India generally has a smirking attitude when Islamabad’s pleas do not find fertile ground in Washington, and this appears to be the case with the outcome of the scheduled official meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and US President Barack Obama in Washington earlier this week. Such an approach is strategically and tactically hollow since there have been no substantive preparations on India’s part to meet any conceivable difficult eventualities that Pakistan can present India on account of its very close friendship with Beijing and still close relations with Washington in spite of attacks by Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups on the US and Nato troops in Afghanistan over the years and the clandestine hosting of Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani military area.
Of the $40 billion given in military and economic aid to Pakistan by the US, $23 billion has come in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but there has been no commensurate effort on Islamabad’s part to combat terrorism. At the recent summit, President Obama declined to entertain Pakistan’s appeal to move from bilateralism to multilateralism on the Kashmir issue — Pakistan urged the US to at least agree to international “monitoring” of the so-called Kashmir question — and the American side reiterated the formulation that India and Pakistan should resolve the Kashmir issue bilaterally. This has pleased India no end. Official briefings in New Delhi also expressed satisfaction that the US-Pakistan joint statement mentioned the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and its affiliates for the first time in the context of jobs to do for the Pakistan government if terrorism had to be put down in that country.
The naming of this specifically anti-India terrorist outfit raised by the ISI has left India self-satisfied as New Delhi sees in this its own diplomacy having effect. But the Indian leadership overlooks the fact that Washington has also agreed to provide Islamabad eight more F-16 fighter jets. In fact, the driving of the continuum of offering such lollipops is the only constant in the US-Pakistan story, no matter how deviant Pakistan has proved itself to be in the eyes of US policy-makers, politicians and the general public, and also internationally. This long-term approach has left the Pakistani civilian leadership with the reasonable assumption that its geographical location makes Pakistan indispensable to America. Who can argue with this? In the nuclear field, China has already offered Pakistan the kind of special dispensation that exists between India and the US. If we are ready even if the future battle space moves from the conventional to the nuclear and cyber, we should have nothing to worry from Pakistani politics and diplomacy.
