India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy by Carranza Mario E.;

Author:Carranza, Mario E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Rethinking US Policy toward South Asia

According to Alexander Evans, “A strategic opportunity for recalibrating South Asia policy was lost at the end of the Cold War. It should not be lost again as Afghanistan and counterterrorism no longer dominate available policy bandwidth in Washington.”[66] A recalibrated South Asia policy should include a nuclear arms control and disarmament component. This policy objective can only be achieved by addressing head-on the Kashmir issue. As Bruce Riedel notes, “The other and far more critical issue for American diplomacy to address is the underlying problem that drives Pakistan’s relationship with terrorism: India and Kashmir. This is the real potential game changer.”[67]

Complete disengagement from the India-Pakistan conflict would be a big mistake. As the United States continues strengthening ties with India it runs the danger of limiting itself to play the role of “crisis manager” in future India-Pakistani crises, in the wrong belief that it will be able to play that role successfully. Some American policy makers “point to the US foreign policy success since 1989 in preventing a full-scale India-

Pakistan war.”[68] Yet this self-congratulatory assessment of the US crisis management record is delusionary and misleading. As we have seen in chapters 2 and 3, India and Pakistan have often been on the brink of escalation to full-scale war (that could have led to a nuclear exchange) in several post-tests crises. Since the Kashmir dispute is inextricably linked to the nuclear issue, a recalibrated South Asia policy must address the Kashmir dispute in order to unblock the obstacles for a meaningful dialogue on the need for a nuclear restraint regime.

The Obama administration failed to make progress on Kashmir and the nuclear issue because it maintained the Bush policy of de-

hyphenation, which prevented American policy makers from discussing the “Pakistan problem” in the US-India strategic dialogues. As Riedel notes:

In the joint communiqué issued in June 2012 after the third round of the US-India Strategic Dialogue, an annual summit chaired by Secretary Clinton and her Indian counterpart to review all facets of the bilateral relationship, Pakistan is mentioned only once, in passing. Afghanistan is mentioned seventeen times. The biggest challenge facing both India and America in South Asia barely received any public attention in their dialogue.[69]

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