A top American expert on South Asia, Stephen Cohen, has advised the United States (US) to formally endorse Pakistan’s nuclear power status through civilian cooperation similar to what it had done for India about a decade ago.
In a new insightful book “Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum,” Dr Cohen, a known authority on South Asia, argues that normalisation of relations between nuclear Pakistan and India is the most vital interest for the US.
He delves deeply into positions Islamabad and New Delhi have long adhered to on some of the most contentious underlying causes of tensions between them and looks at the possible implications of these, particularly the longstanding Kashmir dispute.
“The United States has a strong interest in the normalisation of India-Pakistan relations that goes far beyond normal “good” ties to each of them. Their normalisation is more important than Afghanistan’s stabilisation or building India up as a barrier to an expanding China,” Cohen writes.
The author of “The Idea of Pakistan” and “The Future of Pakistan,” urges Washington to craft a new US approach to Pakistan-India normalisation and the South Asian region as a whole.
Cohen notes in the book that ironically, the one fear that steered US policy after the end of the cold war—nuclear proliferation— turns out to have important implications for India-Pakistan normalisation and “suggests further modification” in American policy.
The United States, he says, should encourage the two neighboring states to take advantage of the reality of deterrence and work towards a stable nuclear regime, while maintaining the tightest control over use of the weapons.
“Washington went part way down this road when it entered into a civilian nuclear deal with India that legitimised New Delhi’s nuclear status; it should find a formula that does the same for Pakistan, with the caveat that being a full member of the nuclear club means that Pakistan— and India— must assume the obligations set forth for nuclear weapons states under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).”
Analysing the US policy of de-hyphenation in its relations with Pakistan and India, Cohen sees the need for clarification.
De-hyphenation clearly needs to be redefined. I would not go so far as to call for “re-hyphenation,” but selective engagement in regional issues is called for.”
The de-hyphenation policy, he views, said nothing about India-Pakistan relations. “There was merely a non-policy of hope that the two would not push their crises very far. Kashmir was off bounds, except for diplomatic urgings for normalcy, while other regional issues were addressed through a dysfunctional division of responsibility.”
The acclaimed expert is also critical of Washington’s policy toward Pakistan, saying “events in Afghanistan have unduly shaped America’s Pakistan policy,” and urges that Pakistan’s concerns about Indian role in Afghanistan must be worked into American policy calculations.
He proposes that the Obama administration’s South Asia policy needs to address the organisational dysfunctionality that handicaps American policy toward this quarter of the world. Although, Cohen devotes a lot of attention to the lingering Kashmir conflict in the book, he feels the issue should not be at the center of America’s regional policy.
A US policy on these lines should, among other things, also explore the possibility of India-Pakistan strategic cooperation in Afghanistan, and retain some elements of de-hyphenation.
The expert notes that some in India might greet a new American initiative with skepticism, but the recently completed American policy document on India actually encourages regional cooperation, and a carefully crafted US initiative might be more welcome in New Delhi than previous efforts.
Doubts will exist on the Pakistan side, but America has stuck by Pakistan and its interest, like that of India’s, is to see a stable democratic Pakistan emerge over the next decade, he says.
“Part of the new approach would be to confirm Pakistan’s identity as a South Asian state,” Cohen says.
At the same time, Cohen points out that for normalisation to work, it must happen in both countries, not just one. Furthermore, the right people have to be talking to each other.
The US, for its part, should do everything it can to use its current cooperative programs with each state to encourage them to work together, and it should support all measures to bring about regional economic agreement and cooperation.
“Its guiding principle should be this: the pace of normalisation and cooperation must be dictated by the two regional states, not by America. At the same time, all parties must understand that American help is a necessary but not sufficient condition for regional normalisation to come about.”
Cohen criticises the Obama administration’s approach to South Asia, saying it “failed to develop a South Asia policy that would have encompassed both India-Pakistan relations (including Kashmir) and the grinding war in Afghanistan.”
In this context, he reveals that in mid-2012 President Obama approved a classified national decision directive for India, but there was no such directive for South Asia, or for Pakistan. “The foreign policy process could not manage more: too many Pakistan policies were (and still are) circulating in the government with no coherent view of South Asia in the background.”
Stephen Cohen proposes nuclear deal for Pakistan in new book
