STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB
No, I don’t think that India poses a threat to Pakistan. And yet I often see that the Pakistani mindset is unnecessarily preoccupied with the clear and present Indian military threat to their existence. This impression of mine was strengthened all over again during the deliberations of the recently held 9th and 10th rounds of Chaophraya Indo-Pak track-two dialogues in Colombo. This India-phobia was especially evident during the dialogue between the retired military representatives of India and Pakistan. The Pakistani military, retired and serving, is clearly concerned about the overwhelming power of India and thinks that one day the Indian military machine will crush Pakistan under its feet.
Why is this an important question to ask at this point of time? Because the more I look at Pakistani strategic posturing and its military’s thinking I realize that it is postured in response to a perceived Indian threat. There is a certain security dilemma that operates in the Pakistani mind about India due to its fears regarding India’s geographical size, stupendous economic growth, alliances, military superiority, as well as its unresolved conflicts with Pakistan. In other words, this is surely an issue that needs to be addressed as it contributes to a lot of confusion in the minds of Pakistanis.
Perceptions are subjective and I don’t want to say whether or not they are justified. However, I wish to argue that Pakistan has no reason to worry about a military threat from India. First of all, India is unlikely to engage in any kind of subversive activities within Pakistan’s territory – a fear that Pakistan entertains vis-à-vis Balochistan – not only because Indian policy is not informed on those lines but also because India has learned from its past mistakes in propping up LTTE and supporting Bhindrenwala, at least in the beginning, during the Punjab insurgency. India has learned the painful lesson that if you promote terror as a policy of statecraft it will come back to haunt you one day.
More so, India clearly has a defensive military posture which forms one of the central drivers of India’s contemporary strategic culture. It is not only the issue of material incapacity of being unable to stage a clear military victory against Pakistan (especially under nuclear conditions) in the event of a conflict that would prevent India from a starting a military operation against Pakistan but also its own internal conflicts which in many ways have tied India down. In other words, India’s multiple internal insurgencies will be its major security pre-occupation in the years to come.
It is also important to look at the contemporary Indian global preoccupations, material and ideational, to gauge whether Indians are Pak-fixated and whether overly focusing on Pakistan can distract them from pursuing their larger international goals. Indian foreign policy discourse is hardly Pakistan-centric; its major pre-occupations are the rise of India, its soft-power promotion, UN reforms and India’s role in a reformed UN, relations with the United States etc. India also realizes that unnecessary preoccupation with Pakistan or lack of improvement in Indo-Pak relations can hamper India’s own growth.
Islamabad should also look at the patters of India’s alliance behaviour. While Pakistan has a standing all-weather anti-India alliance with China, India’s alliances are hardly targeted at Pakistan. Take, for instance, Indo-US strategic partnership. While the US is one of India’s leading strategic partners, it was also a major strategic partner of Pakistan at least until recently. The breakdown of their relations was neither desired nor caused by India. India’s ties with Russia, Japan or France are not to bring harm to Islamabad and that should seriously be noted by Pakistan’s policy makers when trying to gauge India’s potential behavior towards Pakistan.
Of course India is a fast growing economy and has a certain level of economic dominance over the rest of South Asia. One might also argue that this economic prowess could be converted to construct a huge military machine which can become a threat to Pakistan. But why should that that be the case? I would argue that not only should Pakistan look at India’s economic growth in a benign manner but also should explore opportunities to benefit from the Indian economic growth.
And yet eternal skeptics could make the argument that there is the pervasive question of uncertainty in international relations and so you can never be sure of the intentions of other states. More so that there is no guarantee that states will never change their views over the course of time. That’s true, and that is precisely why Pakistan should, so should India, try and resolve their bilateral conflicts so that there is no reason for them to fight with each other. Moreover, apart from resolving their conflicts they should also try and make constituencies of peace on either side. One of the ways of doing that is to strengthen trade ties between the two sides. The recent meeting of the trade ministers of India and Pakistan is therefore a welcome step.
An Indo-Pak no-war pact
India and Pakistan should also try and sign a ‘no-war pact’. Leaders from both the sides, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Pervez Musharraff, have offered it in the past. Skeptics, again, might argue that such ‘feel-good’ declarations have no value when the push comes to shove, that is, when there is an overwhelming reason to fight a war. While it is true that war as a last resort can not be ruled out in the relationship between states, it is also true that confidence building measures such as a no-war pact can make states perceive each other differently, resolve their differences peacefully and generally tend not to break the pact for domestic and international normative reasons.
(Source: Greater Kashmir, March 4, 2012. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2012/Mar/4/a-question-of-curiosity-14.asp )
