During a forthcoming five-day state visit to India, US President Bill Clinton will be wined and dined in style, along with his hot-shot entourage of cheque-book businessmen, powerful congressmen and influential cabinet members. Later, accompanied only with a handful of aides, he will “drop in” for a serious chat with General Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad on March 25. What is the significance of his trip to South Asia?
Given the frenetic lobbying by India and Pakistan in the last few weeks, New Delhi would have been thrilled if Mr Clinton had decided not to grace Pakistan with his presence at all. Equally, Islamabad would have been delighted if he had agreed to linger a bit longer when in town. But because both countries are locked in a fierce confrontation, each seeks to woo the sole superpower to the exclusion of the other. It is therefore understandable that each should try and put its own gloss on the American President’s visit to the region. Thus the Indian prime minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has openly voiced his “displeasure” over Mr Clinton’s decision to visit Pakistan, even if it is to be ever so brief. At the same time, several right and left-wing parties and groups in India championing an assortment of “anti-imperialist” slogans are busy chalking “Go Home Clinton” on the walls of their constituencies. Meanwhile, on the Pakistani side, our ever-vigilant PTV has trotted out its usual band of pundits to trumpet a “crushing defeat” of India. Indeed, our Chief Executive has gone so far as to claim that the American President’s decision to meet him for a round of talks is an endorsement of his military regime.
The American State Department insists it is nothing of the sort. In fact, senior US officials are at pains to differentiate engagement with a military regime from an endorsement of it. But perhaps it is just as well that another critical and realistic distinction — that between an American pursuit of mutually beneficial interests/advantage with India and an American expression of singularly worrying concerns/worries with Pakistan — has not been overtly made by Washington. If it had been articulated in this manner, the Pakistani establishment might have been more than circumspect and less than thrilled at the prospect of a grueling session with Mr Clinton.
Let us be candid. The fact is that the extended US-India discourse will focus on how to accommodate or expand India’s global economic integration and political outreach within the positive matrix of American interests or advantage. As opposed to this, the brief US-Pakistan negotiations will focus on how to restrain or limit Pakistan’s local economic disintegration and global political isolation within the negative matrix of American concerns or worries. In concrete terms this means that the United States’ budding relationship with India is set to explore the prospects of stimulating significant private American foreign investment in India, encouraging a multi-billion dollar Indian information-technology export thrust into the American silicon market and enabling India to build and flex a countervailing econo-military strategic presence vis-à-vis China. All these are mutually beneficial Indo-US interests.
On the other side, the United States’ waning relationship with Pakistan seeks to restore representative democracy in the country, curb the impulse of terrorism in its backyard, restrain its military exertions in Kashmir, limit its nuclear and missile arsenal and stop it from sliding into financial default, political unrest and social anarchy.
The basic reason for the American President’s trip to India and Pakistan is to foreclose accidental or pre-meditated armed conflict between the two countries (which could get out of hand and become a nuclear holocaust) so that the aims and objectives of American interests and concerns in the region are not undermined wittingly or otherwise by either or both sides.
It should also be clear to everyone, but especially to the Pakistanis, that President Clinton could never have conceived of a trip to South Asia without touching base in Pakistan, irrespective of the nature of our political regime. But despite themselves both India and Pakistan may well have strengthened the American agenda in South Asia. An elaborate charade of “will-he-won’t-he” has been played out. The net result is that for opposite reasons both India and Pakistan will now come under American pressure to get off their high horses, start talking to each other without pre-conditions, normalise relations and try to find peaceful bilateral solutions to their outstanding disputes.
The American President, it is said, has already become a lame duck. The Indian Prime Minister has lately out-hawked his Hindu colleagues. The Pakistan Chief Executive stands accused of bullish adventurism. On the face of it, this unlikely troika of ducks, hawks and bulls does not inspire confidence. But what the heck. This is a great challenge and a greater opportunity. India has a lot to gain and Pakistan has a lot to lose depending on how each responds to The Great Communicator.