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| Changing face of US policy in South Asia | | |
Dr. Rajkumar Singh
Till 1974, the year in which India exploded a nuclear device at Pokharan. Washington did not work hard even for horizontal non-proliferation. Its main concern was to defend its pre- eminence in the market of nuclear export vis-a-vis other nuclear powers, especially its own allies in Western Europe. The Pokharan explosion effected a qualitative change in India's military potential. Bangladesh's emergence as a free country in 1971 had torn into pieces the so-called balance between India and Pakistan and established former's pre-eminence in the sub- continent. Both the American government and the press decried it on the ground that it would encourage further nuclear proliferation. The US became angry because India's nuclear capability reinforced its determination to be an independent centre of power and dealt a severe blow to the "sub-continental balance" which it had been nourishing so long. Further, a strong India with proven friendship with the Soviet Union would be a hindrance of America's Indian Ocean strategy centered round
Diego Garcia. A strong India, worse still a nuclear India, was bad for the US and therefore had to be contained.
Background of soft US policy
In December 1979, Soviet troops crossed into Afghanistan and installed a leader of Moscow's choice in place of Hafizullah Amin. It was the first time that Soviet troops had been committed outside the Warsaw Pact area, and it involved them in a country which for over a century had been recognised as a buffer state between the Russian realm and the powers of South Asia. In Washington's eyes, Pakistan overnight became a "front line" state, sharing a thirteen hundred mile frontier with a country, the Soviet Union now sought to control. The geo-strategic situation in the region had already been dramatically disrupted by the revolution in Iran, which ejected the Shah and brought in a band of religious Zealots, who quickly dismantled the Shah's proud army and state structure. Instead of being buffered by the mountains, deserts and ravines of Afghanistan - which so long had separated Russia from the sub-continent, Islamabad could only watch helplessly. The shadow of Soviet Power hung over the entire area, as never before. Within months of the invasion, Pakistan was inundated by a flood of refugees. And Soviet aircraft periodically violated Pakistani air space.
Apart from these, J.A. Coon, US Deputy Secretary of State for Near East and South Asian Affairs, in a testimony before a House Sub-committee, had pleaded for an effort to help Pakistan resist Soviet pressures and to become stronger and more self-confident. It all prompted the Reagan administration to resume aid to Pakistan on a large scale. In the process, it had to lift the Symington Amendment which stood in the way of American aid to countries like Pakistan which were trying to acquire nuclear capability. The showering of praise and aid upon Pakistan by the United States was too bitter to be digested by India which feared that the ultimate victim of a military revitalised Pakistan would be India itself. In the circumstances, when Washington declared its decision to supply sophisticated and powerful F-16 warplanes to Pakistan, it posed a serious threat to the delicate military balance prevailing in South Asia. Indians expressed concern that the US was trying to inject a "New Cold War" into the Indian sub-continent. If global strategy was the justification for the rearming of Pakistan by both America and China, we should be pardoned if we were forced to take certain immediate steps to safeguard our own border and frontiers. We could not think that the US was going to take back the arms from Pakistan nor they could do it even if they want to. An alert India should anticipate increased border trouble and mischief.
Policy realisation by the US
Of late, the United States has realised that complete nuclear disarmament in South Asia may no longer be a feasible policy objective and that the technical knowledge of nuclear weapon production cannot be reversed.
The only workable solution can be the lowering of the nuclear weaponary to the level of 'minimum deterrence' or what Mikhail Gorbachev has termed as 'reasonable sufficiency' or 'defensive defence' of lowering the parity for the strategic stability. The facts on file Dictionary of Military Science described the Cold War concept of deterrence as "The prevention of an action by creating a fear of its consequences." Hence deterrence, which shuts out the "Kamikaze" mentality did not comprise merely the possession of nuclear weapons but it would deter aggression and coercive diplomacy. And in the remote contingency where deterrence fails, having the political will an capacity to retaliate with nuclear weapons after absorbing the first strike. It is the certainty of the unacceptable damage of this second strike which could deter the first use of nuclear weapons. Deterrence operates best between two countries when the window of vulnerability between them is the least or non- existent and there is full transparency in capabilities. Keeping these all in consideration, now the US has set its sights on arms control and near term concrete tension reduction measures, including nuclear and non-nuclear confidence and security, building measures to avoid a nuclear war in the region.
Dilemmas of India-Pakistan
Over the years, Pakistan was basking in the goodwill and support from both China and USA. When Brezhnev committed the supreme folly of marching the Russian Army into Afghanistan in the winter of 1979, USA went for it with the single-minded purpose of teaching Russia the lesson of its life. For ten years beginning from 1979, Pakistan became the most important ally of USA in this part of the world and the weapons for Afghan Mujahideens were passed on through Pakistan. This also enabled Pakistan to receive substantive military aid as well as quite acceptance of its indulgence in nuclear technology extended by China. The prevailing global geo-political ambience is neither unipolarity, bi-polarity or multi-polarity but unashamed opportunism in the pursuit of national interest. Domestic political compulsions for the ruling elite as recommended by special "customers and dominant interest groups would increasingly shape foreign policy options thereby eroding the inviolability of the once sacred 'long term national interest' which is now subservient to the primacy of market forces. Consequently, the perennial grapple for nation- states between the principled pursuit of core values and ethical norms on the one hand and the nurturing of tangible power interest on the other, would become less tortured as a new permissiveness that defies profit permeats international relations in the post-Cold War world.
In the changed atmosphere, it appears that the earlier US policy of limiting Chinese engagement without endorsement is a posture of the past. China is Washington's newest strategic partner and the new flavour is broad-based engagement in political/economic/military spheres and vigorous endorsement of Beijing as the second pillar of stability in the post-Cold War world.
Whether it is the likely devaluation of the Yuan and the concomitant impact on the Asian economy or the Chinese role in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the US now acknowledges that it has no option but to cohabit. |
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