Odds not in favour of India-Pak war, says expert

January 12, 2009

Stephen P Cohen, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy and head of the South Asia Program at the prestigious Washington, DC-based think-tank, the Brookings Institution, visited India last month to attend the pan-Indian Institute of Technology 2008, the fifth annual global IIT alumni conference in Chennai.
While there, the author of books on the armies of India and Pakistan, and noted authority on the security policies of both countries, caught up with the developing situation in the wake of the 26/11 terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

Cohen spoke to rediff India Abroad's Suman Guha Mozumder:

What is your reading of the government of India's response to the 26/11 terror attacks? Will India be able to get Pakistan to cooperate in prosecuting those involved?

While I was in India I sensed anger, frustration, and a bit of fear -- the Mumbai attacks affected Indians pretty much the same way as 9/11 affected Americans. This, of course, was part of the objective of the terrorists -- to strike terror and fear.

However, the official Indian response has been suitably cautious. Despite some very bad police work, bad intelligence and also the revelation that the Indian security apparatus was not prepared for this kind of event, the government's response has been prudent.

There were unwise statements by some ministers, but we know that in crisis such as this, there will be a very high degree of misinformation and people say things that they may want to take back after the fact. The ground truth is that the Indian government understands that retaliatory escalation may make people feel good, which is not an inconsiderable factor in a democracy, but the problem cannot be addressed by India alone, and any military escalation puts India back where it was in 2001-2002, facing a prepared, competent, nuclear-armed rival.

This is an intolerable situation for any Indian government, but as Kishore Mahbubani (Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore, and former Singaporea ambassador to the United Nations) said during one of our sessions, India needs to think about what kind of Pakistan it wants as a neighbour 20 years from now. So far, it is fundamentally undecided as to whether it wants to befriend Pakistan, co-opt it, see it destroyed, or ignore it.


'India is wise to pursue a diplomatic strategy'

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's repeated statement that India is keeping all options open is widely interpreted to mean that India has not ruled out war. With Pakistan moving its troops to the eastern frontier and India presumably being under domestic pressure to act firmly against Islamabad, do you see the situation deteriorating into a war in the near future?
Right now the odds are not in favour of a fourth war, or even a fifth crisis, but these things can change very quickly. In the book I recently co-authored with P R Chari and Pervaiz I Cheema, (Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia), we observed that every major India-Pakistan crisis featured one or more serious intelligence errors, one or more strategic miscalculations by either India or Pakistan or the United States, or all three.

India is wise to pursue a diplomatic strategy, and especially to talk to China, Saudi Arabia, the US and other countries, all of which have an interest in a stable and peaceful Pakistan and are concerned about terrorist movements based in that country.

India's task was somewhat easier since nationals from 22 countries were killed in Mumbai, and even the United Nations has responded. Pakistanis dismiss any approach from India out of hand, but they cannot ignore the combined weight of these and other countries and international institutions. So I don't see a war, but there is a slow-growing crisis, and I would not rule out 'war by other means' in the future, and of course, another terrorist attack could precipitate a serious conflict as happened in 2001-2002.

Senator John McCain said the other day that 'The Indians are on the verge of some kind of attack on Pakistan.' How seriously one should take such comments?

I have no idea where he got his information, but it is in India's interest to make it appear that such an attack may be imminent, precisely to get the US and other countries to put more pressure on Pakistan. This is the pattern that India followed in the Kargil and during the 2001-2002 crisis, but of course it is a tactic that Pakistan has also used in the past.



'Pakistanis will not, and cannot, respond to Indian demands'

You have recently said that 'We are in a period of touch-and-go.' Could you elaborate?
Yes, another terrorist attack and evidence that it originated in Pakistan -- or, conceivably, an incident in Pakistan that seemed to originate in India -- could tip the two countries into some kind of escalation. There is also the possibility that an intelligence mistake, or even another hoax, could lead one or the other country to move; it must also be remembered that in the earlier crisis there were examples of subordinate officers exceeding their authority and nearly triggering a larger crisis. We cite several such examples in Four Crises and a Peace Process.

