India is playing a highly risky game of brinkmanship in Kashmir. Its recent deployment of forces along the line of control (LoC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, and the extremely provocative rhetoric from Delhi have brought the region closer to a nuclear war than ever before.
Less than three weeks after the horrid events of September 11, the Department of Defense published its Quadrennial Review, an official document that discusses in detail U.S. defense strategies. The review is the work of senior Pentagon officials–both military and civilian–who conferred extensively with the president. This key military document asserts that “the U.S. leadership is premised on sustaining an international system that is respectful of the rule of law.” But with recent developments in U.S. nuclear weapons policy, as in other policy arenas, the Bush administration has set an agenda that flagrantly ignores international law.
Almost 40 years ago, the late Pakistani leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was then serving as Pakistan’s foreign minister, famously declared “even if Pakistanis have to eat grass we will make the bomb.” India and Pakistan have since fought two conventional wars and now have nuclear weapons poised to complete the short five-minute arc to the other’s national capital.
Since September 11, the war on terrorism has become the new rationale for doling out military assistance to repressive and politically unstable foreign governments. And just like during the cold war, the millions of dollars slated for our new allies in the war on terrorism have more to do with promoting American geostrategic interests than with protecting U.S. territory from external threats.
On the eve of a meeting of rich country leaders in Canada, President Bush has brought out a "new initiative" promising $500 million to prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS from mothers to children. Intended to stave off the embarrassment of coming empty-handed to a summit trumpeted as focusing on Africa, the White House initiative is in fact a cynical move to derail more effective action against AIDS.
Last night’s long-awaited speech by President Bush was to set the pace for the Palestinians and Israelis to step back from the vicious and bloody cycle of violence that has gripped them for nearly two years. Instead, President Bush and his administration have publicly adopted the Israeli agenda of battering the Palestinians into submission. President Bush’s delusion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be “talked away” in a series of speeches is not only a poor example of leadership but places U.S. interests in the region at seriously high risk.
As the largest grand assembly ever held in Afghanistan, the Loya Jirga will gather 1,501 Afghan delegates from inside and outside the country. The Special Independent Commission for Convening Loya Jirga has been planning the logistics and management of this event since January, but officials remain worried. “For a long time the Afghan people did not have a say in their government. And for the first time in Afghanistan’s history we wanted the people to feel that they were being represented in the government,” said Ahmed Nadery, a spokesperson for the 21-member Loya Jirga Commission. This pronouncement may mark a step in Afghanistan’s evolution, but acting on it will put a strain on Afghanistan’s scant security. Planners also have to consider how to make the Loya Jirga fair and accessible to the country’s largely illiterate population, and keep it from becoming a platform for tribal, political, and ethnic violence.
With India and Pakistan poised on the edge of war, it is hard to focus on much other than preventing a nuclear holocaust in South Asia. But even if the rounds of shuttle diplomacy manage to ease the tension between the two countries, any respite promises to be temporary unless the major powers finally fulfill a pledge they made 34 years ago to abolish nuclear weapons.
There is a history of war in South Asia. India and Pakistan fought in 1948, 1965, 1971, and 1999. There is good evidence that in no case was there the expectation of a war on the scale and of the kind that ensued. Rather, war followed misadventure, driven by profound errors of policy, political and military judgement, and public sentiment. Nuclear weapons do nothing to lessen such possibilities. There is even reason to believe they may make them worse in South Asia. One lesson of the 1999 Kargil war is that Pakistan saw its newly acquired nuclear weapons as a shield from behind which it could fuel and stoke the conflict in Kashmir, safe from any possible Indian retaliation. During this war, nuclear threats were made publicly by leaders on both sides. It took international intervention to stop the slide to a larger, more destructive war.
At one time many of us were worried that the U.S. would pull out of the UN and other international organizations in a fit of isolationism. As it happens, almost as frightening is an equally xenophobic American determination to stay in and hack them to our own image under the war cry of “Do as we say, not do as we do.” The administration wants the world to realize: America is the only Superpower and its decisions on the rules are final. Watch out Kofi Annan.