Author: Shekhar Gupta
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 15, 2002
URL: http://www.indian-express.com/full_story.php?content_id=4374
Introduction: You've come a long
way, baby, but there's still a long way to go
The Rumsfeld visit has capped a
month of the most high-profile and intense diplomacy in the history of
the subcontinent. Not even a fraction of such activity was seen during
our past wars.
Even our other war-like situations
in the recent past (Brasstacks 1987, full mobilisation of 1990 and 1993
and Kargil 1998) did not bring such heavyweight attention that now rivals
worldwide concerns over the Middle East.
Why is this happening? What has
suddenly made us so important to the world? How far will the big powers
go to hold us back from vapourising each other? How can we make best use
of this changed world equation to our benefit? The answer to these questions,
and many other vital ones, may lie in some of the lessons of the post-December
13 developments, with the added impetus of May 14. Since this seems like
a week of some respite, even if temporary, it is a good moment to reflect
on these lessons.
How we stopped whining, began winning
The main reason India's post-December
13 strategy has worked so well is that for the first time in our history
we have shed our victim complex, particularly vis-a- vis the West. We have
engaged with the world powers as allies, if not equals. The route of engagement
has worked so much better than the whining of the past.
September 11 had momentarily stunned
us a bit. The feeling of being left out, of Pakistan being lionised as
an ally rather than being punished as a state supporting terrorism, the
concern that Pakistan was working on a deal whereby the US might ignore
its infarctions in the East in return for the help in the West, was beginning
to irritate us sufficiently to go back to the familiar old whining wall
of Indian diplomacy.
Repeated statements like ''India
will have to fight its battles alone'' harked back to Indira Gandhi's Americophobic
days when she talked of ekla chalo re, even as she signed up a security
treaty with the Soviet Union.
December 13, ironically, brought
some sanity back in our posture. Yes, we would sort out our terrorist threat
ourselves, by striking at its root, and if that was going to complicate
US interests in the region, they should come in and sort things out for
themselves.
It worked in January. It seems to
be working now. The main reason it has worked is, we have shown the confidence
- even arrogance - to sort our threats out ourselves, and then the foresight
to welcome international engagement which has worked to our benefit. Any
amount of whining wouldn 't have taken us anywhere close to this. Nor a
war launched in anger.
Hold your nerve, but stay out of
the trenches
Moshe Dayan was once said to have
told Israeli troops holed up in trenches: ''Only God can help you win a
war and he can see you much better outside the trenches than inside them.
So get out of them.''
This logic applies to diplomacy
as well. One more old habit we need to shed permanently is the diplomacy
of trench warfare. We have done so to a great extent. But we keep lapsing
back into it. Post-January 12 we did lapse into one such phase. So did
even the Americans, but we should have kept snapping at their heels.
Either we should have declared partial
victory on January 12 and begun some de- escalation, or we should have
kept the pressure on. But we let our attention drift to other mundane concerns
like state elections and the Gujarat riots.
A complex situation like this cannot
accept a diplomatic vacuum and it was precisely during this period that
the Pakistanis resumed action in Kashmir. They thought India's diplomatic
offensive has stalled, its forces are tiring out on the borders, the government
is becoming weaker by the day, and Gujarat-type riots elsewhere are inevitable
soon. It is difficult to see how we could have broken out of this jam but
for May 14.
That is why we must not return to
the trenches yet again. It is lazy to say that any further movement has
to wait till the Kashmir elections in September. Three months is a very
long time in our lives. So our diplomacy should continue to engage in mobile
warfare even if the armies are slowly pulled back from the trenches - obviously
from the international borders rather than the LoC in Kashmir. Meanwhile,
we have to hold our nerve if more such incidents take place - which is
inevitable.
Engaging with the world: can't be
a little pregnant
It is a matter of time before the
world powers that are now telling the Pakistanis to clean up their act
will start nudging us to start a real dialogue. Rumsfeld hinted as much
at his Islamabad press conference. Countries must talk to each other, he
said. India and Pakistan could decide as sovereign nations when they would
start talking, before, during or after the (Kashmir) elections.
Given how cautious the Americans
have been in choosing their words, this is about the most obviously pregnant
statement we have heard lately. While, on the one hand, it implies a US
(read international) endorsement for the Kashmir elections if they are
free and fair, on the other, it also means that the election is being seen
as a watershed that should set up serious negotiations between India and
Pakistan.
We have to prepare ourselves psychologically,
politically and diplomatically for that phase. It is one thing to say for
our own internal consumption that today's international intervention is
confined to preventing war and disciplining Pakistan. But ultimately it
would amount to more than that. There will be formulas thrown around discreetly
for a Kashmir solution and there will be pressure to move towards permanent
peace. Then, we will be able to say we will fight our battles alone. There
is no such thing as a partial engagement with the unipolar world.
Sorry, nuclear war isn't a bilateral
issue
This phase in our perennially war-like
region has attracted more international concern than any other. Taxi drivers,
that ultimate determinant of popular mood for travelling journalists, would
ask you in places as far apart as Beijing and Brussels if you were about
to go to war.
India and Pakistani journalists
travelling with Vajpayee and Musharraf, respectively, in Almaty were routinely
stopped by Kazakh passersby and advised to avoid shooting each other. A
war, or a war-like situation, or even a problem that could lead to war,
is now nobody's internal affair. We have to understand the implications
of this change.
It's been a long time since the
world saw a real war between two sizeable nations with sizeable armed forces.
The last was the Iran-Iraq war. Nobody has the patience for another serious
war now. A punitive, one-sided war like Kosovo or Desert Storm is one thing.
But not a slugfest between the world's fourth and fifth largest armies
with nukes on short fuse.
No nation in our vicinity from China
to Saudi Arabia believed that if a nuclear exchange took place its effects
will be confined to our region. That's why they all think they have a stake.
So does the rest of the world by implication. Nuclear weapons, by their
very definition, have international implications. Hence no situation that
could lead to their use can be somebody's internal affair forever.
Count your gains but don't sit back
and savour
We need to count our gains in the
light of these lessons. The Pakistani pledge to abjure terrorism now has
some international guarantees. Their nuclear bluff has been called - finally
we have shown we cannot be blackmailed as we were in 1990.
The entire world - even Pakistan
- has spoken one language on cross-border terrorism. Nobody is calling
Kashmir a disputed territory or questioning the instrument of accession.
Everybody seems to be talking of the forthcoming Kashmir election as if
they have a stake in it.
If you want to feel even better,
cut back to October 1, 2001, and Colin Powell's response to the bombing
of the J&K Assembly which he described as ''a government facility''.
Or when Bush described Lashkar-e-Toiba as a ''stateless, Kashmir-based
group'' immediately after December 13.
If, inside of nine months, a US
administration that described the J&K Assembly as a ''government facility''
and Lashkar as ''stateless and Kashmiri'' has moved on to implicitly endorsing
a Kashmir election this year, you could use that old Americanism to make
yourselves feel better. You've come a long way, baby. But having come this
far, don't sit back to savour the gains of what is at most the quarter-final
round in this 55-year-old contest.
