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March 29, 2005
The US, India, and Pakistan
An article in last Sunday's Houston Chronicle details the techno-diplomatic dance being played out between the U.S., Pakistan, and India:
Much was made Friday of the Bush administration's long-awaited announcement that it would sell F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan, initially about two dozen, ultimately an unspecified number.
But Washington needs both India and Pakistan, albeit for different post-Sept. 11 purposes. So, less noticed Friday, Washington also made India a valuable offer: the chance to shop from a menu of US fighter planes, including jets that could be built in India. The two offers spelled a shift in the US approach to nuclear South Asia, one that feeds a potentially dangerous arms race in a region rife with conflict.
It appears the US-India relations are on the rebound after the chill caused by India's not-quite-upfront nuclear testing in the late 1990's. Beyond even a simple balancing of fighter jet quotas, the Bush administration seems to be pursuing a longer-term plan of courting India as a strategic ally:
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has presented to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the Bush administration’s outline for a “decisively broader strategic relationship” between the world’s oldest and largest democracies, a senior US official said.
“Its goal is to help India become a major world power in the 21st century,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We understand fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement.”
There is an important subtext to the fighter jet angle. The recent diplomatic talks also indicated a US willingness to provide India with technology for domestic nuclear power production (at the hopeful expense of Indian plans to build an Iran-India pipeline):
But analysts say the US's latest moves go beyond “Next Steps” by offering India access to nuclear power reactors ending the 30-year export ban on this technology and in effect showing Washington trusts India as a nuclear power. [...]
This dialogue will almost certainly involve India's plans to build a controversial gas pipeline to Iran, via Pakistan. Ms Rice said the US opposed the pipeline because of the Bush administration's “well known” antagonism to Iran.
I like all these moves, even though there is no guarantee they'll be successful in the long run. There's no reason to treat the India-Pakistan relationship as a zero-sum game--if we play our cards right, perhaps we can keep both as allies.
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