Indian obsession gone wrong

Nations or states are seldom destroyed by outside forces. Left on their own, most nations, if not all, have the capacity for self-destruction due to bad policies. Pakistan’s external policies on Afghanistan and internal policies fanning right-wing Islamism throughout the 1980s is a good example why the country is where it is today. Perhaps a more current example is that of India’s failing attempt to isolate Pakistan and in turn losing the regional hegemony to China.

Starting mid-2000s Indian military doctrine included for the first time non-kinetic warfare — full-scale information warfare to isolate Pakistan regionally and globally. The idea was to delegitimise Pakistan at the global forum and push it to the edge. It would use all platforms from TV channels, academics, bloggers, lobbyists, to social media to wage a war on Pakistan. By the time the Pakistani security establishment got their heads around to the changing circumstances, the Indian strategy delivered enough to characterise Pakistan as the ‘epicentre’ of terrorism around the world.



In any strategy, however, the important step is to know when to pull back. India, essentially, became a victim of its own obsession with Pakistan. At a time of Pakistan’s weakness when India could have struck a deal, it pushed on further, practically cutting down sporting ties, banning Pakistani entertainers and destroying all possible bridges. Although a late entrant into the cyber and information warfare, Pakistan recouped and starting 2010 under the new ISPR became a formidable force. If history tells us one thing, India may get a headstart, but Pakistan usually catches up — the nuclear programme is a good example.

India’s pre-occupation with Pakistan, it now appears, had the opposite result over the years. What India discounted in its regional calculus was the Chinese factor in this equation, or to be more precise the ‘extent’ of Chinese involvement in Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), hence, came as a deep shock that changed the entire Indian military and threat calculus. Instead, however, to adjust to the changing reality, the worst policy is to resist and go against the momentum. India has tried to do just that by refusing to attend the recent OBOR summit in China that saw even the US, the UK, Iran, and several Western countries flocking to be a part of.

It’s not only Pakistan that has slipped out of India’s hand. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka are all under the OBOR net. Most importantly, however, what should be really upsetting to India is the recent entry of Afghanistan under OBOR. While it may not be China’s direct intention, but India itself is on a course of self-isolation in the region. Especially, with America as the ally, it appears that India’s worrying times are ahead unless it embraces the change that is sweeping across the region.

How CPEC is going to eventually play out for Pakistan and other countries in the region is yet unknown and really not the question; the real question is how and why India lost the opportunity to strike a deal with Pakistan when it had the chance, first during the Musharraf era and later several times during the PPP government, and more recently with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who went miles, even against the wishes of his own security establishment to forge a peace deal with India.

India could have, and perhaps should have been for smaller countries a leader in the region, but its over-indulgence to teach Pakistan a lesson got the best out of it and the once successful policy to isolate Pakistan is now biting India back. For good or worse, just 70 years after independence the region is again lost to foreigners — this time to China.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2017.

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