Obama's India Visit

[ajtr]

Strategic fallout of Obama's visit ​

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Dr Maleeha Lodhi

The writer is a former envoy to the US and the UK, and a former editor of The News.

Hours before Barack Obama's address to the Indian parliament last week the American ambassador in Islamabad informed the Foreign Ministry that his president was about to announce US support for India's permanent membership of the UN Security Council (SC). No indication was given to Pakistan earlier that a move with such far-reaching strategic implications was in the offing.

Not during the much touted Pakistan-US 'strategic dialogue' held two weeks earlier in Washington. And not in lengthy exchanges during the subsequent visit to Islamabad by Douglas Lute, special assistant to President Obama.


In contention is not whether Islamabad could have influenced a decision that was America's to make but that Washington could do so with little concern about the consequences for its relations with Pakistan.

Pakistan's predictably strong reaction to the announcement reflected the depth of its opposition to a move that will seriously upset the regional balance of power. Resolutions adopted by both the cabinet and parliament conveyed Pakistan's protest and said the move disregarded Pakistan's principled position and sensitivities on SC reform.


President Obama's endorsement did more than offer verbal support to India's longstanding ambition for a seat at the big table. It confirmed that Washington is now embarked on a strategy to prop up India as a counterweight to China's growing political and economic power. The nature of Obama's Asia tour - to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan - and recent policy pronouncements, such as its offer to "mediate" ocean-border disputes in South East Asia (while refusing to help resolve Kashmir) and on the currency dispute with Beijing, are all signs of a more overt policy to contain China.


To draw India closer behind Washington's objectives Obama handed Delhi virtually everything it wanted from his visit: recognition of its global leadership, easing of controls on high-tech exports, endorsement of its role in Afghanistan and backing for India's membership of four multilateral export control regimes.

Obama maintained silence on Kashmir other than anodyne statements about the need for India and Pakistan to resolve their differences. His support for a step-by-step process to first tackle the 'easy' issues endorsed the Indian approach to the dialogue. He lectured about human rights in Myanmar but couldn't bring himself to utter a word about abuses in Kashmir, where half a million Indian security forces continue to ruthlessly suppress an uprising of stone throwing youth demanding 'Azadi'.


The strategic prize for India was Obama's support for permanent membership of the SC which topped Delhi's wish list. The principle that enlargement of the primary global security forum was not something to be unilaterally decided among select powers but based on an international consensus did not weigh on Obama's mind.


This is at sharp odds with Pakistan's position that SC reform should ensure fair representation for all 192 UN member states - large, medium-sized and small - and be determined by consensus to enjoy international legitimacy. It has opposed claims by some big powers for privileged positions, contrary to the UN's central principle of the sovereign equality of states. Pakistan has also advocated representation of the 57 member Organisation of Islamic Conference in any SC expansion.


The gridlock on reform in the UN's intergovernmental negotiations means that change will not come quickly or easily. But it will be a grievous mistake to conclude that Pakistan has little reason to worry about the US endorsement. President Obama's pronouncement marks a major policy shift by Washington which had so far only declared support for Japan's permanent membership. India will now seek to leverage this by mobilising the Group of Four (Germany, Brazil and Japan or a broader coalition) to secure the endorsement of the UN General Assembly (GA), probably well before its next session.


The view that Islamabad should not react to what some describe as a "symbolic" US move overlooks the recent history of reform efforts at the UN. It is instructive to recall what happened in 2005. In March that year the UN secretary general called for an early decision on UNSC reform. This spurred India along with the other G4 countries to mount what was described as one of the biggest lobbying exercises in UN history.

Sensing a momentum for reform the G4 tabled a 'framework' resolution in July 2005. This called for four new permanent seats for themselves, two for Africa and another four non-permanent seats.

The resolution was co-sponsored by 23 countries in the GA, which has to approve by third-thirds any proposal to amend the UN Charter. This must then be accepted by all five permanent members of the SC.

Calculating that adding veto-wielding members would be opposed by the P5 the resolution left this issue for the new permanent members to decide.

Opposing this were nations grouped in the Uniting for Consensus (UFC) led by Pakistan and Italy and supported by Mexico, South Korea and Argentina among around 35 countries. The UFC's alternate proposal rejected new permanent seats and instead called for increasing non-permanent members to twenty-four, elected on a regional basis.

The G4 sought support from the 53 member African Union in order to secure the required two-thirds. But their efforts foundered when an African Summit declined to endorse their position. Algeria and Egypt successfully insisted that the longstanding African position - demanding two permanent seats with veto powers to be selected by the African nations - ought to be reflected in the G4 resolution. G4 expectations that South Africa and Nigeria would deliver the Africans failed to materialize.

