Pakistan - India Border comes under US Military spotlight, India may be included in the Central Command along Indo Pacific Command
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ISLAMABAD - The importance of the India-Pakistan border has remained low for the United States for many decades, but experts say it is gaining new strategic meaning as part of its emerging Indo-Pacific strategy, which redefines U.S. resources and partnerships in the region.
Kashish Parpiani, a Mumbai-based expert with the Observer Research Foundation, highlights that the historically conflicted boundary between India and Pakistan also forms the territorial demarcation line between the U.S. military’s central command and its Indo-Pacific command and thus places India and Pakistan into two separate strategic military zones.
Traditionally, India wasn’t allowed to participate in central command even though it had concerns that transverse its western border in the region, but now that has changed.
After its last 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, the United States decided that India would get increased access to U.S. Central Command. The 2+2 Ministerial dialogue is the highest-level institutional mechanism between the two countries that allows for a periodic review of the security, defense, and strategic partnership.
Richard M. Rossow, Senior Adviser of Indian Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in a commentary published link on Dec. 20 that this decision will provide “more balance to the ‘Indo-Pacific’ partnership.”
Parpiani said providing India more access to U.S. Central Command will mean giving India “more than a keyhole view into the U.S. military developments in the region—with respect to its allied relations with Pakistan.”
“It’s a matter of [the] U.S. agreeing to more transparency on its relations with Pakistan. [It] can be seen as a gesture of providing an assurance to India.” Why the Spotlight?
India shares 2,065 miles of international land border with Pakistan, according to the Indian government (pdf link). This includes 450 miles of disputed area known as the Line of Control, a de facto border that emerged as a ceasefire line between the two countries after their first war of 1947-48, according to the Council on Foreign Relations link. It is one of the most militarized borders in the world.
India and Pakistan have fought four wars on this border and the region continues to be an active ground for multiple non-state actors that operate against the Indian state from Pakistan’s soil. Many of them like the Hizbul Mujahideen, Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami, Harakat ul-Mujahidin, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Lashkar-e Tayyiba are identified by the United States as Foreign Terrorists Organizations, according to a CIA list link .
Meanwhile, the border also has a substantial Chinese presence in the disputed Gilgit-Baltistan region and China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) passes through it, a major cause of worry for both India and United States, according to Alice Wells link, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State. Eyjaz Wani, another Research Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, said China has invested in many projects near the Line of Control in the disputed territory held by Pakistan and that India perceives China’s presence in the disputed territory as “direct violation of India’s sovereignty over the region.”
A Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) report shares Wani’s concerns and mentions that under President Donald Trump, Washington has raised an alarm over the BRI.
“Meanwhile, the United States shares the concern of some in Asia that the BRI could be a Trojan horse for China-led regional development and military expansion,” said the CFR report link by Andrew Chatzky and James McBride.
Chatzky and McBride also mention that India believes the BRI is a plan to dominate Asia and feels “unsettled” with China’s decadeslong embrace of Pakistan.
“The United States views India as a counterweight to a China-dominated Asia and has sought to knit together its strategic relationships in the region via the 2017 Indo-Pacific Strategy,” said the report released on Jan. 28.
Parpiani said that as a major conflict theatre of global strategic relevance, the border is important for the United States for the same reason it is for its global adversary, China.
He believes that the Indo-Pacific strategy makes the India-Pakistan border extremely important because without resolving the historical disputed border issues between the two South Asian rivals, a holistic view of the Indo-Pacific strategy is not possible. Parpiani’s holistic approach would address all of India’s concerns and actually enable it to play the role it should as a strategic partner of the United States. Addressing India’s Concerns
India’s concerns on its border with Pakistan arise out of the tense security situation in the region, and Parpiani said if the United States wants to cultivate India as a strong strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific, it’ll have to address India’s concerns with Pakistan on its western border.
“India’s eastward commitment to the American calculus on the Indo-Pacific region stands impeded by India’s continued focus on its western frontier. Pakistan’s use of subversive statecraft to exacerbate the conflict in and over Kashmir, is the central reason,” said Parpiani.
Kanishkan Sathasivam, a Massachusetts-based geopolitical analyst calls India’s threat perception vis-à-vis Pakistan as “misplaced” and believes that it distracts India from playing the role it ought to play as a U.S. ally.
“During the Cold War, the U.S. believed India should have been allied with the West against the Soviet Union, but [it] refused to do so because of its hostility with Pakistan which was an ally of the West.
“Now, in the post-Cold War era, again the U.S. believes India should stand with the U.S. and its other Asian allies against China, and treat China as India’s primary source of threat, but India continues to be ‘obsessed’ with Pakistan over any and all other issues,” he said.
Parpiani highlights this as a gap that the United States recently started to address by cultivating India as a better strategic partner as part of a holistic Indo-pacific strategy. The EPOCH Times
