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A talk with Pakistan

In December 2016, Dr Ashley J Tellis, a renowned South Asia scholar, made a presentation with a stark title ~…

A talk with Pakistan

Representational Image (Photo: Facebook)

In December 2016, Dr Ashley J Tellis, a renowned South Asia scholar, made a presentation with a stark title ~ “Are India-Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn?” ~ to a very discerning audience at an event organised by Carnegie India. As always, Tellis marshalled his facts well and was brutally frank and deeply incisive in his analysis.

Though he was in a way preaching to the committed, his presentation was extremely thought-provoking and insightful and was very well received. Those who missed the talk can now read his brilliant monograph: Are India-Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn? (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C., 20 September 2017). That the unlikely but realistic title has been retained comes as a pleasant surprise.

The author’s major conclusions reflect a deep understanding of the state of play in South Asia and are unexceptionable: “The international community’s routine call for continuous India-Pakistan dialogue is not only misguided but also counterproductive.

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This entreaty… fails to recognize that the security competition between the two nations is not actually driven by discrete, negotiable differences… Pakistan’s revisionist behaviour is… intensified by its army’s ambition to preserve its dominance in domestic politics… Possession of nuclear weapons has permitted its military and intelligence services to underwrite a campaign of jihadi terrorism intended to coerce India… This manifestation of hostility toward India makes any kind of diplomatic solution satisfactory to both Islamabad and New Delhi highly elusive.”

The glaring asymmetries between the strategies of India and Pakistan have been highlighted by the author. India is a status quo power that perceives China to be its foremost strategic challenge, while Pakistan is a revisionist state that seeks to make territorial gains through the use of military force. Tellis writes, “… the path to peace depends largely on Pakistan’s willingness to accept its current strategic circumstances. Since the full subordination of the Pakistani military to its civilian leadership is unlikely for the foreseeable future, a shift in Pakistan’s orientation and behaviour will depend fundamentally on the military itself.” The implication is clear: the army calls the shots and is not inclined to change course.

According to the author, mediation by the international community will not help to usher in peace, “…Since the United States lacks the means to alter Pakistan’s strategic calculus and China lacks the desire… China would likely utilise Pakistan to slow down the rise of its emerging Asian competitor, India.” India is firm in its conviction that all disputes between the two countries should be resolved through bilateral negotiations in terms of the Shimla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore Declaration of 1999. Hence, India is unlikely to accept international mediation.

Tellis recommends that the US and the international community should prevail on the Pakistan army to stop sponsoring jihadi terrorism in India and persuade it to, “acquiesce to the current territorial and strategic realities involving India and, as a consequence, end its relentless revisionism, which threatens to destabilise the Indian subcontinent and the security of Pakistan itself. Such a change in orientation may be difficult to bring about, but the international community, “… should certainly avoid reinforcing troublesome Pakistani behaviour through a premature and futile call for dialogue.”

The author recounts the history of the security competition between India and Pakistan since the independence of both in 1947 after a partition that was “violent and cataclysmic” and “bred intense emotional hostility” between the two states. He states that, “… p ermanent hostility to India, nurtured through the continuous promotion of a parochial Islam, animates what is widely referred to as the ‘ideology of Pakistan’.” He describes Pakistan’s inability to acquire the state of Jammu and Kashmir, even though it was both contiguous to Pakistan and a Muslimmajority state, as the root cause of Pakistani resentment.

The use of military power by India to force other Muslim-majority principalities like Hyderabad and Junagadh to join India added to the bitterness. Tellis dwells at length on Pakistan’s nuclear coercion that “serves to shackle India and prevent it from fully focussing on consolidating its economic achievements and enlarging its geopolitical reach beyond South Asia…” He aptly deduces, “…nuclear weapons in Pakistani hands, far from being just deterrents against Indian adventurism, in fact, provided Rawalpindi with a licence to support insurgencies within, or terrorism against, India… Pakistan’s… ever-expanding nuclear arsenal… serves to prevent any significant Indian retaliation against Pakistan’s persistent low-intensity war for fear of sparking a nuclear holocaust.”

Tellis analyses the prospects of transition to genuine civilian rule in Pakistan in detail and concludes that there is a greater probability of Pakistan remaining a “Praetorian Democracy” as long as the army continues its policy of “persistent revisionism” and finds it difficult to “change its stripes”. He points out the enormous damage sustained by Pakistan for nurturing, sponsoring and supporting various terrorist organisations and the army’s commitment to “jihad as a grand strategy”.

He writes, “The more precarious Pakistan’s security situation has become as a result of the army’s successive strategic failures, the tighter the military’s lock on political power, financial resources, and policy direction.”

The author examines the usefulness of compellence as a strategy to coerce the Pakistan army to stop its sponsorship of cross-border terrorism. He is of the view that the international community lacks the leverages necessary to do so.

He feels that between the US and China, the latter is better placed to prevail on the Pakistan army to stop using jihad as a strategy because of their much closer relationship, but China is unlikely to do so. He discounts the possibility of a maverick General coming to power in Pakistan, who has the gumption to undertake a transformative reorientation of the country’s policies.

Finally, Tellis recommends that the US should stop calling for a sustained “India-Pakistan dialogue on the full range of economic and political issues;” it should, instead, make “a determined effort to compel the ‘deep state’ in Rawalpindi to sunder its links with jihadi terrorism;” and, should “not become an accessory to Rawalpindi’s strategy of extortionary engagement” with India. He suggests that the US should “stay out of the India-Pakistan contention altogether, leaving it up to both states to reach any agreements that can based on their relative power.”

It emerges clearly from the author’s analysis that peace between India and Pakistan is unlikely until Pakistan’s deep state ~ the army and the ISI ~ gives up what it perceives to be a low-cost, high payoff quest to continue to bleed India through a thousand cuts.

Till the Pakistan army realises the colossal amount of harm that it has caused to its own country and changes course, “ugly stability” will continue to prevail in South Asia. This excellent monograph is a profoundly analytical account of the history, the present state and the future prospects of the complex India-Pakistan relationship, especially the role played by Pakistan’s deep state in perpetuating conflict.

It must be read by policymakers, armed forces leaders and the members of the strategic community in both India and Pakistan. In fact, it should be prescribed reading in the training establishments of the armed forces and foreign service training institutions.

(The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi)

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