It may not be on Indias agenda ,to arm for Pakistan,afterall,how many times can a man die & ibndia has 10 times the ammunition to kill over 10 times.So india is trying to equal China & be the superpower first of South Asia ,& then challenge China ,maybe.
Meanwhile Pakistan is stuck in its vicinity feling the heat of nuclear cauldren brewing not far from iuts eastern borders.How can India say ,trust me ,when thee is no precednce of it (ala kashmir Accession)Dont fear me ,i wnt kill you ,how can home to 130 million muslim in the subcontinent believe you after 92- 6th dec destruction of mosque symbolically sounding the alarm as well threat to 500 millions of muslims of the subcxontinent.
http://server35.hypermart.net/thefridaytimes/
Living next to India without capitulating
Khaled Ahmed'sA n a l y s i s
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is in international politics no simple rule to prescribe just how
belligerent, or how peaceful, any state should strive to appear in order
to maximise it chances of living at peace with its neighbouring states.
One cannot say in the abstract that for peace a country must arm, or
disarm, or compromise, or stand firm.
As competition in international politics becomes more intense, the
peace-loving state faces the necessity of balancing between too little
or too much strength, between too many failures that strengthen the
potential enemy, and too many successes that scare him unduly.
(Kenneth Waltz in Man, the State, and War, 1959)
'It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust to inertia. It is
the greatest force in the world.'
(Rex Stout's hero in the novel Fer-de-lance, 1934)
India has increased its defence expenditure two years in a row: 28
percent in 2000 and 14 percent in 2001. The first increase was equal to
Pakistan's total defence budget. The second increase, as Pakistan's
foreign secretary pointed out, brings the total increase to nearly 40
percent in two years. This is a massive act of rearmament. Pakistan's
reaction has been that this increase has upset the balance of security
in the region although Islamabad has refrained from a tit-for-tat
reaction by increasing its own defence budget. In fact, according to one
newspaper report, in the year 2000, the army spent only Rs 61 billion
from an allocated budget of Rs 133 billion. This self-denial, together
with a cut in the development budget, actually brought the budget
deficit down to 2.2 percent of the GDP in the beginning of 2001.
By refusing to fall for the Indian invitation to escalation, Pakistan
has chosen to give priority to its economy. It has announced no
competitive increase in its defence budget. This is a break from the
past when Pakistan was consistently seen as the 'imitative' state in
South Asia, ready to match India, bomb for bomb, missile for missile. It
had seemed that if India wanted it could make Pakistan do anything it
pleased. In Islamabad, the safest policy in the face of a hawkish
establishment was to simply follow India. Islamabad's mistrust of the
international system also forced it to see India and Pakistan cloistered
unequally together in the region without outsiders caring about the
threat to world peace this represented. In the year 2001, however, the
state of the national economy has brought Pakistan to the realisation
that it was unwise to follow India's lead.
Defining strategic balance:What is the military balance that Pakistan
thinks has been disturbed by India's rearmament? Was it there before the
escalation? And if it has been disturbed, why has Pakistan's 'restraint'
since 2000 not put it at risk? The answer to these questions is not easy
because the concept of balance is not entirely computable for all kinds
of people looking at the problem. Pakistan has what has been called an
'equaliser' nuclear device. Going nuclear has presumably redressed the
imbalance that had existed between the two conventional armies. Then, if
the 'equaliser' is there, why should Indian rearmament bother Pakistan?
Is India's escalation in response to the proxy war in Kashmir? India's
escalation has not reduced Pakistan's ability to carry out this proxy
war, at least not yet.
Different Pakistanis look at the proxy war in different ways. Some
oppose it and think that in the ripeness of time, it will lead to an
all-out war, that some day it will all be beyond India's tolerance and a
war will ensue. Some support the proxy war but arrive at the same
conclusion by arguing that India might resort to war to end it. In both
cases, there is an implicit lack of confidence in the 'deterrence'
achieved by the two countries through their nuclear devices. During the
Kargil Operation, the 'deterrence' worked for some time, then gave way
to the fear that an all-out war may be started by India, which in turn
will force Pakistan to resort to a nuclear strike. At least this is what
prime minister Nawaz Sharif was made to think, superseding his earlier
faith in the 'deterrence'. The question is: is India increasing its
defence budget to impose a war on Pakistan?
Rearmament and war:If the past is any indication, India may not be
spending more on arms to wage a war on Pakistan. A war of aggression by
India will immediately lead to a nuclear stand-off because of Pakistan's
inability to absorb a conventional attack on its territory. On the other
hand, past record shows Pakistan, rather than India, taking aggressive
steps after rearmament. This is understandable because Pakistan is the
'reactionary' state unhappy with the status quo which it is committed to
overturning. Anyone outside South Asia will come to the conclusion that
India's escalation is not a preparation for a military assault on
Pakistan but to create in Pakistan a psychological reaction that may
favour its strategy of the status quo. If Pakistan replies by rearming,
the economic price entailed by it will break its back and it will
submerge in a civil war. If Pakistan does not 'reply' in kind, it will
succumb psychologically to the conclusion that taking on India is
against its survival. In other words, more and more opinion-makers in
Pakistan may support the policy of gradually switching off the jehad in
Kashmir.