This led to the collapse of the G4 effort. Not being able to count on the votes of the African group, the G4 was obliged to withdraw their resolution. Even with the 80 or so votes that G4 nations claimed to have mustered, without significant support from Africa, they could not achieve a two-thirds majority.


Since then negotiations in UNGA's inter-governmental group have swirled around rival reform proposals pressed by the G4, UFC and other countries.

After President Obama's declaration, the G4 along with Brazil and South Africa will try to renew their offensive to change the dynamic at the UN. This presents Pakistan with a major diplomatic challenge. Islamabad and other UFC countries will have to anticipate a diplomatic battle on multiple fronts.


Having rightly taken a robust position at the outset Pakistan will have to focus diplomatic efforts on four important tracks. One, Islamabad will need to translate its strong position into coordinated demarches in the capitals of GA member states.

Two, and most critically it will need to coordinate closely with China to ensure that Beijing reverts to its 2005 position of vocal and active opposition to the move for enforced adoption of a G4 type resolution. Islamabad will have to convince Beijing that it avoids sending any ambiguous signal that could be exploited by the G4 and its allies to rally support and switch the position of those backing the UFC or the undecided. A 'red signal' now will avoid China being placed in a difficult even untenable position later where it might have to use its veto alone to thwart the adoption of a UN Charter amendment approved by the General Assembly.

Three, Pakistan, together with the UFC countries, will have to launch an energetic campaign to galvanise support behind their own reform proposal and secure the 70 or so votes to block the G4 or similar resolution. OIC countries, ignored in the G4 plan, will also have to be persuaded to throw their weight behind this campaign.

And four, Pakistan will have to forcefully convey to Washington that it should not translate its verbal support for India into active lobbying to help it gain permanent membership. Such a demarche in Washington should signal that Pakistan-US relations would be adversely affected if the Administration goes beyond declaratory statements.

These efforts will have to rest on the firm premise that there is nothing inevitable about SC reform dictated by the self interest of some countries. This will mean disregarding defeatist voices at home who believe that, after American endorsement, India's permanent membership of the SC is inevitable. It is not.

 

[Vinod2070]

^^ Pakistan is spending its energies negatively. They are better spent elsewhere, to improve conditions within Pakistan!

Knowing them, they will keep beating a dead horse, hoping against hope and finally blame everyone in the world when the inevitable happens.

They are trying to go begging everyone, from China to USA and sundry others, not to achieve anything for themselves but to try to thwart the Indian bid. Shows their priorities and explains why they are the failed state they are.

 

[Patriot]

India Eyed for US Great Wall Plan?

Neoconservatives have urged Barack Obama to boost US defence ties with India to counter China. But the last thing the US needs is a polarized Asia, writes Robert Dreyfuss.

In advance of US President Barack Obama's three-day visit to India this month, a panoply of Republican, conservative and neoconservative strategists in Washington urged him to use his trip to persuade New Delhi to join the United States in a political-military alliance. India, they argued, could serve as the lynchpin of efforts to cement the United States' role as a superpower in Asia and the Indian Ocean—an anchor in an American scheme to surround and contain a China.

It's a tempting proposition for a superpower. Over the decades, the United States has gotten used to viewing other nations as pawns and minor pieces on a sweeping chessboard, and for many conservative analysts India was seen not as a great nation in its own right, but as a bulwark against Beijing—just as in an earlier era, Beijing was viewed as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.

For the most part, and to his credit, Obama declined to reduce India to the status of a chess piece. Though he called India 'the defining partner of the 21st century,' throughout his visit Obama kept the focus on trade, economics and jobs. 'During my first visit to India, I'll be joined by hundreds of American business leaders and their Indian counterparts to announce concrete progress toward our export goal—billions of dollars in contracts that will support tens of thousands of American jobs,' Obama declared.

But back home, the president's emphasis on economics disappointed the armchair strategists of the American right. Ever since the inauguration of the US-India strategic dialogue earlier this year, right-wing think tanks in Washington had salivated over the concept of an alliance between the two great nations against China. Ignoring India's longstanding commitment to a nonaligned stance and neuralgic opposition to entangling alliances, and papering over the very real and significant differences between US and Indian interests, analysts at the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and the Heritage Foundation—the leading bastions of neoconservative thought in Washington—envisioned a kind of super-NATO linking the United States and India.

The neoconservatives, who have few channels into the Obama administration, must have been nostalgic for the days of the George W. Bush administration. Back in 2005, Tom Donnelly, a neoconservative military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote that 'successfully wooing India is key to preserving the liberal, American-led international order.'

