leverage against pakistan cross post

[Guest guest]

A wide angle to leverage against Pakistan? How many of you feel this is 'doable'/sensible?

What is our leverage against Pakistan?

It's come down to this now – last fall, Musharraf and his cohorts were putting

out bounties on the heads of Indian citizens – anything from one lakh to 40

lakh depending upon who you can kill. Now, Musharraf has extended his bounty

program to include women and two-year old kids; offer valid only if the women

and children are not protected by any security or police. Not having legitimate

sources of income, this bounty program extends job opportunities for Pakistani

youth, from employment in terrorist factories to mafia-style contract killings

– constant progress, brought to you by the Islamist generals. Unfortunately it

would seem, Musharraf kills leaders, political activists, soldiers, women and

children at will in India while our Government seems to have no ability or

perhaps even the will to protect its citizens. Pakistani minions have killed

well over 800 Indians just this year, while we've not been able to slow them

down or even make Pakistan pay for this in any form. Unlike a wrestling match,

where you win or loose depending upon how well you can exploit your leverage

against your opponent, India does not seem to have any leverage against

Pakistan. Pakistan, on the other hand has exploited its three points of

leverage against us remarkably well. First, Pakistan turns up/down its

well-entrenched, but covert proxy-war whenever it wants to. In fact, it has

slowly extended this proxy war to multiple parts of India and has surely put

stumbling blocks in our convoluted path towards economic power. It seeks Indian

capitulation on Kashmir as a reward for slowing down its terrorism – and of

course, we are considering this possibility as a strategic step towards solving

Kashmir. Second, Pakistan maintains a highly public strategy of readiness to use

nuclear weapons. During any crisis, Pakistan fires its missiles or moves them

around from site to site, causing panic in western governments. After all, the

Americans and Russians were sophisticated enough to know about the impact of

nuclear detonations; how can anybody expect these brown South Asians to know

anything about the horrendous effects of nuclear war? Parleys and panicky

visits follow, immediately resulting in paralysing Indian restraint. Finally,

Musharraf has unflinching support within the conservative leadership of the

United States. Some of this based upon the complete control they have over

Musharraf, some based upon air-bases and oil deals in Pakistan and of course,

some residuals from the cold war era. However, in the end, it all comes down to

Central Asian oil that Unocal (an American company that loved even the Taliban)

wants access to, for which Pakistan provides an excellent path to sea. Pakistan

understands this and has convinced US to overlook genocides (in Afghanistan and

Bangladesh), ethnic cleansing (in Kashmir and Pakistan itself) and, of course,

nuclear proliferation (from North Korea/China and to Syria/Saudi Arabia). Also,

it does no harm to Uncle Sam to own a unruly, some what genocidal terrorist

state, that will do its bidding when required, as was borne out in the war on

Russians. Unfortunately, India does not seem to have any leverage against this

terrorist nation, other than to beg for assistance from the US. This is not

necessary, when we can do far more than wring our hands in helplessness. So,

what are India’s options – what can we do to pin down Pakistan or at least make

them pay the price for threatening the lives of a billion Indians. Fortunately,

India does have some clear points of leverage against Pakistan, including:

*An economy about an eight times the size of Pakistan’s * Pakistan lacks

indigenous natural resources including water * Pakistan's lack of a globalised

population unlike India's * In general, Pakistan has a far less law-abiding

population than India's - all of Pakistan, has the same problem that we have in

Bihar (scary isn't it?) * Pakistan's steady downward trend to extreme, jihadi

Islamization * The unique ability of our political establishment to

procrastinate (we'll see the implications of this) The question is what are the

concrete steps we can take to pin down Pakistan? First, revive the covert

anti-proxy wars of the seventies and eighties that we have now shut down to

gain political leverage. The least we can do is help the Bugti and Mazari clans

test out the latest Indian and Chinese RPGs on Pakistani oil pipelines or

perhaps against doctors in Karachi. Covert action against Pakistan is not

terrorism – it is the kind of action that helped control Pakistan supported

militancy in Punjab (according to B Raman). Without this leverage, talks and

political pressure cannot amount to anything, as Pakistan and even countries

like Bangladesh realise that they have nothing to loose and keep killing

Indians. We have used this in the past to stop attacks against us and it is

time to restart this policy and reacquire this ability. The Islamist generals

of Pakistan, who’ve added mafia activities to their already extensive economic

arsenal of terrorism, do not understand much else other than the use of force.

Do not expect them to change their policies unless their families are

threatened or their vast loots are taken away. Next, threats of war once in a

while do help. Pakistan's economy cannot tolerate the cost of war-preparedness

and neither can its stock market. Currently, its stock market is being held up

by US charity, but most of the liquid cash that Pakistan gets goes into

defence. In fact, so blatant was this that (reported by The News) the US wanted

full accounting for the second aid tranche, after Pakistan could not account for

the first $600M of US aid. Pakistan cannot outspend us in defence, but it gets

economically weaker every year that it spends 33 percent of its GDP on defence.

Here’s some anecdotal evidence - Bangladesh whose economy is not much smaller

than Pakistan, is reselling the eight MiG-29s (valued at $11M each) that it

bought a few years ago, since it cannot afford to maintain them; Pakistan with

a similar economy, but wants 70 new F-16s (costs $40M each). No wonder Pakistan

lately has been harping on conventional parity – at present they realise that

it’ll be very difficult for their economy to keep up with their defence

spending. Third, abrogate the Indus water treaty. It's understandable that

direct impact on Pakistan will not be seen for the 10 years that it will take

to construct appropriate dams, but visible quick construction will have a

deleterious impact on the country's financial ratings and investment inflows.

