Asia’s New Geopolitics: Military Power and Regional Order by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, Political Freedom, Security (National & International), General
ISBN: 9781000536270
Google: Ok5FEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-09-28T06:29:26+00:00

Pakistan has traditionally relied on its great-power friends – especially the US and its Western allies, as well as China – to offset India’s larger economy, armed forces and diplomatic influence. New Delhi’s tilt towards the Soviet Union during the final decades of the Cold War, along with India’s policy of non-alignment, helped by introducing distance between New Delhi and the West. India’s economic dynamism and Pakistan’s concomitant slowdown have, however, begun to test this traditional framework. The end of the Cold War freed India to pursue more purposeful engagement with other powers, and its economic reforms provided a new basis for commercial engagement with China, Europe, Japan and the US. This, in turn, provided a basis for the major powers to recalibrate their approaches towards India and Pakistan.

While all of these powers have exhibited concern about the series of crises between India and Pakistan, they have been willing to afford India greater leeway and to acknowledge a sensitivity to New Delhi’s concerns. As India’s economic weight and political importance have risen, new incentives have emerged for the major powers to expand engagement with India on its own merits. The idea of separating, or ‘de-hyphenating’, US relations with India and Pakistan was expressed most clearly by the George W. Bush administration in 2001, and other Western powers have taken the same approach.31 The 9/11 attacks and the resulting need for Pakistani support did not lead to a return to Washington’s traditional zero-sum approach to South Asia. Instead, for the first time since the emergence of India and Pakistan as independent nations, the US and the West began to enjoy good relations simultaneously with both.

A more self-confident India certainly found it less important to object continually to US support for Pakistan in the ‘war on terror’. Indeed, for the first time since 1954, when the US and Pakistan signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement, New Delhi became significantly less vehement in its objections. In March 2005, when the Bush administration announced a major package of military assistance to Pakistan, New Delhi both restrained its criticism and took up Washington’s offer to initiate a strategic-partnership agreement. The changed approach towards the US led to two landmark agreements, on bilateral defence cooperation in June 2005 and civilian nuclear cooperation in 2008, which together transformed the basis of India–US military and political relations.32 This shift in New Delhi’s attitude stemmed from the recognition that the primary threat from Pakistan lay not in the conventional military equipment it might acquire but in its ability to unleash sub-conventional conflict through supporting cross-border terrorism. India thus began to focus less on dissuading the West from selling arms to Pakistan and more on persuading it to exert pressure on Pakistan to stop hosting anti-India terrorist groups. The question of terrorism also acquired a prominent place in India’s own political engagement with Pakistan following the nuclear tests conducted by both countries in 1998.

The US policy of de-hyphenation that began under Bush continued under Obama and Trump. Although de-hyphenation sounds even-handed, it actually favoured India.

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