Indian Liberals Are Half Right On Our Pakistan Policy

For once I agree with the leftist liberals. We should stop talking tough with the Pakistanis and threaten to break off the diplomatic talks after every attack. The Pakis act all hurt and do something. Then we retaliate and return the favor. This is like two children fighting. This vicious cycle (they attack and we talk big) is getting tiresome and exposes our foreign policy which is mostly based on hope and emotions rather than hard-nosed pragmatism. Think about it. The USA called off the summit with the Russians even after a traitor leaked sensitive documents to hurt the American interests but they are going to go ahead with lower level talks. That is wise and prudent. What we do is myopic and downright foolish.

Our problem is that the people in charge of our foreign policy are bureaucrats who are more interested in getting promoted and making money rather than coming up with tough and pragmatic choices. Our leaders often are old incompetent men who are either beholden to La Famiglia (like SM Krishna who read the wrong speech att the UN) or men who have too much nostalgia associated with pakistan (memories of Lahore etc.). Unless we get fresh political blood in the South block or get IFS officers who are chess players with guts, this cycle is going to continue. The pakis know it and will keep doing it because our response is so bloody routine. In that regards we are like Pavlov’s dog. The pakis attack. We jump up and down. Then we settle. Then we resume the status quo. They are our enemies and hurting us comes naturally to them. If they can get away with it like they always do, what incentive do they have to stop.

In a rather revealing article, Madhav Nalapat writes the following:

They pointed out that those commanders who adopted a "pro-active stance that would deter the Pakistanis usually suffered in their careers" while the "more cautious ones got promoted". They said that this was in contrast to the Pakistan army, "which always backed the man on the spot, even if he was only a JCO (junior commissioned officer)". Others said that "these days, babus in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) take even tactical decisions best left to the field commanders" and that "interference by the MoD in operational matters has reached the danger level" from the point of view of operational readiness to deal with threats.

This clearly enforces the impression of the existence of older pakiphiles in our government. Even Atal Bihari Bajpayee was one of them. These men are beholden to the cause of peace at all costs. Even in the aftermath of the attack on the parliament the BJP government held back our defense forces. Operation Parakram was reduced to Operation Chai-Samosa.

Yes. Like our leftists say, we should stop talking tough. Of course my (and others who think like me) solution is a bit different. There is an old edict. You never take a knife to a gun fight. If they put one of yours in the hospital, you send one of theirs to the grave. Does this mean we start a war with the pakis? No. We should respond to them in the same coin. The reason why the pakis hide behind the cloak of terrorism and use their soldiers to do the killing is that it gives them deniability. Does that mean we start our own brand of terrorism. No but we have other ways of raising the cost for the pakis. We need a two pronged attack. We need to get some capable IFS officers with guts in the South Block. These men should be more interested in doing their jobs rather than get cushy postings abroad. It is often said that our IFS babus get bested by their paki counterparts because the pakis always come prepared and sound and even look better. All this means a lot because clearly we are not winning this war on the international diplomacy front. This was a lot worse before 9/11 attacks because the paki credibility has since gone down.

We need to undo all the damage IK Gujaral did who was essentially a paki in Indian clothing. We need to revive the RAW dirty tricks department (in a manner of speaking), give them a substantial budget and a free hand to exploit paki fault lines. Unless we hurt the pakis bad, they will not learn. We need to target anti Punjabi Pakistani groups in Pakistan like the MQM or the Balochis and give them the same kind of help that the pakis provide to SIMI or IM or LeT etc. An dthis is not a theory of a frustrated conservative like yours truly but of the very varied group of people. Pravin Swami who is a man in the know says the following:

Forty former Indian military and civilian leaders have today voiced those concerns in an unprecedented statement calling for drastic shifts in India’s policy. The signatories include two former army chiefs, an air force chief, two heads of the Research and Analysis Wing, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau, a director-general of the Border Security Force, two foreign secretaries and two home secretaries. The group isn’t an aerie of Bharatiya Janata Party-linked hawks: several were intimately involved in the dialogue process that began in 2003; others have been active in non-official India-Pakistan exchanges (full disclosure: I’ve also been involved in some of those meetings).

“It is time”, the statement says, “that policies are devised that will impose a cost on Pakistan for it’s export of terror and thus change the cost-benefit calculus of these policies”. It doesn’t, though, tell what these new policies should be — and that’s why we need a serious national conversation on.

Manmohan Singh and his ilk, irrespective of their party affiliations (we have enough pro-paki people in the BJP as well) need to be removed from decision and policy making positions. People who can pragmatically think and take care of Indian interests ONLY need to be put in place. 2014 elections could not get here more quickly.

The Nalapat article can be read at;
http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/pmo-to-blame-for-soldier-deaths
The Swami article can be read at:
http://www.firstpost.com/india/its-time-to-rethink-indias-red-lines-on-pakistan-1023149.html