Pakistan is heavily touting a gas pipeline from Iran to India as a “pipleline of peace” that might bring Islamabad and Delhi together.  Yet at the same time the United States is leaning heavily on India not to agree to the pipeline project in order to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme, as this article in The Telegraph from Calcutta the makes clear.

It is not at all clear how all this will fit together in what appears to be a very unpredictable world. Views please?
 

India, Pakistan and even tiny Sri Lanka have all ignored U.S. concerns, and have hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the past two days. It is a fleeting visit with less than five hours scheduled in Delhi, but it seems like a carefully calibrated piece of diplomacy tiptoeing around the elephant in the room.
 
For, as relations go, India and Pakistan have become bound up with the United States in ways that would have been unthinkable not very long ago. Islamabad is a frontline ally in Washington’s war on al Qaeda and the Taliban, India a growing strategic partner with whom it is pushing a far-reaching civilian nuclear deal that gives it de facto recognition as a nuclear state.

So what’s this dance with Iran, accused by the United States of sponsoring terrorism and seeking to develop nuclear weapons ? Some of it is down to economics : Iran holds the key to India’s energy  insecurity, as a piece in the Asia Times argues.

With oil prices skyrocketing, India’s thirst for cheaper imported gas has acquired a greater urgency than before and if this means jumpstarting the 15-year-old proposal to pipe gas from Iran through Pakistan, now estimated to cost $7.5 billion, so be it. Pakistan too needs the natural gas to meet its growing energy demand, as also the millions of dollars it will earn in transit fees.

And if history is any lesson, the “pipeline of peace” could promote security in the region with the costs of a conflict between India and Pakistan that much higher.

But is there also a desire to assert or rather be seen to be asserting independence of action in hosting Ahmadinejad at a time when tensions are rising again over its nuclear ambitions ?

Pakistan has a new civilian government which has pledged to pursue a more independent course, including in the fight against al Qaeda, than followed by President Pervez Musharraf.

India’s government is under pressure from its communist allies who think it has gone too far in seeking warmer ties with America and risks losing its independence of action. In any case, New Delhi has been acutely sensitive of being seen as anything other than a fiercely independent nation.  

What of Sri Lanka ? Perhaps the island has had enough of lectures on human right violations and veiled threats to hold back assistance if it continues to seek a military solution to the insurgency by Tamil Tiger rebels. Iran will probably abjure such admonitions.