India and the rest of the world are watching the cost to Pakistan of the
jehad it has unleashed. It has aroused concern in the neighbourhood and
a regional coalition seems to be emerging against it. But more than
that, it is at risk from indigenous elements which represent the
internal cost of jehad. In this scenario, India wants to be seen as
unvanquishable. An increase in military spending can also be a response
to the general Indian feeling that India is helpless to put an end to
the insurrection in Kashmir and stop the 'cross-border interference'
from Pakistan. A political consensus in India after Kargil also allows
the BJP government to rearm without any political backlash. A very
convincing reason for India's escalation has been given by Prof Anwar
Syed ( Dawn 4 March 2001):
India as status quo hegemon:'Even though it has never been stated quite
so bluntly, the fact remains that India's prescription for Pakistan is
plain and writ large. India wants Pakistan to understand that by
comparison it is a small country, that it should refrain from annoying
India in the international forums, and that even if it will not be a
stooge it should stop opposing India's ambition and effort to act as a
big power in world politics. This is more than a mouthful for most
Pakistanis to swallow. Yet it is a fact of life that Pakistan cannot be
an effective rival of India in international politics, nor is it in a
position to stop India from building influence in its region which (in
its perception) includes Southeast Asia, the oil-producing countries
along the Gulf, Iran, Afghanistan and the newly independent Central
Asian republics.'
Prof Syed goes on in his article to correctly advise that it is not for
Pakistan to 'balance' the influence of India in the region. It can
however do that in tandem with other states that may in time seek to
introduce this balance in the region. Military and non-military powers
like Japan, Australia, China, the United States, may all seek this
balance in times to come. Pakistan can position itself now for a
peaceful coalition against India in the future when India's actions in
the region begin to be seen as 'unbalancing'. Pakistan can do that by
quickly reducing its international isolation through a flexible foreign
policy. As things stand however Pakistan sticks out in the region as a
state that militates against peace. That it is in possession of a
nuclear device does not gain it friends; it simply increases
international fear and loathing. Possession of nuclear weapons must go
together with an image of a peace-loving, cooperative and internally
responsible state.
Pakistan's image as a belligerent state:Kenneth Waltz in his book Man,
the State and War has posited that war occurs because of three factors:
that there should be men in charge of the state who prefer war over
peace; that the nature of the state be such that it is constrained to
wage war; and that the international system is configured in such a way
that war becomes inevitable. He is careful to point out that any one of
these factors or 'images' cannot be solely responsible for the waging of
war but a combination of all the three. If we apply the theory to
Pakistan, all the three factors seem to be coalescing against it. The
'man' in Pakistan has a predominant mindset favouring war; the state has
become jehadi, threatening friends and foes in the neighbourhood with a
war it cannot completely control; and that there is a rapidly growing
international coalition of forces (Islamic and non-Islamic alike)
interested in 'reducing' Pakistan as a semi-rogue nuclear state which,
in their perception, is helpless in creating conditions of war, both
covert and overt, regionally and extra-regionally.
The question is if Pakistan cannot pursue its present policy of
aggressive reaction, can Pakistan abandon it without capitulating to
India? Most Pakistanis think that not fighting India would mean giving
in to India. It is definitely not a question of capitulation, but an
alternative policy requiring a flexibility of approach. And that comes
only if you are fully in control of the state internally and there is a
national consensus on ending internal disorder. This brings us to the
ticklish topic of sovereignty. States not internally cohesive soon lose
external sovereignty too. The threats delivered to foreign states by the
various actors in Pakistan's jehad create the conditions for this loss
of sovereignty, as happened in the 18th century Tokugawa Japan. Japan's
historic 'anti-foreignism' caused the samurai to kill foreign traders
till the latter would trade only on the condition of
extra-territoriality and positioning of private troops. Japan lost its
sovereignty gradually as it traded with foreigners. Would foreign states
be justified in approaching Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Mufti Shamzai for
the protection of their nationals? If events continue to take the wrong
turn, this might happen, stripping Pakistan of internal sovereignty as
well.
Balancing the threat of another state may be a very complex process.
There is no settled point beyond which an aggressive or defensive
rearmament may actually lead to war, but there are definitely more than
one ways of achieving security without taking military steps. One step
definitely is to remove the threat that the rearming state perceives.
This is possible without becoming vulnerable because of Pakistan's
possession of the nuclear bomb. The other is to move towards arranging
an international coalition for peace, after dismantling policies that
reinforce isolationism. Most importantly, Pakistan should seriously
think of changing its hostile policy towards those South Asian states
that counter India through cooperation rather than confrontation.
------------------
"jo kHat main kahte they apni jaan mujhko
aaj kHat likhne main unki jaan jaati hai .....;!º¨
[This message has been edited by FYI (edited March 17, 2001).]
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