The Crazy Kashmir Option
Fortunately, Joe Klein is not being considered for any senior posts in the next administration. He writes:
Perhaps most important, as President-elect Obama indicated to me a few weeks ago, a high-powered special envoy should be named–someone like Bill Clinton–to try to solve the eternal dispute between Pakistan and India over Kashmir. If India recedes as a threat, the Pakistani military’s imagined need for a guerrilla counterforce in Kashmir and Afghanistan should also recede.
Here is what Obama said to Klein:
Kashmir in particular is an interesting situation where that is obviously a potential tar pit diplomatically. But, for us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep on messing with this? To make the argument to the Pakistanis, look at India and what they are doing, why do you want to keep n being bogged down with this particularly at a time where the biggest threat now is coming from the Afghan border? I think there is a moment where potentially we could get their attention. It won’t be easy, but it’s important.
This is madness. Kashmir is perhaps the thorniest case of disputed land claims in the world. If it were to erupt into a new war, the dispute has much greater stakes for South Asia and the world than anything currently happening inside Pakistan, and there is no guarantee that attempted mediation gone wrong would not push the Subcontinent in the direction of war. It is almost certain that no American envoy or administration knows enough about the region and the relevant issues to make an attempt at resolving it.
How would this mediation effort cause India to “recede as a threat” to Pakistan? To put it less one-sidedly, how might the border be largely demilitarized and the two states no longer regard each other as rivals with competing claims over this territory? As near as I can tell, that would happen only when nearly all of Jammu & Kashmir has been ceded to Pakistan, and perhaps not even then. Obviously the Pakistanis are not going to go along with a process in which they gain little or nothing. If this is their pay-off for doing more against the Taliban, they will want significant territorial concessions from India. I can see what Pakistan gets out of this arrangement, but why the Indians would participate is a mystery. One does not need to be an India expert to know that major concessions will never happen, especially when they are being promoted by a foreign power. Were some Indian Congress governmenr cajoled into making any concessions over Kashmir, the nationalists would crucify them come the next election. Even if such a deal could somehow be pushed through, which the recent remarks of the Indian External Affairs Minister show to be essentially impossible, it would be very unpopular and it would be repudiated by the next government.
It’s a terrible idea, it won’t work, and if it became a real policy of the U.S. government it would be fairly dangerous to both parties and to our interests. Have I left anything out? Oh, yes, it will badly harm our relationship with one of the rising powers of Asia, and it will distract us from realistic options in Pakistan.
Update: K. Subrahmanyam writes against U.S. involvement in Kashmir in a Times of India piece from last week:
The president-elect could not have selected a worse moment to air these thoughts. Kashmir is due to go in for elections in the next few weeks. Such a suggestion will come in handy for secessionist elements.
I have not yet found any Indian commentary that supports the proposed mediation. If anyone finds some, I’d be interested to see it.
I think you’re overblowing the goals of such “mediation”. I think Obama knows full well that a final resolution to the Kashmir impasse isn’t going to happen. What I think he’s referring to is a cessation of Pakistani-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir, and India itself, which would certainly be of benefit to India. We both know that the Pakistani intelligence service sponsors and trains terrorists on the border with Kashmir, and sends them in frequently to make attacks in India. This is the source of great enmity in both countries, particularly India, and it has turned the whole of Kashmir into an armed camp. What Obama would like to do, it seems, is help the Pakistanis on their western border fronts in exchange for their shutting down the terror camps that attack India in the east. The kinds of concessions they would be looking for in India would not be territorial, I imagine, but probably political, in allowing Kashmiris a little more autonomy and less of a militarized presence. It’s essentially calling for a truce, which may or may not work, but it’s not a crazy approach as you make it out to be.
The sad thing is that India is actually reconsidering privately the Kashmir issue. The Indian media’s coverage of the Kashmiri protests a while ago caused some intellectuals to argue for Kashmiri sovereignty (which is a major first – the consensus in the 90s among the intelligentsia was that Kashmir was an integral part of India). If Obama does anything about Kashmir, this internal critique would disappear and India would go back to its “no one should infringe our sovereignty” consensus.
If the US gets in any way involved or tries to make India and Pakistan hammer a deal, the same predictable thing would happen that happened under Clinton. India would stone wall because no government can afford to do anything about Kashmir, especially under the watchful eye of foreign power unless it wants to lose power. If BJP gains power (which is unlikely), this question would not even arise. If Congress gains power, Congress would stone wall incessantly. At least, India forgave Clinton somewhat because it loves charismatic personalities. Obama would not get such a love fest.
What Obama would like to do, it seems, is help the Pakistanis on their western border fronts in exchange for their shutting down the terror camps that attack India in the east.
The day Pakistan shuts down its terror camps against India would be the day the Sun rises from the West. *If* and that’s a big *If* Pakistan gets a stable Afghani border and the day terrorism would ratchet down, WHY would Pakistan stop its terrorist activities in India? Pakistan’s military excels in making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. It does not behave rationally or the kargil war or the Indo-Pakistani war in ’65 would not have happened.
The way that it is being presented suggests that the goals of this mediation would be something like a final settlement of the dispute. How else does India cease to “threaten” Pakistan (a framing of the issue that is, of course, inherently tilted towards Islamabad’s perspective) and thus free up Pakistan’s attention to focus on the west? Pressuring the Pakistanis to stop making cross-border raids could be done very directly with the leverage our military aid provides–why involve the Indians and Kashmir?
