Learning from Israel

[suchandra]

Intellectually a splendid gesture - obviously Americans like to be in war (isn't the whole nation build upon genocide?), in fact by now they cant stop war without having a severe commercial crisis since millions of US workstations depend on war.

 

"Taking Israel's assistance to bamboozle the US administration to swing our way":

 

There’s a way to use the USA to contain Pakistan!

http://www.indiareacts.com/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=1455

 

8 August 2006: Whenever the India, Pakistan question is considered, there is a linkage drawn to the Israelis and Palestinians, or earlier, the Israelis and Egyptians, although Egypt has since gone out of the reckoning. These two linkages, the one earlier with Egypt and the prevailing one with the Palestinians, does not hold good, and insofar as two situations are never the same, this is not even similar. A more instructive link can be drawn between India-Pakistan on one hand and the Israelis-Arabs on the other.

 

The Palestinians are not a state like Pakistan, not yet, but their fighting comes from Arab backing, although even this is under duress. The Arabs have never really cared for the Palestinians, but they cannot openly denounce them. But more than the Palestinians, the Arabs find it difficult to accept the existence of Israel amidst them, and although most of them in one way or another have accepted Israel’s right to exist, it is still a reality they find hard to live with.

This duality about Israel has been forced on the Arabs by the Americans, who remain the world’s greatest power, and who generally put their monies where their mouth is. Israel is their greatest ally in the region, their only natural ally, and they will move the earth, as they say, to secure its interests. Therefore, in many days of savage Israeli bombing of the equally savage Hezbollah cadres, the world has been unable to step in and force a peace, because the Americans want the Hezbollah taught a lesson. This attempted “pacification” of the Hezbollah is relatively recent, the Arabs have been by and large pacified in relation to Israel before, again by the Americans, and there are lessons to draw from this.

It is futile to expect the Americans to entirely de-hyphenate India and Pakistan, although some measure of difference has been instituted in the relations. While Pakistan is America’s MNNA ally, by virtue of which it gets arms aid, including the F-16s now, India is being cultivated strategically, by such means as the civilian nuclear deal. That deal, incidentally, is put on a plane of making India and China civilian nuclear powers who will grow less petroleum dependent and therefore less dependent on Middle East oil. Less oil from the Middle East means less funding for terrorism.

But despite this qualitative difference between India-US and US-Pak relations, on issues like Kashmir, terrorism, America keeps us joined. For example, the visiting US under-secretary of state, Richard Boucher, said Kashmir was a separate issue from terrorism, which carried the sting that it was a dispute which had to be resolved outside the framework of terrorism. And on terrorism, he preferred to call the Bombay blasts a “tragedy”, he admitted “pieces” of terrorism directed against India could be located in Pakistan, but he was insistent that Pakistan, the US and India were all victims of terrorism. What do you make out cutting through Boucher’s dross? That Pakistan directed terrorist acts against India won’t fundamentally alter US-Pakistan relations, and the United States will press for the India-Pakistan peace process to continue at any cost. The second conclusion is that the US has not given up on a Kashmir solution that satisfies Pakistan whether or not it does India.

This is where the Israeli-Arab relationship, so hugely shaped by the United States, leaves lessons.

Now, this has been known, but the time for it has arrived, India’s major cultivation of the US establishment through the powerful Indian community. On the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement, this Indian community acted as our strongest, unpaid lobby group. This community must now, under the Indian government’s intelligent direction, work to put us on a par with the Israelis in the American administration, which not only comprises the administration, the Congress, but the army of opinion makers, including the media, the influencers, the think tanks, and outside the establishment, public opinion.

In the early NDA years, soon after the May 1998 Pokhran blasts, this was attempted, with the help of Israeli groups in the US, but the timing may have been wrong. We did not have the economic/ financial muscle we have today, we were not readily accepted as a world power as we are today, and the nuclear tests sucked our energies in giving justification, trying to save ourselves from sanctions, and so on. Now that we are past some of our hurdles, the time to do a second Israel on America is at hand.

See how the Americans have pacified the Arabs, an infinitely larger task than pacifying a single state like Pakistan. Not one Arab state has stepped “out of line” in the Israeli-Hezbollah war, and this is more than a factor of Iran’s ally, the Hezbollah, getting as good as it gives, or worse. There is also talk of moderate and hard line Arabs. And there is recognition of sorts that Israel has a right to defend itself, to secure its borders, and protect its citizens. Within the Israeli-Arab-US paradigm, therefore, Israel has carved out a special place. We should do the same with Pakistan. We are on track with our relations with Israel, and we should take their assistance to bamboozle the US administration to swing our way. If we think our way through this, it can be done.