Diplomacy: K.P. Nayar
The world has moved on, and quite remarkably so, during the week when Indian strategic thought was obsessed with the invitation of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif. Because of such obsession, new opportunities and challenges in what is potentially the most important relationship that needs mending by the Modi government have been lost on the critical public discourse about the course of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
As India was largely erupting in euphoria, anticipating change with the swearing in of a new government, the president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, actually delivered the change that he promised when he came to power in January 2009. It took Obama five-and-a-half years to do so in one critical theatre of American life, but he did it at the same time that Sharif wound up his visit to New Delhi and returned home to Islamabad. “You are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Obama told those passing out of the prestigious United States Military Academy, West Point. He was delivering an address that marked the commencement of military service for the class of 2014 which graduated out of the academy that has produced some of the best in America’s military.
Because Obama’s speech was a milestone in American history, it was appropriate that he quote Dwight Eisenhower before he became president, remarkably, when he was still a serving general in the US army. Eisenhower said at this very venue, in his commencement address to the class of 1947 at West Point: “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”
What Obama said in his commencement address may emerge as a turning point in America’s history. Although the US ended military draft as a fallout of the trauma in Vietnam, every young American with promise who graduated out of its highly rated military schools in the last 13 years lived in the shadow of being in a war zone. It is to the credit of Obama that he promised to end that. He won the election in 2008 on such a platform.
To have fulfilled that promise in a country where bullets are bullish is an achievement that has few parallels. It is an acknowledgment of the enormous influence of the military industrial complex over American policies that the president was cautious in the use of his words. Eisenhower may have wished that his successor in this later century could have told the cadets that they “may not be sent into combat”. Period. But Obama added the words “in Iraq or Afghanistan”.
Bitter past experiences have taught this president to exercise caution that often shields politicians from the vulnerabilities of opinion polls. When Syria’s internal conflict was developing, Obama said the use of chemical weapons would be a red line. Chemical weapons were used — although no one conclusively knows who used them — but Obama could only stand by and be outsmarted by an international community which had grown tired of American machismo in the post-September 11 years. Obama said there would be consequences for the Kremlin over Ukraine, yet he could do precious little when Vladimir Putin acted decisively to protect Russia’s legitimate interests.
Notwithstanding such testimony to declining American power worldwide, Obama put the best face on it. “Those who argue… that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics,” he assured the young graduates, many of whom are starry-eyed about their country’s power and influence. Obama’s speech was remarkable for charting his country’s way to the future through such a changed global security environment.
And that is where the opportunities lie for India and offer challenges to the Modi government. The president pointed out that “since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences — without building international support and legitimacy for our action... Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans... To say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution.”
It is a sad reflection on the state of Indian strategic thought that even in the midst of this country’s obsession with Modi’s invitation to Sharif, Obama’s categorical decision to leave office in 2017 after seeing a complete troop pullout from Afghanistan created no more than a few ripples in New Delhi. The two events, though, are overlapping for strategic Indian interests.
Of the roughly 32,000 US troops now in Afghanistan, only 9,800 will remain by next year. Coinciding with the West Point speech, Obama announced that by the end of 2015 that number would be further cut by half. When a new US president is elected and Obama leaves the White House, the only American troops remaining in Kabul will be the ones for the protection of the US embassy there.
That, understandably, is a challenge for New Delhi and the attack on its consulate in Herat over a week ago underlines the severity of that challenge. In the long run, however, Obama has offered an opportunity which the Modi government should comprehensively examine as the president’s proposals roll out in the coming months and are acted upon on Capitol Hill.
The US envisions the nature of future terrorist threats to change drastically because “technology and globalization has put power once reserved for states in the hands of individuals, raising the capacity of terrorists to do harm.” In India, there is inadequate appreciation of such a change in threat perceptions and both the Intelligence Bureau and the external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, still give paramount importance to human intelligence. Human intelligence is critical, of course, and India’s “humint” strengths have been appreciated in Washington, Moscow and elsewhere. But this needs to be increasingly matched with improved technology and globalization in intelligence gathering.
Obama said: “As we move to a train-and-advise mission in Afghanistan (with) our reduced presence... I asked my national security team to develop a plan for a network of partnerships from South Asia to the Sahel... I am calling on Congress to support a new Counter-terrorism Partnerships Fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity, and facilitate partner countries on the front lines.” The Modi government must not miss out on this opportunity for capacity building in counter-terrorism. It should initiate a review of Indo-US relations in order to take advantage of this opportunity.
A remarkable realization dawned on the Obama administration when it came to power that George W. Bush and the Republican Right mismanaged the fight against terrorism and harmed America by turning it into a campaign against Islam. Yet Obama could not move fast enough towards a course correction, hamstrung in part by his past, his middle name of “Hussein” and a widespread misperception, especially in America’s Bible belt, that the president is a closet Muslim. There is a lesson in Obama’s words that the new government in New Delhi could absorb, given the global perception about its leaders.
“We must be more transparent about both the basis of our counter-terrorism actions and the manner in which they are carried out. We have to be able to explain them publicly... when we cannot explain our efforts clearly and publicly, we face terrorist propaganda and international suspicion, we erode legitimacy with our partners and our people, and we reduce accountability in our own government.” Prophetic words with a sense of déjà vu if it is transplanted in many an Indian context.
telegraph_dc@yahoo.com
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