“Jingoism may work for domestic electoral cycles, but can be dangerous internationally. Confronting the Sino-Pak combine, assuming Trump as a credible pro-India counterweight, is risky at best. Pliny the Elder’s advice to avoid ‘brutum fulmen’ or ‘senseless thunderbolt’ is perennially sound. PM Modi needs to send his ‘Rasgotra’ to Pakistan and avoid public fist-clenching”, says the author – KC Singh.
Harold Wilson’s quip that a week is a long time in politics comes to mind reviewing last fortnight’s developments. The US rained missiles on Syrian air base at Shayrat, near Qoms, in retaliation for the alleged Syrian use of sarin gas, notified as a chemical weapon, against civilians in Khan Sheikhoun. Pakistan upped the ante sentencing to death, for espionage and terrorism, Kulbhushan Jadhav, a former Indian Naval officer, allegedly apprehended in Balochistan. India ignored Chinese threats over the Dalai Lama visiting Tawang, which has the second holiest Buddhist monastery after Lhasa, and the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama.
Taking them serially, Trump’s decision to punish Syria’s Assad regime surprised both his “Alt-right” allies, who felt betrayed by his neo-interventionism, as too his critics in own party and among Democrats, who were elated. Trump was recanting from his election rhetoric of distancing the US from geopolitical cesspools. He perhaps had multiple motives. He was able to jettison charges of cosiness, if not actual complicity, between the Russian government and his election campaign. It is speculated that the US gave Russians a heads-up to avoid direct conflict by ensuring no Russian lives were lost. Careful target selection by avoiding living quarters and attacking in the dead of night, when plane hangars were unmanned, also had the same objective.
Chinese President Xi Jinping did not get the same courtesy as Trump, having ordered the Tomahawks fired, sat down for dinner with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, informing him of the decision only post meal. Trump thus altered the dynamics between Xi and himself, demonstrating the resolve to defend the global order, which his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), flip-flop on ‘one-China’ policy and election rhetoric, urging isolationism, seemed to question. Xi swallowed the embarrassment but the Chinese media — after he left the US — lambasted the breach of Syrian sovereignty.
Analysts are wondering if this was a mere knee-jerk reaction, or the first move towards replacing the Assad regime. If the latter is true, there is yet no evidence that Russia is ready to abandon the Iran-Assad-Hezbollah alliance sine qua non to re-balance the Shia alliance. In any case, to force a ceasefire and realign half-a-dozen Sunni groups which oppose the Assad regime and hold parts of Syrian territory, ranging from effective Kurds — whose success Turkey resists — to Al Qaida associates and the IS, would be impossible without an international force, ideally with the UN Security Council imprimatur and the US and NATO participation. But such a force would be an anathema to Russia and China. Clearly, the generals manning critical positions in the Trump administration are finally getting to influence policy choices.
This may not augur well for India-Pakistan relations as Pakistan gets emboldened the minute it gets access to influential US presidential aides. Trump’s revision of the Obama doctrine to use the Shias, led by Iran, to counter the IS by attempting to separate Russia from the Shia alliance has resurrected the demoralized Sunni brigade, led by Saudi Arabia. Pakistan allowing its former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif to head the Sunni alliance forces conducting operations in Oman indicates re-convergence of Pakistani, GCC and US interests.
That leads to the next issue of Pakistan suddenly pronouncing the death sentence on Kulbhushan Jadhav. The Indian public reaction and uproar in Parliament is perfect reading by Pakistan to get Indian attention. The exact motive is difficult to decipher at present, but may be multi-fold. It could have been triggered by a former Pakistan ISI officer going missing in Nepal, allegedly abducted by India. The desire to exploit the spring offensive by protesters in the Kashmir valley, whose protests have seen unprecedented success by forcing the negation of the electoral process, is a perennial factor. The Central government’s inability to understand this dynamic is inexplicable, particularly that the rise of Yogis as commissars will feed the paranoia of the Muslim majority in a sensitive state and that an alliance with the BJP has rendered the PDP politically irrelevant in the Valley. The Pakistan army may also have concluded that PM Nawaz Sharif is vulnerable to indictment in the Panama Papers case and political instability seems real. Finally, after the initial trepidation about how Trump led to the detention of Hafiz Saeed in a fit of delayed contrition, Pakistan now has a measure of Trump the interventionist, at whose court Pakistan will present itself as the nuclear weapon-wielding mercenary.
Finally, the Indian decision to test China by a more forward policy is laudable, but the timing may be inappropriate if it is based on the assumption of continued US assessment that a stronger India was in US interests to balance a rising China. This has been the US assumption since after the initial brouhaha over Indian nuclear tests of 1998. Although the Trump-Xi summit in Florida was overshadowed by the Syrian imbroglio, the two leaders seem to have bought time to negotiate differences over imbalanced trade, North Korea and South China Sea, etc. The statement by US ambassador to UN Nikki Haley about US mediation in India-Pakistan dispute raises questions whether Pakistan is really as isolated as the BJP claims.
Finally, the Indian reaction to the Kulbhushan episode, with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj promising all in India’s power, is hyperbolic. Hostage takers are best dealt with by quiet threats, which should be credible, and carrots that are tangible. By minimizing Indo-Pak contact there are few carrots that India holds. The only credible threat, short of a war, can be that abducting each other’s citizens and conducting mock trials is letting security agencies override diplomacy. Former foreign secretary MK Rasgotra recalls calling on President Zia-ul-Haq to convey Indira Gandhi’s message that if Pakistan did not stop abetting the hijacking of planes — which was assuming epidemic proportions in the early 1980s — India would do likewise. The gambit worked as differential of power between the two states had not yet been levelled by Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons.
Jingoism may work for domestic electoral cycles, but can be dangerous internationally. Confronting the Sino-Pak combine, assuming Trump as a credible pro-India counterweight, is risky at best. Pliny the Elder’s advice to avoid ‘brutum fulmen’ or ‘senseless thunderbolt’ is perennially sound. PM Modi needs to send his ‘Rasgotra’ to Pakistan and avoid public fist-clenching.
(The author is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India)