Foreign Policy

Strategic Environment - Foreign Policy

By the time this article is published, the first formal India-Pakistan talks to improve their perpetually hostile bilateral relationship since the 26/11 Mumbai attacks will have already taken place.  No doubt Islamabad will have cited the Kashmir issue as the raison d’être for its difficulties with New Delhi, though such routine whimpers will yield little.  The words spoken at the recent meeting may be the same as at previous meetings, but the geopolitical geometry of Indo-Pakistani relations has changed rather radically once again, with the result that any serious prospect of moving to a resolution on disputed Kashmir is off the agenda.

It all has to do with Afghanistan, where the shifting winds of Western strategy have recently parted the clouds, promising sunshine over Pakistan and simultaneously casting a lengthening shadow over India.  In the first place, due largely to the unanticipated fallout of the Afghanistan adventure, Islamabad is not presently capable of resolving the dispute even if it wished to do so.  Because of its critical vulnerability to the jihadists it nurtured in Afghanistan and now protects on its own soil, the Pakistani government cannot accept a solution involving anything less than the whole Kashmir Valley falling into its lap.  New Delhi, of course, would have no reason to entertain such a proposition.

Strategic Environment - Foreign Policy

For Regional Cooperation, Development 

The emergence of three major powers—Russia, China, and India— on the Eurasian landmass, agreeing to cooperate to seek economic growth and regional security, while not allowing bilateral differences to come to the fore, has already begun to bear fruit. Both Japan and South Korea have begun to enhance their investments in this vast area; and Russia, in particular, is already planning to shift a large part of its energy supply from the west to the Asia-Pacific in the not-so-distant future. 

However, all three nations, particularly Russia and India, are flanked by smaller, weaker nations, which are kept unstable and isolated by the old British colonial forces, often using Islamic fundamentalism as a battering ram against the larger nations. One of the worst victims is India, which was broken up by the British colonials, prior to their departure in 1947. The partition instigated massive violence in the affected areas, and despite the decades that went by, the Indian subcontinent has remained a hostile landmass, where even the infrastructural integration could not be achieved. This in turn, retarded economic development, and has brought untold misery to the hundreds of millions of citizens of the South Asian countries.

Strategic Environment - Foreign Policy

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By Maj Gen Sheru Thapliyal, SM (Retd). 

The Joint Statement between Pakistan & India at Sharm-al-Sheikh during NAM conference in which Baloochistan was mentioned for no rational reasons has once again brought into sharp focus, lack of direction, absence of any strategic thought and a shocking unawareness of our national interest on part of our foreign policy establishment.  Those who have been carefully following India’s foreign policy since independence will not be surprised.  Our foreign policy has been a continuous muddle ever since.  A country follows a foreign policy so that gains are accrued.  Here we have been following a foreign policy which has resulted in an unending chain of disasters.  What is worrying is that no one seems to bother.