The Pakistani military is not going to give up on sponsoring cross-border terrorism so long as India remains in control of large parts of J&K. They have a tremendous ideological and political investment in this conflict; they have a vested interest in preventing resolution of the dispute. Pakistan is not going to concede its guerrilla and terrorist tactics against India while also redoubling efforts against the Taliban. Nyx is right that outside meddling is going to shut down the internal debate in India and push the debate back into a fruitless recitation of the old arguments about why Kashmir was, is and always will be Indian.
Yes, the wording is imprecise and unclear, and perhaps leads you to think Obama imagines a total resolution to the conflict, but I think that’s reading something into his remarks that simply aren’t there.
As for the goal of closing Pakistani-sponsored terrorist camps, that’s of course the goal of the Indian government itself, so I don’t think it’s a bad approach to take. Saying something is never going to happen doesn’t mean it can’t happen. What would lead the Pakistanis to do this? Perhaps some kind of governing concessions, as nyx says, in which India grants greater authonomy to J&K. The reason to involve the Indians in this is that Pakistan won’t give up its camps without some kind of concession from India. At a certain point its more a matter of national pride than meaninful policy, and perhaps an outsider can help diffuse that.
conradg,
I wish you could stop talking about India like you were an expert or something. I got to say you reveal your ignorance.
India is not “letting go” of Kashmir – not now, not tomorrow, not ever. The ignorance of people who comment on this issue is really remarkable.It may come as a shock to you, but the first Prime Minister of India was a Kashmiri. A Kashmiri Pandit. Yeah that guy who was called the light of Asia by Winston Churchill.
Kashmir today is majority Muslim just like it was in 1947. How ever the land predates Islam itself. And it was a Hindu majority region until the mid 14th century when Islamic rulers invaded India.
Ever since its Islamic conquest, its ethnic makeup has changed. It still had Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists co-existing peacefully as Kashmiri’s are more into Sufi Islam as opposed to hard edged Sunni Islam – until of course India was partitioned in 1947.
The partition was the greatest tragedy to hit India in terms of loss of life, land, liberty and a bitterness that lingers till day. India never came grips with the loss of 2/5ths of its territory and most definitely was not going to roll over on Kashmir either.
Every one in India knows that the Central Govt was brutal in suppressing the freedom movement. But this is so 1989. In the last 10 years, the State of Jammu and Kashmir has had peaceful and well recognized elections to its State Govt – it is perfect by no means but it stands representative of those people who are willing to give democracy a chance.
There is still an uneasiness in the Valley over religious and ethnic differences – this is to be expected. It is not going to vanish any time soon. At the same time, the Govt of India has bent over backwards to make sure that Kashmiris get special recognition in the Union – in fact, you cannot even purchase property in this state if you are not Kashmiri yourself.
Your comments about India not being a political fiction that wouldnt survive the end of the century are nothing more than a joke. Have you EVER lived in India? for an extended period of time ? India’s mindboggling diversity has withstood far greater challenges than mere territorial disputes. Where exactly do people get the authority to make such grandoise predictions on subject matters they know very little about ?
If you think India should let go off Kashmir, I am pretty sure that you would have wanted Lincoln to let go off the Confederate States too. As Ron Paul pointed out the other day, ” why not just buy the slaves” and then declare them free once they got into the North?
Or at the very least Lincoln should have called for a plebiscite to see how many Southern States wanted to be with the Union. Instead we got a bloody war that tore this nation apart, left gaping wounds that have taken centuries to come close to healing.
And yet you are asking India to “let go off” Kashmir. Yeah, sure.
Of course all of this started when Obama shot his mouth off during the debate about carrying out operations in Pakistan. As McCain pointed out at the time, “you just don’t say that in public” because you leave Pakistan with absolutely no option but to confront you. The proper course of action for Obama after the debate would have been to keep his head down and hope nobody remembered this bit of idiocy. Instead, he just dug himself a lot lot deeper into the hole he was in. What a god damn lightweight.
Obama’s and Klein’s opinions are largely “think tank talk” – unlikely to be put into policy. Neither India nor Pakistan trust the U.S.. There is always going to be a segment of the Indian polity than believes Washington wants to reward Islamabad for its cooperation in other areas with meeting its aims in Kashmir. Likewise, there will always be Pakistanis who believe that America would like nothing more than to see a rising India balance (not necessarily conflict with) a rising China. IMHO, the Pakistani paranoia is probably more grounded in reality.
Aside from the current Al Qaeda/Taliban issue, America has no other interest in the region. By contrast, American-Indian relations are proceeding along multiple tracks – diplomatic, economic, and cultural. Dealing with India is one of the few areas where George W. Bush has actually done a very good job. Immediately after 9/11, he could have done what earlier American presidents did – and that is largely ignore India. He did not do that. In fact, he was so ambitious that he actually lobbied hard for and got what always seemed to be a pipedream – to have India recognized as the world’s sixth nuclear weapons power. Obama is unlikely to roll back the nuclear deal.
Bush also managed to defuse a tense situation from 2001-02 by working backstage – leaning on both India and Pakistan to not escalate their rhetoric. He was the first President to publicly state there were terrorists crossing the Line of Control from the Pakistani side. And lest the Indian side get too cavalier, in spring of 2002, Bush ordered the evacuation of non-essential Americans out of India. By making it appear that war was likely, the onus fell on India to cool things down.
Kashmiris have been poorly treated by New Delhi – even people who detest Pakistani terrorism against India acknowledge that. But, as India’s fortunes continue to improve, it may well come to believe it can be more flexible in dealing with the Kashmir problem. But Indian diplomats are probably the most touchy in the world – so any initiative must appear to be indigenous, without the trace of an American influence.
As Ron Paul pointed out the other day, †why not just buy the slaves†and then declare them free once they got into the North?
This was proposed, and rejected.