A thaw in the offing?

Diplomatic circles that keep a close watch on South Asian developments seem to have detected a possibility of a positive twist in the ties between India and Pakistan in the New Year. Some even see Pakistan and India restarting the engagement process. An unnamed Indian diplomat has also been quoted to have confirmed that the Indian premier might review his current strategy towards Pakistan and offer another ‘olive branch’ and observers believe the Modi administration may be waiting for state elections in Punjab and UP — scheduled to be held in March — before making any policy shift towards Pakistan. These circles see Prime Minister Modi’s greetings conveyed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his birthday as a prelude to a potential thaw. Exactly a year ago, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a surprise stopover in Lahore while flying to Delhi from Kabul to wish his Pakistani counterpart on his birthday and also attend the wedding of Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter.

The move raised hopes for possible dawn of a new era of cooperation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours whose ties have often been bedevilled by acrimony and lack of trust due to unresolved disputes, particularly Jammu and Kashmir. But the hopes proved short-lived as a few days after Modi’s stopover, a militant attack on India’s Pathankot airbase and then on Uri military camp led to the collapse of the peace process the two countries had agreed to revive. The year 2016 was arguably the worst in terms of relations between the two neighbours since 2001 when they were on the brink of a war following the attack on India’s parliament. In the last 12 months, the two countries not only hurled verbal threats at each other but their troops also engaged in bloody clashes along the Line of Control and the Working Boundary leaving scores dead on both sides. The Modi administration threatened to isolate Pakistan globally and raised the spectre of a possible war on water issues after it vowed to revisit the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty that has survived three wars and strained relations between the two states. Despite Indian belligerence, Islamabad has continued to maintain that it is not shying away from resuming peace talks with Delhi. But Pakistan has always maintained that it can never accept any preconditions for the resumption of talks, saying all issues should be discussed simultaneously.

Realising finally perhaps that its ‘muscular foreign policy’ has failed to achieve tangible results and also perhaps on the advice of his security strategists Mr Modi has decided to take a second look at his Pakistan policy. These Indian security strategists having analysed the escalating situation from their own perspective had perhaps reached the conclusion that India and Pakistan have already approached a rough symmetry at three levels of their coercive capabilities like sub-conventional, conventional, and nuclear and also that one of the countries may be more capable in one or more of these domains, but each has now demonstrated enough capability in all three domains to deny the other confidence that it can prevail at any level of this violent competition without suffering more costs than gains. This condition of rough balance and deterrence across the spectrum of conflict amounts to an unstable equilibrium and any number of actions by Indian leaders taken by mistake or on purpose could further destabilise it. Perhaps on reaching such a conclusion these Indian strategists have advised their Prime Minister that the existence of this basic balance has created an opportunity for him to take steps to stabilise and pacify the Indo-Pak tensions. Indeed, diplomacy and deal making cannot shift balances of power, but they can solidify them through explicit agreements that clarify expectations and standards of behaviour. Such agreements — essentially, negotiated accommodations, raise the stakes for any one of the two that would subsequently violate them. Indeed, there are no clear solutions that India can unilaterally pursue to end the self -perceived threat of violence from Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 27^th, 2016.

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