Hari Jaisingh
THE post-Pokhran scenario continues to be tough and complex. The stalemate remains on different fronts. The lifting of sanctions, a fact of life now, depends on the outcome of the negotiations going on between India and the USA, the countries that matter in today's geopolitics. The US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Strobe Talbott, and the Prime Minister's special envoy, Mr Jaswant Singh, are seasoned negotiators. They do not exhibit flamboyance and are addressing themselves to the sensitive issues bedevilling the relations between the two countries with seriousness and maturity. Mr Jaswant Singh has remained urbane and unflappable, explaining India's position with irrefutable logic.
I am sure the dialogue will yield results sooner or later for the simple reason that there seems to be greater appreciation in Washington of Indian viewpoint now than ever before. There is also a touch of sobriety in American thinking today. Perhaps there is a realisation, howsoever limited, in the Clinton Administration about the folly of underplaying India vis-a-vis China and Pakistan. Of course, Washington's strategic consideration in promoting Pakistan and China is not going to change overnight. However, a rational view of South Asian, nay Asian, problems within a balanced framework can go a long way in correcting the tilt which often surfaces in America's relations with Islamabad and Beijing.
Interestingly, the issues of CTBT and NPT can no longer be viewed within a narrow framework. Nuclear technology is changing fast. A new generation of nuclear weapons technology will soon make the NPT-CTBT umbrella irrelevant. The new area of nuclear fusion research could even undermine the present global nuclear order which controls the spread of nuclear weapons by limiting access to materials such as enriched uranium and plutonium. Already, research in these areas is in an advanced stage. So, both the USA and India will have to think on new lines and avoid making a fuss about matters which will not be so important in tomorrow's world. Viewed in this light, a more flexible approach on the CTBT will probably help New Delhi. I expect Washington to be more responsive to Indian sensitivities and accept India as a nuclear weapons power with equal benefits in every respect. The USA should also agree to share its nuclear technology so that nuclear explosions can be avoided. It has already been generous with regard to China and has provided it with simulation technology.
In fact, Washington can help the process of peace and stability in South Asia if it delinks India's strategic interests from its Pakistan-related calculations. India needs to be viewed differently and if the USA has to make a comparison, it has to be vis-a-vis China and not Pakistan. Most of the Indo-American problems will get resolved if Washington ceases to bracket India with Pakistan. This is not a tall demand. All that is required is a small correction in its foreign policy approach.
Even the Kashmir issue will be seen differently once Washington views it in the larger context of the Indian nation and its secular and democratic traditions. It will certainly not be in the interest of the USA to allow Hindu fundamentalists to decide the turn of events in India and beyond. In any case, anything which aids and abets the forces of Islamic fundamentalism will harm America's long-term strategic interests not only in South Asia but also beyond Central Asia.
Of course, the basic issues spoiling the ties between India and Pakistan have to be discussed and tackled bilaterally when the two Prime Ministers meet in Colombo on July 29 during the SAARC summit. Here again, both Indian and Pakistani leaders need to address the problems with an open mind.
We do not expect Pakistan to change overnight. All the same, Islamabad has to realise that the policies and postures pursued by it for the past 50 years have only brought untold misery to the subcontinent. It has also to understand that it cannot grab Kashmir through an armed conflict or proxy war or even by internationalising the issue.
Pakistani leaders might feel psychologically more secure with the acquisition of bombs, but basically it does not give them what they wish to grab by hook or by crook. In the circumstances, a meaningful dialogue is the only solution to end the deadlock between the two countries. New Delhi has made it clear that it is willing to discuss Kashmir. So, rather than dig up old and irrelevant issues like plebiscite, Islamabad should think in practical terms and try to work out a solution that should also satisfy New Delhi. Islamabad can rewrite history. It can also create an atmosphere of war hysteria back there. It can lead and mislead its own people in the name of Islam. It can also seek shelter under the Chinese-supported nuclear umbrella. It can even smuggle arms, money and mercenaries and launch a jehad against the people of Kashmir and those of India. But it will be worthwhile if Mr Nawaz Sharif and other political leaders begin to see India in a different perspective. Pakistan has to accept the fact that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. This country has to take care of their interests and take them along in the march towards a better tomorrow.
India is a secular democracy and Indian leaders are under obligation to nurse and strengthen its roots. Unfortunately, Pakistan has tried to foist the myth of the insecurity of Muslims in India and misinform its own people in this regard. India has definitely no design on Pakistan. It has accepted it as a sovereign nation. The rest are the problems created by politicians for their own survival. With a considerable loss to their own people, India has also suffered in the process. It has been forced to waste its precious resources on weaponry, whereas priority ought to be on the well-being of the people by lifting their standard of living.
Mr Nawaz Sharif and Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee need to see subcontinental issues in a new socio-economic framework and conduct themselves like statesmen rather than as small-time warlords. They ought to realise the folly of conflicts and embrace the path of peace and development. The future of South Asia, in fact, depends on how its leaders are able to address themselves to the problems of development, deprivation, illiteracy and population growth.
Looking beyond as we move on, New Delhi will have to shed a few obsessions with the neighbourhood, get over the China defeat syndrome and rediscover "a sober balance" between national development, national security and enlightened internationalism. As Jagat S. Mehta, former Foreign Secretary, once put it, India's lodestar in the 21st century must be the ability to keep up with the push and pace in social and economic achievements within the democratic system and winning respect as a consistently principled participant in the comity of nations.
It is a fact that because of its size and location, India will always be strategically important. It will also be cultivated commercially as a market comprising a billion people, with the second biggest middle class in the world. But the weak point is that there are also nearly 500 million people in our midst who live at the poverty level with nearly 100 million more in the surrounding parameter. The rising expectations and growing frustration of this large slice of humanity are like a "gigantic volcano" which could burst and incinerate our manifold achievements.
In exercising strategic and foreign policy options, Indian policy-makers must not lose sight of the harsh domestic realities. The harsh realities of poverty are equally, nay more, grim for Pakistan. But it is rather unfortunate that this simple message is lost in Islamabad's corridors of power because of the misplaced obsession and priorities of the rulers there. Beyond the euphoria of nuclear blasts, both India and Pakistan require a new thinking and a new perspective to create an atmosphere of peace and development. The need of the hour is galloping economic growth.
Mr Nawaz Sharif and other Pakistani politicians need to clear the climate of self-destructive suspicion around India and take to the path of building stable equations of trust and confidence. In this setting, the South Asian region will be more secure against external manipulation and our bilateral ties with the big powers less prone to debilitating friction.
A wholly new challenge lies ahead for Indian diplomacy. South Block must appreciate the fact that India's global standing in the coming years can only flow from economic surplus and technological surplus. Paul Kennedy's nonfiction best-seller "The Rise and Fall of Great Empires" argues that in the past empires fell when economic dynamism stagnated and military power was needlessly over-extended.
The message is clear for India's policy-makers. We have to strike the right balance between an adequate arsenal of guns for defence and the availability of bread and butter for the millions of deprived and under-privileged Indians. It is a pity that our foreign policy strategy has not properly grasped the question of economic development, replacing ideology and dogmatic politics in international relations. The hard new world calls for hard new thinking.
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Courtesy: The Tribune: July 24, 1998