India sulks as US rewards Pakistan

India might be disappointed by Washington's decision last week to designate Pakistan as a "major non-Nato ally", but it has no reason to lose sleep. The history of United States policy towards the subcontinent is marked by the repeated American use of Pakistan and discarding Islamabad when the immediate requirements are met. At the worst, India will tell itself, déjà vu!

The proximate cause for India's disappointment has been the fact that the US Secretary of State Colin Powell did not explain the decision when he was in New Delhi two days before he announced it in Islamabad.

This has broken the new tradition of trust and transparency that had evolved over the last few years in diplomatic relations between India and the US.

India's irritation also stems from the fact that the American move happened right in the middle of the campaign for general elections, at a time when the ruling coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, has been showcasing its foreign policy successes, in particular the improved relations with the US.

Election mode

But President Bush, too, is in an election mode. As he faces a tough fight against Senator John Kerry, behind whom the Democratic Party has quickly closed ranks, and the continuing volatility in the ground situation in Iraq, Bush desperately needs a major victory in the war on terrorism.

The capture of senior Al Qaida leaders on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border will be a shot in the arm for Bush. This political gift can only be delivered by the Pakistan Army and its boss, General Pervez Musharraf. Only that explains the somewhat incredulous praise showered on the Pakistani leader by Powell.

The US decision is also aimed at shoring Musharraf's position and ensuring his hold over the military at a time when he has taken considerable political risks to back the American search for Al Qaida and the remnants of the Taliban on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The timing of the American decision is disconcerting to India, coming as it does amidst the delicately poised peace process with Pakistan. During Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to Islamabad he had hammered out a framework of bilateral engagement with Musharraf.

Under the agreement, Pakistan will stop cross-border terrorism while India has promised to negotiate on Kashmir. The talks on the Kashmir question in a peaceful environment will be accompanied by a broad range of confidence-building measures, trade and people-to-people contact.

While the negotiations are slated to begin after the Indian elections in May/June, New Delhi would have reasons to worry if Islamabad begins to believe that the external environment of the peace process has been radically altered in favour of Pakistan after its designation by the US as a major non-Nato ally.

This is a larger concern for India than the prospect of a renewed military relationship between Washington and Islamabad. Since September 11, 2001, India has certainly anticipated the prospect of renewed arms supplies from the US to Pakistan. India is aware that Pakistan's stalled military modernisation since the early 1990s cannot be a permanent state.

While India will wait to see the quality and quantity of arms transfers from the US to Pakistan, in reality the nuclearisation of the subcontinent has reduced the past centrality of the military balance between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Minor variations of the military balance are unlikely to affect the security condition in the subcontinent now underwritten by nuclear weapons.

In the past, even at the height of US-Pak military co-operation during the Cold War, India had few problems in maintaining an edge over Pakistan in relation to conventional weapons. The economic gap between India and Pakistan has steadily widened thanks to India's higher growth rates since the last decade and Pakistan's poor financial performance.

India's ability to moblise resources for its military modernisation cannot be matched by Pakistan even with substantive American aid. India's capabilities for arms production at home have expanded significantly over the years. Its supplier base abroad is now wider and includes the US and Israel besides traditional suppliers like Russia, France and Britain.

There have been hints from Washington that it might be willing to extend the status of a "major non-Nato ally" to India as well. But India is unlikely to put itself in the unacceptable position of competing with Pakistan for American favours.

India's standing in the world has significantly improved over the last decade and it would prefer the construction of a relationship with the US independent of the Pakistan factor. That is eminently possible given the size and character of the Indian economy and the shared agenda of wider regional and global issues.

Improved relations

The US, too, says its relations with India and Pakistan are not a "zero-sum-game", thanks to the vastly improved relations with New Delhi in recent years. For this assertion to be credible, Washington will have to offer solid assurances to New Delhi on three counts.

First, Washington agrees to limit itself to modest levels of military assistance to Pakistan.
Second, America signals an awareness of the danger of Pakistan getting emboldened, in the wake of the American designation, to re-start supporting terrorism across the border after the summer months are over.

Finally, Washington promises to quickly demonstrate progress in the bilateral agenda with New Delhi, particularly on the question of access to advanced technologies and facilitating India's entry into the global non-proliferation regime as a responsible nuclear weapons power.

Movement on these three fronts will help mitigate the political consequences from the American designation of Pakistan as a major non-Nato ally. In the absence of such assurances, India will have to conclude that its own war on terrorism will have to be pursued separately from the one the US says is fighting in its neighbourhood.

C. Raja Mohan is Professor of South Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and columnist on world affairs.