On the eve of Obama's visit, Tim Sullivan and Michael Mazza, Asia hands at AEI, waxed eloquent about India's 'growing anxieties about China's increasing military power and regional assertiveness,' and proposed a vast effort to build up India's military capabilities with US arms exports and technology, including efforts to help India project its naval power into 'East Asian waters.' Expressing unhappiness with India's continuing reliance on Russian-made weaponry for 70 percent of its armaments—a 'vestige of India's Cold War strategic alignment'—they proposed an influx of advanced US arms for India, even suggesting that India take part in the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme. The buzzword at AEI and other think tanks was 'interoperability,' that is, integration of US and Indian weapons systems in the event that a coming conflict led the two nations to be open military allies.

Interoperability, too, was a key point for John McCain, the ever-bellicose senator from Arizona. Speaking to another think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, McCain called for a 'joint US-Indian concept for both the Indian and Pacific oceans' and greater involvement of Indian military officers at US Central Command—which runs the war in Afghanistan—and at the US Pacific Command. Obama, said McCain, should 'facilitate India's deployment of advanced defence capabilities, such as nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, missile defence architecture, as well as India's inclusion in the development of the Joint Strike Fighter.'

McCain and the neoconservatives imagined an India arrayed against both China to the north and east and Pakistan and 'Islamic fundamentalism' to the west, and they happily endorsed the development by India of mobile 'integrated battle groups' that could engage in a simultaneous 'two-front war,' according to Dan Blumenthal, an AEI analyst.

A commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Blumenthal worked for Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith at the Pentagon between 2002 and 2004. Writing last spring, Blumenthal penned a blistering critique of Obama's measured policy in Asia: 'President Obama's accommodating stance toward China and his apparent lack of interest in cementing partnership with Delhi have focused Indian minds, as has his failure to invest in resources his Pacific commanders need.'

Meanwhile, neoconservatives, along with McCain, have blasted Obama's promise to begin pulling US forces out of Afghanistan next July, saying that the idea has signalled weakness to India.


For the most part, Obama ignored their advice—just as he should have. While in India, he won applause for backing India's elevation to the status of permanent member of the UN Security Council and he lifted some controls on the export of sensitive technology to India. He also won praise for demanding that Pakistan shut down terrorist 'safe havens,' such as the organization that sponsored the bloody attack on Mumbai. But ever conscious that Americans are overwhelmingly concerned about jobs and the economic impact of US-Indian trade, Obama properly kept the focus where it belonged.

That's not to say that the Obama administration hasn't taken other steps that certainly make it look like the administration is toying with the notion of building a 'Great Wall of Containment' around China. Over the past year, the United States has inked a $6.4 billion arms deal with Taiwan, sided with Vietnam and other South-east Asian countries in their dispute with China in the South China Sea, conducted provocative naval manoeuvres with South Korea near the Yellow Sea and restarted ties with Kopassus, Indonesia's disreputable special forces. In August, the Pentagon released an alarmist report about China's military growth, including worries over its development of an antiship ballistic missile that could strike US warships in the Pacific.

Still, Obama has tried to balance India and China and to deal with each as an independent, emerging major power. Last summer, William Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, set the tone by emphasizing that the United States wants to see 'a healthy relationship between India and China.' And the White House seems exquisitely conscious of the fact that the last thing the United States needs is a polarized Asia in which its two giant powers are arrayed against each other, with the United States choosing sides.

But there's one remaining puzzle from Obama's trip to India: Did the president engage his Indian hosts on the efforts to develop an exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan? Though the Republicans and neoconservatives demand that Obama pursue victory in Afghanistan at all costs, the president remains committed to the July 2011 deadline to begin the drawdown of US troops, and to a negotiated political settlement that will necessarily involve major parts of the Taliban-led insurgency being integrated into a rebalanced Afghan government.

As a major player in Afghan politics—especially as the chief backer of the old, anti-Taliban Northern Alliance—India has a critical role in that rebalancing. Getting both India and Pakistan, which supports the Taliban and its allies, to agree on a reshaped government in Afghanistan is absolutely essential to a US exit from the nine-year-old conflict. Yet, as President Hamid Karzai inches toward a deal with the Taliban, there are worrying signs that the Northern Alliance is rearming, fearing a renewed civil war, and that India and some Central Asian countries are assisting them.

To secure an accord in Afghanistan, Obama must persuade India to get involved. But judging from the results reported so far from Obama's visit to New Delhi, there's no sign that he made any progress on that score.







http://the-diplomat.com/2010/11/19/india-eyed-for-us-great-wall-plan/