Posted on 05/19/2002 12:55:12 PM PDT by AM2000
The only motive of the ongoing Green Beret-paracommando exercise in Agra is to send Islamabad a signal that the US' affiliation to Pakistan is no longer unconditional, says Kajal Basu. But what price is India paying for allowing US troops on Indian soil?
New Delhi, May 17
This week, another of India's monoliths of foreign policy was kicked down the drain: we had the first-ever joint exercises on land with the US Army. India has had several joint sea exercises with the US Navy, but it had steadfastly stuck to a certain redeeming orneriness where hard territory was concerned. No longer. As the days go by in Agra, with the crack US Green Berets and Indian paracommandos teaching each other the tactics of inclement-weather behind-enemy-lines killing, another of India's barricades of non-aligned non-engagement has toppled.
The joint exercises might have gone unnoticed in the rain of diplomatic skittles falling but for congratulatory - and entirely uncritical - media coverage. No one has yet asked why the joint exercises were necessary now, or at all. No one has asked why Agra was chosen as the venue (apart from the unconvincing argument that it has one of the country's leading facilities for sportive parajumping).
But nothing these days - particularly anything even vaguely militaristic - is without bigtime context. The far backdrop to these exercises is the so-called global war on terrorism; in the in-your-face foreground is the crossborder tension between currently the world's most unstable nuclear mavericks, India and Pakistan.
Be that as it may, the question remains: why the exercises? Army sources say that there is no overwhelming and immediate tactical imperative behind the wargames. If brutal climate is what the Green Berets were looking for, Agra is hardly the best (or the worst): first, India has far more extreme hothouses; second, the Rangers have been put up in a five-star hotel and in watercooled bivouacs, hardly the operational ambience of the battlefield.
(The Green Berets are the best of the US Army: the Special Forces Groups (Airborne) are handling some of the most difficult situations in Afghanistan, working in covert anonymity in small, mobile teams. Based largely in Fort Bragg, they were called into congregation immediately after 9/11. Their motto, "De oppresso libre (liberating the oppressed)" is more a coat-of-arms boast than an operational philosophy. The Green Berets are, pure and simple, killers. It is unlikely that the Indian paracommandos have much, or anything, to teach them - the Green Berets are in Agra to provide steroid infusion to the Indian jumpers.).
This unlikely cavalier professionalism indicates that these particular joint exercises are hardly the stuff of war simulations - they are more form than content, more diplomatic than military; they suggest a purpose that is strategic, not experiential. Since joint exercises are hardly covert operations, it would be safe to assume that they have a direct purpose: these exercises are supposed to send a signal across the border to General Pervez Musharraf that the US' support to Pakistan is conditional and entirely circumstantial, and that if Pakistan twitches enough to seem like it is bucking the antiterrorist coalition's yoke, the US Administration will look to India as a subcontinental alternative to Pakistan.
US-Pakistan joint exercises have been conspicuously absent over the past months, even though they would have made eminent sense, since the US has co-opted Pakistan as a frontline partner in the antiterrorism war. The US forces have, instead, chosen to largely go it alone, actively, and rather pointedly, working with other coalition partners, including Afghanistan.
Given its penchant for putting its eggs in a diffusion of baskets, the signal is also coming India's way that the current Administration hasn't given up on India - not by a long shot. Over the past months, India has asked for, and not received in all its comforting fullness, assurances from the Bush Administration that India's antiterrorist concerns are not mere irritating peripherals on the coalition hardware. The Vajpayee government has yelled itself hoarse about Pakistan's continuing crossborder support to Islamist militants, but the Bush Administration has always played a lukewarm response.
Even the recent carnage of innocent non-combatants in Jammu didn't thaw the Bush Administration's reaction, which was effectively near-arctic, to crossborder terrorism. India received a diplomatic - if pleasant - Janus in US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christine Rocca (while in India, she vented against the recent terrorist attack; the moment she landed in Islamabad, her first words were of praise for Musharraf's unctuous antiterrorist actions); India has an abrasive ambassador in the in-your-face form of Robert Blackwill, the least-liked US government plenipotentiary since Patrick Moynihan; and Pakistan is having the most lucrative run of global lending institutions in its history.
With war fever in India fast approaching redline, the US needed to give the country a sense that it could be depended on to do the right thing. The ongoing joint exercise serves just that single purpose - while neither side gains anything in terms of military experience (except that Indian paras have a different sign language from the Green Berets), it is another way of the US telling Pakistan to pull up its socks and to be like it means business, in a language that the rest of the world understands.
But the exercise doesn't come without a price: sooner or later, India will pay for inviting US troops on Indian soil. US Administrations are good and relentlessly driven at extracting payback for favours extended, however fleeting the nature of the favours. While Indian officers have often gone on mid-career deputation to Sandhurst and West Point, India has never had a military quid pro quo with either "advisors" or "exchange students". This is a first; and, in the global antiterrorism dispensation-in-progress, which will see unprecedented fraternising and actions in the months and years to come, the US will need as many return favours as it can get to stuff into its imprest account.
The fact is that the exercises were a signal, not so much to Pakistan, but to India. We want to strengthen our ties with that country and joint military exercises are a way to reinforce the fact that the respective militaries are friendly with each other. It's just possible that they might have to cooperate on the battlefield someday.
This author assumes that it would be on the battlefield against Pakistan, I think. That's certainly not going to be the case. US policy is to be allies with both Pakistan and India despite how much they may hate each other. That drives both countries absolutely nuts, but when it comes their stormy relationship, "nuts" is the norm.
You finally get it :-)
But seriously, I think you've managed to grasp the Indian mentality quite well. In Indian and Pakistani cultures, if two families are at odds, then the only way a third family can be "friends" with both is if the third family is infinitely more powerful than the two families. India has a superpower complex, and can't accept the military and economic superiority of the United States, and that's the crux of the problem. They're arrogant and petulant. The Pakistanis, OTOH, refuse to accept that India is both militarily and economically superior to them, and that aggravates the Indians too - and it causes Pakistan to constantly act up, and makes them bite a helluva lot more than they can chew.... Or, like you said, they're both just nuts.
Because the Left doesn't understand that diplomacy isn't the same thing as war and can't be substituted for it, they are always willing to negotiate; this has been a great blessing to our enemies when they needed a breathing space, or time to let the American government forget why it got into the war in the first place.
Needless to say, this passion for misquoted Clauswitz is perfectly proof against any attempt at correction.
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