Strategic dividends

The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington last week was not a state visit but the closest it could get to being a state visit. Billed a ‘working visit’, which really means that the host took care of only the PM and his most personal staff while the rest had to be borne on the expense of the state of Pakistan, the trappings were stately. Blair House; the audience of the ladies with the US president’s wife – again at the White House – pushed the boundary of it being just a working visit.
The invitation to visit was by President Obama; it always is, even when another nation’s leader requests a meeting. It was delivered in a short order by President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, who also briefed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the agenda of what the US president desired to discuss with the premier. It related to Obama’s vision of the global security architecture that he wants to push in the remaining part of his term – which ends on January 19, 2017.
Obama’s vision centred on the global threat of Isis, which has replaced Al-Qaeda. Of course this broad characterisation of the threat includes Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – active theatres where if things went further south, Isis will only become a clear, present and a pervasive danger to world peace. There are four supporting theatres against this threat which can help nip Isis only if the right amounts of synergetic approach and action can be coordinated from these geographical proximities.
The four launching pads with a potential to offer an effective counterpoise to the Isis threat are: Iraq, which is half Isis, and where the US still retains a presence in small numbers; Turkey, which is headlong into the Syrian war but essentially with its own aim of deposing Bashar al-Assad, and neutralising the Kurds and their influence in Turkey; and Pakistan which is at war with itself after having been immersed in the politics of extreme and militant Islam for over a decade, and most importantly neighbours Afghanistan where after the mother of all battles against extremists the finish just seems to be evading the protagonists. Pakistan, despite its own internal occupation, is considered the most key player in bringing to close the unfinished parts of a prolonged Afghan conflict.
The final player of this quadrant against the threat of losing the Middle East to Isis is Iran with whom the US has just concluded a nuclear deal, mainstreaming the country back into the global order while enabling it to fight the most potent threat to contemporary world peace. The opening to Iran on Obama’s own initiative gave him two consequential returns: a nuclear deal with a potential to halt Iran from the weapons route, and Iran’s willingness to contribute to the cause of defeating Isis, whose religious beliefs represent a distorted and an exclusivist interpretation of Islam that threatens the political order in the Middle East, and endangers the Shia school of thought in its periphery. Talk of a strategic dilemma – and a response with such fortuitous dividends.
This in short is also Obama’s legacy. If it perpetuates as two independent streaks in Iranian conduct in the future years, Obama’s legacy would have sustained; if not, he would have at least invited perhaps the most potent defense against the growing phenomenon of ISIS in Iran. The latter of course has direct stakes in stopping the momentum of ISIS, as indeed establish itself once again as a major player in the middle east. Oil and other economic benefits are simply a happenstance in this high-voltage, high stakes game of power politics.
Enter Pakistan and Nawaz Sharif. For Isis, Afghanistan offers itself as the next breachable frontier with a weak government and a fractious society; if it does entrench there the next vulnerability can be Pakistan. This will then become the mother of all threats to the world order. Nangharhar in Afghanistan already has some splinter groups clamouring for IS identity, while incipient presence in Pakistan has been effectively neutralised. The space for Isis in this region needs to be closed. Only peace and stability will ensure that. That entails its own dynamics including a more realistic appraisal of the looming threats by the Afghan leadership. This brought Afghanistan back to the centre stage in the Nawaz-Obama talks.
Next came the talk on the nuclear arsenal that now forms Pakistan’s ‘full spectrum deterrence’. Tactical nuclear weapons in American parlance are mated, loaded and deployed at the tactical level making them vulnerable to be misplaced, lost or misused. That is not how Pakistan retains its nuclear arsenal, short, medium or long range. Also, that is not how Pakistan manages its arsenal, nor deploys them to tactical units in ready-to-fire outfits. The apprehensions of these falling into ‘wrong hands’ are misplaced.
The Indians too know the fact well but will anyway make a show of their ill-conceived concern to the world reinforcing its fears. The Americans took the case up anyway, hoping to convince their Pakistani counterparts of the need to revert weapons mix to the original composition. This introduced India into the dynamics of the discussions in Washington.
The joint statement that came out after these parleys was a realistic assessment of what blights the region and what is possible to attain, were the composing nations simply to conduct themselves with decent disposition towards each other. It calls for no extraordinary favours, just for simply not extending the arc of their respective ambition at the cost of the other.
One wonders if the current plight within India too came up for discussion because a lot of what America desires to achieve in the region is dependent on how India, as a state and a society, fares after the ongoing spike of Hindu extremism on display there. It makes for a harrowing possibility. A country of over a billion people gone off the rails on the basis of hatred and intolerance of the other spells a major threat to the stability in this part of the world. What is worse is that the state seems to be in collusion as it watches by the side when people of other race, caste and religion are mutilated and burnt alive. This India makes for a fearful neighbour which if unchecked in its societal slide can disrupt and distort the stability of the global order.
In preparation thus of the evolving strategy to bring order back to Afghanistan and close the space to disabling power-plays and fallacious sentiment based on either religion or race, America has extended the stay of its troops to the end of 2017. That creates the all-important space for Pakistan and other friendly forces to reengage in dialogue with the protagonists in an effort to carve out a peaceful settlement.
Afghanistan will need to be disciplined by America, which will continue to retain significant influence there with its military and financial support, to give up its inimical pronouncements and work in tandem with Pakistan to reconcile the warring segments. Pakistan’s own war against its own brand of terror groups will continue unabated and, given the complementarity of a stable Afghanistan, should soon see a closure. A stable India, encouraged to permit a consensual approach to resolve regional strife, will be the key to realising peace and stability.
The space for Pakistan in Afghanistan is wide open for us to contribute in evolving a regional order based on peace, stability and strategic balance. It is now up to the intellect and acumen of those responsible to put it all together. This may well be President Obama’s parting gift to Pakistan before the sun sets on his time in Washington. An unintended gift, but a gift alright. It is time to get to work.
Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com