ISLAMABAD – Let me begin by very briefly putting India-US relations in itsgeopolitical context. There is dangerous instability prevailing in manyparts of the globe. The world is facing the perilous international securitysituation in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia and Iran arevigorously sponsoring respective proxy conflicts in the region.Developments in the Middle East are expected to be ‘revolting’ afterPresident Trump’s decision to shift USA’s embassy to Jerusalem.

Iran reportedly pursues its nuclear weapons program by and large as usual.The prospects for the progress of ‘Middle East Peace Process’ betweenIsrael and the Palestinians are the grimmest. The basic trends inAfghanistan are negative. Russia’s relations with the West are unlikely toget much better very soon if at all. Much of the developing world isreeling from world economic downturn.

This is the treacherous context in which US-India relationship in thenear-term have and will develop, though India switched over from Moscow toWashington DC in 1991 exploring the avenue through Tel Aviv.

Henry Kissinger had put it much earlier in these words: ‘The world facesfour major problems — terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of massdestruction, the movement of the centre of gravity from the Atlantic regionto Asia and the impact of a globalised economy on the world order. The USand India have compatible, indeed overlapping, vital national interests inall four areas.’

India-US bilateral relations have developed into a ‘global strategicpartnership’ based on shared democratic values and the increasingconvergence of interests on bilateral, regional and global issues.President George W. Bush based his transformation of the US-India relationson the core strategic principle of democratic India as a critical factor inbalancing the rise of Chinese power.

To be explicit, this was not at all based on the concept of containingChina. Instead, it centred on the idea that the United States and India inthe decades ahead had enormous equities in promoting responsibleinternational policies on the part of China.

The deep US-India bilateral cooperation in that respect was in the vitalnational interests of both countries, i.e. USA and India. It was with thisstrategic paradigm in mind that the Bush Administration treated India withat least as much importance as China.

The combination of largely overlapping US-Indian vital national interestsand shared democratic values may produce a bright future for strategiccollaboration between New Delhi and Washington in future

Regular exchange of high-level political visits has provided sustainedmomentum to bilateral cooperation. The wide-ranging and ever-expandingdialogue architectures have established a long-term framework for India-USengagement.

Today, the India-US bilateral cooperation is broad-based andmulti-sectoral, covering trade and investment, defence and security,education, science and technology, cyber security, high-technology, civilnuclear energy, space technology and applications, clean energy,environment, agriculture and health. In my view, the United States has fourdeclared national interests in the South Asian region concerning Pakistan:

to prevent Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials from coming into thepossession of extremists; to ensure that Afghanistan does not become asanctuary to repeat terrorist attacks against the United States and itsAllies, and to avoid war between India and Pakistan.

The US government clearly has its work cut out for her described ‘nationalinterests’. The possible effect of enveloping US preoccupation withPakistan seems on its way ‘practical’ thereby constraining the US-Indiaunconditional future relationship.

This produces an understandable and growing US interest in trying to reducetensions in the India-Pakistan relationship. Islamabad will definitely‘repeat the argument’ that tensions with India and the Kashmir dispute arepreventing it from moving robustly against the terrorists on the Westernborders. So, India will continue encountering eventual pressure from theUSA about normalising the situation in Kashmir.

It therefore strongly makes a case for Pakistan to internationalise the‘Kashmir issue’ as it is in line with the US’s desire to improve thesituation on Pakistan’s western borders. This may sound a repeat of the oldarguments, but the facts can’t be simply ‘brushed off’.

India emphatically considers it a mistake for Washington to treat India,mostly at the margin of US consideration of policy toward Af-Pak, as alesser player on issues related to the future of South Asia. It is Indiathat Pakistan claims is illegally occupying Kashmir. And it is only Indiathat could find itself at war with Pakistan.

So, India is profoundly connected to the future of Pakistan, not on theperiphery of it. Also, a segment of the US’ top brass and officials opinethat the United States, India and Pakistan are now together in facing ‘acommon threat, a common challenge, a common task’, in seeking to defeatterrorists based in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It is now commonly believed in the US that NATO cannot win in Afghanistanas long as Taliban sanctuaries exist in Pakistan. But as George Friedmanassumes, ‘While the US and NATO forces must rely increasingly on Pakistanisupply routes to fight the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan — fearful that theUnited States and India will establish a long-term strategic partnership —has the incentive to keep the jihadist insurgency boiling (preferably inAfghanistan) to keep the Americans committed to an alliance with Islamabad,however complex that alliance might be’.

As Henry Kissinger remarked: ‘The conventional army loses if it does notwin. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.’ Perhaps with this in mind,President Trump ordered the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan.But he has made it clear that to defeat the Taliban, America will have toembark on a long and expensive campaign in Afghanistan and solicitassistance and support from Afghanistan’s neighbours specifically Pakistan.

The US Administration has recently revisited its policies in detailregarding the war in Afghanistan, a conflict that the United States and itsallies are not winning and may be apparently losing.

Iran is another knotty issue in US-India relations and a potential sourceof considerable bilateral tension. For many reasons, India is unlikely togo along with Americans as related to US policy decisions about Iran.

Also, it is not clear how Washington’s dominant preoccupation with economiccooperation with China will affect Indian government calculations relatedto the US-India bilateral relationship and regional security. But if the UStreats China in a privileged fashion, this is unlikely to producespontaneous concessions from the Indian side on other matters of importanceto Washington.

It appears that India does not figure as prominently in the US calculationsregarding Afghanistan imbroglio as speculated by the Indian mass media.Washington may not object to India’s economic development activities inAfghanistan but is considerably sensitive to Islamabad’s complaints aboutIndia’s covert involvement against Pakistan.

So, the US administration will not give sufficient weight to India’s viewsregarding Afghanistan as compared to those of Pakistan, the NATO Allies,Iran, China and Russia. The US ultimately will have to seek to limit thedegree of Indian involvement in Afghanistan.

The combination of largely overlapping US-Indian vital national interestsand shared democratic values may produce a bright future for strategiccollaboration between New Delhi and Washington in future. But in theimmediate period before us, the bilateral ties are likely to be moreproblematical than prophesied by the Indian cronies in the USA.

By: Nawazish Ali, *The writer has served in Pakistan Army*