Why Russia could become a mediator between Pakistan, India

ISLAMABAD: It looks like Donald Trump and his team don’t understand the need and value of America’s role in South Asia. 

This presents a golden opportunity for Russia to move in, especially since it enjoys good relations with Pakistan and India. 

Last week’s hearings of Donald Trump’s nominees for posts of secretaries of state and defence, and director of the CIA showed that Russia’s stakes in South Asia could grow due to the new White House administration.

The hearings showed that South Asia is beyond their focus. Only Gen Mattis, incoming secretary of defence, made an emphasis on America’s relations with India and Pakistan. 

However, when talking about Pakistan, he didn’t mention India, and vice versa. He ignored the issues of Kashmir and nuclear juxtaposition in South Asia. Others, including President Trump, didn’t reveal their position on the Kashmir issue and the risk of the nuclear weapons use in South Asia. 

The new administration leaves the world to wonder, how it will act in response to a highly probable crisis between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and/or cross-border terrorism. 

Will it have the officials with deep understanding of South Asia like Strobe Talbot in the Clinton administration? Will it be ready to “work behind the scenes to inspire a settlement to the dispute” in Kashmir, in the words of Richard Armitage? Will the new administration be rightly understood, accepted and respected by both India and Pakistan?

It’s too early to answer these questions. However, the recent hearings proved that Trump’s selections don’t have a focus on South Asia. Russia may just become the sole contender for a mediator role between India and Pakistan. 

This role was usually occupied by the US under the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and to some extent Barack Obama. 

It looks like Donald Trump and his nominees don’t understand the need and value of this role, the history of the US policy in South Asia, and the US instruments in this region. 

Until now, Russia has not mediated well between India and Pakistan. The Soviet record included the famous Tashkent agreement of 1966, but not a lot after that. Vladimir Putin made one attempt to mediate between Pakistan and India, when he invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf to attend the ‘Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures’ in Asia, in Almaty, Kazakhstan in June 2002. The outcome was discouraging for Moscow. The leaders of India and Pakistan didn’t talk to each other. 

Moscow seemed to learn this lesson and decided not to volunteer for the mediator role anymore. The Kashmir problem disappeared from Russian statements and documents. The nuclear juxtaposition between India and Pakistan lost its previous attention in Russian statements and documents. 

The Russian approach calls for two separate tracks with India and Pakistan and almost ignorance of everything troublesome between them. This approach can work to certain constraints in a crisis-free time, or when an external power has a loose engagement with both India and Pakistan, or with one of them. It’s not the case anymore. Moscow intends to have good political dialogue, trade, and deep military cooperation with both India and Pakistan. It supports the membership of both nations in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which has an ambitious goal to create the Eurasian common security space.