Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
political situation are in Pakistan's favor. For India, Kashmir has so many links
to India's secular political order—especially the place of Muslims—that any
settlement which appeared to compromise this order is unacceptable.
Clearly, Kashmir is linked to broader issues of the military balance between
India and Pakistan, and the very identity of the two states, and while more could
be done to ease the suffering of the Kashmiri people—a cease-fire, and some
draw-down of regular and paramilitary forces on the Indian side, and some
reduction in support for extremists coming from the Pakistan side—no lasting
settlement is possible without dealing with these larger strategic and ideological
concerns.
India has much to gain by a normal relationship with Pakistan. Such a
relationship could contribute to India's assuming a place among the major Asian
and even global powers. It would not be a question, as it is now, of Indian power
minus
Pakistani power, but of an India free to exercise its influence without the
distraction—and the cost—of a conflict with a still-powerful Pakistan.
However, events seem to outrun India's capability to adapt to them. In recent
years there has been a summit, a war, a coup in Pakistan, another summit, and a
major American war in Afghanistan. This war forced Islamabad to abandon its
extremist Taliban allies, with potential far-reaching consequences for Pakistan's
domestic politics and its support for the radical jihadis in Kashmir. Yet India
seems to have responded to the crisis in Afghanistan by reverting to an earlier
strategy of encirclement of Pakistan, hoping that its relationship with the United
States plus a revived tie with the new Afghan government will again put it in a
strategically dominant position. This strategy is only likely to reinforce Pakistani
suspicions of India.
The prognosis, then, is yet another decade of deadlock. Both states will
continue to acquire—and probably deploy—nuclear weapons. India is likely to
remain resistant to outside mediation or facilitation of the Kashmir dispute, and
domestic political turmoil in both countries will make it even more difficult for
the next generation of Indian and Pakistani leaders to forge a relationship that is
not grounded on distrust, hostility, and, now, the threat of nuclear holocaust.
There may be limited agreement between New Delhi and its western neighbor,
but the most problematic issue is not whether Indians or Pakistanis can be trusted
to fulfill obligations incurred in agreements where they had little incentive to
comply, but whether, under the influence of a pessimistic vision of the region's
destiny, they can be trusted in cases where it
is
in their self-interest to comply.
At best the Pakistani generals may conclude that persistent hostility towards
India and an obsession with Kashmir has done great damage to Pakistan, and
Indian leaders will conclude that some normalization with Pakistan is necessary
for India to play a wider role in the world. This is the basis for a truce between
the two countries, but not the basis for a peace. For that to occur, there will have
to be more profound changes in their deeper relationship, for they will remain
