Though written in lucid prose,the article presumes the importance of Pakistan than warranted by its polity.
True, a Nation need not be huge and economic power house as India is.
But at least the Nation should be stable and be economically self-reliant;it should have some political system in place;the responsibilities of the various organs must be clear.
Only then Alliance with a country like Pakistan which is more or less a failed State, where none knows,including their President knows what happens in the Country(remember the instance of Indian planes incursions into Pakistan last year), will be beneficial to the Allies.
The Alliance with Pakistan, apart from the reasons mentioned in the article, is also motivated by the anxiety ,rather urgency of the World(not merely US) to stop the export of terrorism.
Having found Pakistan to be an unstable State,the US is slowly giving up on Pakistan, though it is discomforting for the US to deal with India, as India wants to deal with US on its terms and not as a supplicant like Pakistan
China regards Pakistan to check mate US in the region.
Having noticed that US is developing India relationship,China is looking elsewhere to encircle India as Pakistan can only be a liability to it in the long run;China wants Pakistan remains unstable.
Funniest point is that Pakistan has a grievance that it has not been involved in Afghan Rebuilding.while the World knows the part played by Pakistan in Afghan confusion.
The dynamic nature of geo-political environment is transitioning from American efforts to retain its uni-polarity to a stage where the emerging competitors and challengers are moving to a position of asserting their influence. This is likely to result in geo-economic, geo-political and geo-strategic changes, realignments and re-assertions, in certain regions which are likely to play important, if not pivotal roles in the future. These are high-stake political games which may well result in either prolonging geo-political status-quo or the commencement of changes towards a multi-polar balance of power.
To maintain the geo-political status-quo, major US concerns are likely to remain focused on Asia. These include an emerging China, sustaining support for a countervailing India, a resurgent Russia and a concerned Muslim world attempting to redefine its place in the world polity. While US led efforts aimed at containment of Russia are stabilizing almost along the original Russian borders in Europe, endeavours to curtail her expansion towards the south and limit Russian and Chinese influence in Eurasian hinterland are underway.
Pakistan
In February 2002, Colin Powell told the House International Relations Committee that, “America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before.” Chairman of NATO Military Committee while on a recent visit to Australia stated that, securing the safety of Washington and Brussels requires the expansion of a US dominated military alliance into “the Euro-Asian and Asian-Pacific regions.” Major US and NATO presence in Afghanistan and their efforts to enhance military presence in various Central Asian countries under the garb of providing support for Afghan war are clear indications in this direction.
In the post 9/11 environment Asia therefore became the test-bed of American attempts to assert and realign the politico-economic order to maintain her full-spectrum domination and deny or delay the emergence and assurgence of competing powers. US invasion of Iraq was essentially a venture to sustain these objectives and not against terrorism which had roots in Afghanistan. It was thought that the US adventure in Iraq would achieve its objectives soon and would allow shifting the focus to stabilize Afghanistan for a protracted US presence because of geo-political compulsions. While the US was busy in Iraq, they co-opted Indian support to replace Pakistan as a stabilizing influence in Afghanistan, mainly due to Pak-US trust deficit. This also provided Americans an opportunity to project Indian influence in Central Asia to dilute the existing Russian and increasing Chinese support base.
Having failed in her earlier attempts to coerce Pakistan through application of direct strategy, India readily took this opportunity to pay back Pakistan for its alleged interference in Indian Occupied Kashmir and ventured in to a strategic encirclement of Pakistan. Under a calibrated strategy, US also supported India by attempting to persuade Pakistan to allow passageway for sustaining the Indian influence in Afghanistan and beyond. While addressing a press conference in January this year in Islamabad, Hillary Clinton openly supported this venture to the discomfiture of her hosts. However, Pakistan did not acquiesce and avoided a self-inflicted strategic encirclement.
Moreover, in order to dilute and contain resurgent Taliban, US contrived with Indian and Afghan support to shift the terrorist center of gravity to Pakistani territory resulting in manifold increase in drone attacks in Pak regions bordering Afghanistan. However, the US desire to confine this war to Af-pak region was short-lived. Soon the Taliban outside of so-called Af-pak region re-emerged stronger, warranting a US surge followed by a crisis of command and strategy.
Also, the Americans soon realized Indian inability to replace Pakistan’s strategic influence in its backyard. This also solidified the fact that the geo-politically influenced strategic pivot provided by Pakistan could not and would not be replaced by India, no matter how powerful India may be. Pakistan had withstood the challenge, no matter how weak it had been or would be. Achievement of US geo-political and geo-strategic goals therefore would become extremely difficult without co-opting Pakistan. This fact can not be overstated by citing a statement of Senator McCain (courtesy wikileaks), who while talking to David Cameron in a 2008 meeting said that, “if they (Pakistan) don’t cooperate and help us, I don’t know what we are going to do.”
Many believe that India is a regional power, yet they fail to realize the fact that its regional prowess can only be exercised against nations as small and vulnerable as Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh. It has not been able to convincingly project its power potential against present day Pakistan and China and it is unlikely to happen in the future as well. US Embassy, New Delhi (courtesy wikileaks) corroborates this fact indicating that, with present Indian military capabilities, Cold Start doctrine would encounter mixed results.
US, France, UK, China and Russia etc can project their power potential because either they do not have a powerful regional threat to counter or they have enough capability to deter a regional threat and also project their capability to take care of extra-regional threats.
India cannot laterally expand its influence beyond its western borders due the existence of geo-political impediments in addition to the geographical restrictions placed by the presence of Pakistan. Expansion of its influence towards the east is impeded due to the large geographical lay of China. Myanmar can provide India with limited ability to expand towards South East Asia. She attempted to undertake such a venture but due to its internal upheaval in adjoining areas failed to take timely advantage. Chinese influence in Myanmar has in the meantime increased manifold which may limit future Indian endeavours. Therefore the only direction it may be able to expand its influence is towards the vast expanse of sea in the south.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/pakistans-geopolitical-dilema-china-or-us-viewpoint-from-pakistan-analysis-22032011/#comment-95089
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