Opinion US-Pak tensions: Delhi’s Strange Passivity

For the first time since the Partition of the Subcontinent,India's relations with Pakistan and the United States appear in a better shape.

New DelhiDecember 11, 2011 03:33 PM IST First published on: Dec 11, 2011 at 03:33 PM IST

For the first time since the Partition of the Subcontinent,India’s relations with Pakistan and the United States appear in a better shape than those between Islamabad and Washington. But the UPA government,which appears to have lost its way at home,seems incapable of exploiting a rare strategic opportunity that has presented itself.

Last week,a leading American think tank,the Council on Foreign Relations,has listed the potential conflict between United States and Pakistan as a higher risk for Washington in 2012 than the prospect of a war between Delhi and Islamabad.

For nearly quarter of a century,preventing an Indo-Pak conflict that could escalate to the nuclear level has been a major preoccupation of the United States. All US administrations since the 1980s have made the promotion of a productive dialogue between India and Pakistan a major foreign policy priority.

In an ironic reversal,Washington today confronts the real possibility of a military conflict with Pakistan amidst a rapid deterioration of bilateral relations in 2011. The US raid on Abbottabad and the execution of Osama bin Ladin in May and the attack on two Pakistani outposts on the Afghan border by the NATO forces that killed 25 Pak soldiers at the end of November have underlined the deepening contradiction between the interests of the United States and the Pakistan army in Afghanistan.

Rawalpindi’s blockade of supplies to US forces in Afghanistan through the Pakistani territory has entered the third week. The Pak Army has also announced plans to move additional troops to its western borders with Afghanistan and beef up its air defences to counter potential intrusions by the NATO troops and US. drone attacks.

As talk of a US-Pak military conflict gains credence,India’s relations with the United States and Pakistan appear in reasonable shape.

The US-India ties continue to bask in the warm afterglow of the progress made during the years of George W. Bush and consolidated during President Barack Obama’s visit to Delhi last year.

India’s engagement with Pakistan,stalled after the terror attacks on Mumbai at the end of 2008,has gained some traction in 2011. A round of new dialogue with Pakistan was completed in 2011,and there are rising hopes for the long overdue normalization of trade relations between the two countries.

So far,so good. What is regrettable,however,is Delhi’s strange passivity in the face of an extraordinary turn in its international environment. After objecting to US-Pak partnership over the last six decades,Delhi seems a mere bystander in the quarrel between Washington or Islamabad.

Enthusiasm in the UPA government for rapidly expanding strategic cooperation with the United States appears to have evaporated; and Delhi’s approach towards Islamabad remains weighed down by bureaucratic incrementalism and excessive political caution.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had invested extraordinary energies in the first term of the UPA government in transforming India’s relations with both the United States and Pakistan.

It’s a pity that the UPA government is too paralyzed at home to imagine bold strategic moves towards Washington and Islamabad