Some world criticism will happen, but supporting Pakistan with water while they

kill us at will, does not make sense. At the next big attack from Pakistani

terrorists, simply announce the six-month abrogation notice as retaliation.

Even reducing their water supply by 0.5 percent will significantly impact the

Pakistani economy – remember, international agreements can be violated in

national interest and with a six-month warning (like the US did with the ABM

treaty). If our politicians shake in their boots to take so public a stance on

the water treaty, simply start redirecting the water covertly and then deny,

deny and deny any wrong doing. Fourth, insist on Iran, Russia and the US firms

that want a Iran-India gas pipeline, that only a deep sea pipeline or a even

ship-based supplies will be acceptable - not a land-based one. This will cut

Pakistan out of anything up to $oneB in annual revenues and perhaps the only

possibility of future growth. Balance, this with pressure on Bangladesh to sell

natural gas and buying more gas/oil from Iraq – the same US companies that are

interested in Pakistani pipeline are interested in processing natural gas in

Bangladesh – so, external pressure can be brought to work here. If further

bribes are needed, lure Unocal in with exploration rights in the newly found

sources of natural gas off our east coast. Fifth, leverage India's globalised

population to project Pakistan as the source of terrorism in the world. Indians

have insinuated themselves in media and the arts in many countries and can

affect public opinion; we scarcely use this resource. Indians now are CEOs and

are increasingly found in TV news and politics. The defeat of Cynthia Mckinney

is a good example of the new Indian political power – now we need to use this

same power to get rid of Senator Burton. We need to use Indian access to media

and politicians to project the truth about the Pakistani government, its record

of genocide in Bangladesh and Afghanistan and the support for democracy and

proliferation that has led to the state of affairs in Central Asia. Finally,

the procrastination mindset of our current Indian – let them simply do nothing

about holding talks. History tells us that all militaristic dictatorships tend

to self-immolate – Pakistan is no exception and it is well on its way. A civil

war like situation exists within it and US law enforcement is increasingly

running untethered operations in Pakistan. A few more years of this situation

will do two things – our relative economic strength will increase, while

Pakistani internal turmoil will eat away at it – a fortunate result of the

lethargy of our politicos.

After all, we procrastinate better than anybody else in the world – it took us

15 years to start doing something in Kashmir. Problems with Bangladesh – we’ll

do something about it in the next decade. This procrastination drives the

Islamists in Pakistan and Bangladesh up the wall – they finally cannot stand it

any more and start doing really stupid things, like killing Americans or

supporting/hiding killers of Americans and such other nonsense. Look at what

Pakistan is a doing now – it restarted exchanging nukes with North Korea this

March and embraced Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s yearning to kill American soldiers in

Afghanistan. Simply buy time, through no talks, procrastination about talks or

talks about planning for plans on talks – believe me, our politicians can do

this better than anyone else. What good will this do for us?

The whole goal of leverage is to strategically increase pressure on your

opponents, where it hurts them most. Pakistan's economy is weak enough that

over a period of a few years India will have overwhelming superiority in

conventional and non-conventional weapons (including missile defense). A few

years of spending $fourB more than Pakistan on our defense industry and

research will benefit our economy (in terms of arms exports), but also make the

existing arms gap with Pakistan insurmountable. In three years from now, short

raids into Pakistani territory will be very hard for them to resist or

retaliate against. Also, this same economic leverage can be used more directly

– consider Ukraine, which has large arms deals with Pakistan (upgrade of T-72

tanks), but is extremely nervous about future revenues. Now, Ukraine would be

happy to do a multi-billion dollar deal with India, even if it means giving up

its collaboration with Pakistan (in fact the Ukrainian President was just here

to drum up deals)– can we push them towards it, is the question. Don’t get me

wrong – I’m not talking about sanctions; I’m talking about good business

decisions that help India interests. Second, the lack of water resources and a

reduced economy will only edge Pakistan closer to breakup. We’re already seeing

signs of this in the open battles between Punjab and Sindh over water. Pakistan

still stands a good chance of breaking up over the next 5-7 years. The US may

actually help in this – just look at how the US indirectly helped the Islamic

revolution in Iran, by giving unconditional support to the Shah to a point,

where the local population could not tolerate it any more. Of course, the

Americans were surprised by the Iranian coup – the same could well happen in

Pakistan, when the other generals get ambitious and decide to get in bed with

their mullah brethren, in stead of Musharraf. The brewing battle JEI and

Musharraf and Pakistani generals in general get frisky every few years; when

they do, they either cause a coup or simply crash the planes carrying their

commanders. A war is never required - especially, since it will harm India's

credit rating and economy more than Pakistan's. Three years from now, the odds

will be so much in favour of us from geo-political, military, economic and

every other angle that one can think of, that we may not even have to fight a

war. Furthermore, Pakistan is doing a good enough job at self-destruction

without any help from us – thank you very much; the Pakistani education system

of madrassas teaches up to 60 percent of Pakistani youth about the joys of

jihad and the science of the Koran; their religious leaders, the imams rail

every Friday against infidels and preach the benefits of jihad; the government

and the army between which there is longer any difference, fund the jihadi

industry; the business of producing illegal guns or creating fake Indian

currency are the new cottage industries and now, jihad has become one of the

premier employment avenues for Pakistani youth. Why not simply wait a little

longer, use our leverage judiciously and watch Pakistan shoot itself in the

head – Pakistan is working hard towards this and it works for us. by A, Banerji

 

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