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Journalism of Courage
They8217;re talking of a new Spring in the subcontinent. Will the season last? Or will it be back to the wintry stalemate, as in the Middle East and Northern Ireland 8212; two of the other worries that consume overworked minders of the world8217;s troublespots now that the gunshots have almost died down in Iraq.
He denied it, of course, but commentators in the western media continued to wonder whether US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage packed a Roadmap for Kashmir into his suitcase when he set out for South Asia. Like the roadmap for the Middle East the Bush Administration recently slipped into the public domain.
The WASHINGTON POST found it significant that the 8216;8216;Indian leader revealed his intention to restore full diplomatic relations and cross-border transport links just a week before a visit by a senior Bush administration official8230;8217;8217; Asked the London TIMES, incredulously: 8216;8216;Peace? So suddenly? Out of nowhere?8217;8217; The quick answer, it said, is American pressure on both capitals. The impetus for talks has come from the US, stated the GUARDIAN, equally baldly. But the NEW YORK TIMES sought to etch a fine distinction. The Vajpayee initiative wasn8217;t meant so much to 8216;8216;placate8217;8217; Richard Armitage, it said, as to 8216;8216;pre-empt8217;8217; him.
Perhaps Vajpayee8217;s move simply reflects that India8217;s strategy so far was not working, suggested the NYT. Perhaps, as terrorism continues in Kashmir, India was finding itself increasingly boxed in.
In that case, in the same paper, George Perkovich, author of a book on India8217;s nuclear programme, certified that the Indian PM8217;s new moves are tactically brilliant: 8216;8216;If you8217;re Musharraf now and something goes boom in Kashmir, you just gave a way for the Indians to pound you internationally8217;8217;.
But can Pakistan deliver on peace in the longer term? The WASHINGTON POST was among the openly skeptical. 8216;8216;Mr Musharraf8230; has shown little sign that he is prepared to give up the Pakistani dream of one day taking control of the Indian-ruled part of the territory. Though he has cooperated with the Bush administration8217;s fight against al Qaeda, he has made only token moves against the Muslim extremists8230; The Bush administration has chosen not to confront Mr Musharraf about his backsliding8230;8217;8217; The best the world can probably hope for, it said, is for an incremental easing of tensions, cricket matches, other confidence-building measures.
For the NYT, too, the problem lay squarely in Pakistan. Its army, which has used the struggle over Kashmir to prop up its power, remains a wild card. 8216;8216;Continued complicity with Kashmiri terrorism8217;8217; it sternly warned in an editorial, 8216;8216;could make Pakistan an international pariah, as it was when it recklessly backed the Taliban in Afghanistan8217;8217;.
Meanwhile, Britain8217;s FINANCIAL TIMES was asking another question. Was America prepared for peace in the subcontinent? There appears to be little new thinking coming from the US, it said, which is seen as indispensable in keeping the peace process on course. There is a question mark, it suggested, over whether Washington has thought this thing through. And whether the US is sufficiently engaged to play the facilitating role it is expected to.
The coming of Nuclear Age
In a long feature in the NEW YORK TIMES last Sunday, simultaneous with the latest stirrings of peace in the subcontinent, columnist Bill Keller asserted that the subject is nuclear proliferation. He argued for a new arms-control regime which must begin by assessing the motives that tempt states to go nuclear, and then figuring out how to remove the temptation. India and Pakistan may lose interest in nuclear weapons, he suggested, if America played a more active role in defusing their border dispute.
Keller wrote of a First and Second Nuclear Age. The first nuclear age, he said, began over Hiroshima and eventually 8216;8216;matured8217;8217; into the standoff between the US and the Soviet Union. During this time, the two rivals brought their weapons under control, worked out a protocol for living with them, restrained other potential nuclear states by treaties, threats, other diplomatic pressures. 8216;8216;In its way, the cold war worked8217;8217;.
The nuclear tests in India and Pakistan announced the Second Nuclear Age. As Keller tells it, the difference was this: now nuclear tests were a declaration of national pride and/or the settling of scores. Nuclear weapons had lost their mystique, their stigma. They had a regional agenda; they even had a religious subtext.
In this story, India and Pakistan were forerunners of a new kind of nuclear power. It was about 8216;8216;insecure nations, most of them led by autocrats, most of them relatively poor, residing in rough neighbourhoods, unaligned with and resentful of Western power8217;8217;.
So how do 8216;8216;we8217;8217; read America deal with these arsenals of a more unruly nuclear age, asked Keller. He said the argument now rages between the traditional arms controllers 8212; the nonproliferationists who advocate treaties, export controls, international agencies and sanctions 8212; and the newly ascendant camp of muscular counterproliferationists. Who offer a 8216;8216;relatively coldblooded self-interest and confrontation most fulsomely demonstrated by the invasion of Iraq8217;8217;.
Surely, we must be grateful that in Keller8217;s book, America can tackle India and Pakistan by one of the softer options on its menu: by helping 8216;8216;defuse8217;8217; the 8216;8216;regional grievance8217;8217; that 8216;8216;keeps them on edge8217;8217;.
