Harbingers of change?

Islamabad should endeavour to promote less contentious and more cooperative ties on its eastern and western fronts.

Given the state of Pakistan-India relations, their leaders can meet only on the sidelines of regional and international conferences. This is regrettable, but when it comes to ties between the two South Asian neighbours, one has to be thankful even for tiny morsels of relief.

The just-ended 17^th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Maldives came at an opportune moment for the region, long stymied in its efforts to launch meaningful economic cooperation because of rivalry between its two largest members. While India has, in the recent past, pursued a sustained policy of revitalising its ties with neighbours, Pakistan too has sought to ease tensions, making both substantive and symbolic gestures. These have included extending the long sought MFN status to India, while reiterating its commitments as regards antiterrorism. Meaningful, too, was its decision to refrain from airing its concern over the elevation of India’s relations with Afghanistan to a strategic partnership and, soon thereafter, returning an Indian military helicopter that had strayed into Pakistani territory.

Pakistan’s eminently sensible decisions may well have become possible because the government knows that the main opposition leader has long advocated cordial and cooperative ties with India. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that while in Pakistan there appears to be a growing consensus in favour of establishing ‘good neighbourly’ ties with India, it is the latter who remains subject to serious domestic differences on relations with Pakistan.

There is also no denying that with Afghanistan entering the ‘endgame’, it is not only the US who is exploring new avenues to protect its interests in the region, but other major players too are scrambling to enhance their influence. The new shape of things is yet to evolve, but with Pakistan’s relations with the US currently in their most strained phase, Islamabad has reached out to both Beijing and Moscow, the former to consolidate its existing strategic relations and the latter to probe if meaningful substance can be added to a relationship that has remained a prisoner of history’s heavy baggage. If these efforts can bring Pakistan membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, new opportunities — both political and economic — could emerge, adding greatly to the region’s stability and prosperity.

This explains the curious current phenomenon of India becoming increasingly a major fulcrum of US ambitions in both South and South Asia. It is not only the usual Washington think tank crowd that is beating the drums of India-US collaboration, even Hillary Clinton has become a cheerleader for a more ambitious Indian role across a wide swath, assuring India of US support if it chooses to extend its sphere of influence to the Pacific. This has been followed by offers to sell sophisticated weapons systems, not surprising given that Delhi plans on spending over $100 billion in arms purchases in the next decade. And last week, Deputy Secretary William Burns while describing Asia-Pacific as the US foreign policy’s “strategic pivot”, suggested that US and Indian strategies in the region should “reinforce each other”. No less significantly, while Pakistan remains cautious, India is quietly extending its support to the US inspired New Silk Road project, as well as its initiative to establish an organisation like the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, encompassing South and Central Asia, ostensibly to counter Chinese and Russian influence in these two vital regions.

These could well be harbingers of major changes, but given the daunting challenges confronting Pakistan, it would do well to lower its ambitions and remain focused on the domestic front, because without improvement in governance and sound economic policies, the country will be in no position to have an effective foreign policy. In the meantime, Islamabad should endeavour to promote less contentious and more cooperative ties on both its eastern and western fronts, while exploring new linkages with other centres of power and influence. Enhancing options is what diplomacy is all about.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th,  2011.