I am reassured by the fact that the only people who really want escalation, and who would benefit from another India-Pakistan crisis or a war, are the radical Islamists who hate the governments now in power in Islamabad and New Delhi. All parties must resist the temptation to strike out, as only the radicals would benefit, but they must also think strategically as to how the present flammable stalemate can be transformed into a more normal relationship that would benefit both countries.

Short of war, what option does New Delhi have to get Islamabad to dismantle the terrorist structures within that country and hand over the named terrorists to India?

The situation now resembles, in many ways, the 1990 crisis, when there were weak governments in both India and Pakistan, and it was difficult for either side to back down. India's best strategy would be to get other countries to front for it. Pakistanis will not, and cannot, respond to 'Indian demands', just as India cannot and will not respond to Pakistani ones. There have to be intermediaries, but not just an American operation, and China is probably the most important country in this regard.

However, this will all mean nothing if Indians still have no serious vision about the kind of Pakistan they would like to see 20 years from now: a smouldering nuclear ruin, ten mini-States at war with each other, or a prosperous and peaceful trading power with which India can cooperate in stabilising the entire Indian Ocean region. This should be a matter of debate in India -- there is, for the first time, a genuine elected government, so how can it be strengthened against those in Pakistan who are the irreconcilables regarding India?


'Pakistan has tremendous leverage over the US and the West'

Do you think India's diplomatic efforts aimed at getting the international community to put pressure on Islamabad will work?
'Work' has to be seen in terms of years and decades, not days and weeks. India has some tremendous assets vis a vis Pakistan, notably the possibility of economic cooperation, movement on outstanding issues, and even its enormous cultural power. But Indians seem paralyzed as to Pakistan, and most either demonize it or pretend it does not exist.

In what way, if at all, can the US help resolve the crisis? If Pakistan is a US ally in the war against terror, it has to be a partner on both on its western and eastern sides, right?

My answer is "yes, but" and the "but" is very important. Pakistan has tremendous leverage over the US and the West, and even China, because while it has either tolerated or encouraged extremist groups, it has also cooperated with other states in managing them. It also controls much of the access to Afghanistan, and while there is talk now of other routes for resupplying US and NATO forces there, this will take some time to develop, and Iran is the easiest route into that country, as India has discovered.


'Pakistan has become America's biggest foreign policy problem'

Experts say the civilian government in Pakistan has little control over the military or the ISI, and that it is helpless to act against terrorists, many of whom are said to have been patronized/created by the ISI. Do you subscribe to this view?
I have no doubt whatsoever that this act was not sanctioned by any member of the Pakistan government, nor did they know about it beforehand -- but I also have no doubt that they do not control all events that take place in Pakistan. This is the 'sovereignty' issue, as Bob (Cohen's Brookings colleague Robert) Kagan has called it -- what do you do when a government is unable to exercise control over actions that take place on its territory and which affect other States?

Clearly Pakistan is culpable as a State, but there is no question that the Zardari government wants to cooperate with India and other States -- it just does not have the power to do so.

With all this in the balance, what do you see as the future of Indo-Pak relations, and what is the future of Pakistan as a nation state?

I'm tempted to say read my book -- in this case, The Idea of Pakistan, which was entirely about the prospect of a failed Pakistan and the implications for other States. As I wrote, Pakistan has not failed comprehensively, but it has failed in every sector, and the indicators are all blinking red.

If Pakistan were an obscure country this would be unfortunate, but it is on the bleeding edge of the Islamic civil war, it has nuclear weapons, and it has allowed its territory to be used to destabilise most of its neighbours.

Pakistan has become America's biggest foreign policy problem, as I predicted, but unless India is willing to think strategically and long-term, it will continue to be India's major problem as well.