India and the WikiLeaks Dispatches

The WikiLeaks publication of purloined U.S. diplomatic correspondence makes for fascinating reading, though so far no bomb-shell revelations have emerged due to the cables’ relatively low security classification.  Much of what they contain regarding U.S. policy in South Asia was already known or strongly suspected.  Nonetheless, they are valuable in providing greater texture to Washington’s decisionmaking and in illuminating the unsolvable conundrums that bear on U.S. and Indian relations with Pakistan. 

First, the dispatches underscore the dysfunctional civil-military dynamics that define the Pakistani state.  The country’s democratically-elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, may be sympathetic to American and Indian grievances but the cables make clear that he is something of a marginal player in Islamabad.  Rather, two years following Pervez Musharraf’s ignominious departure from the scene, the Pakistani army remains the real power behind the throne and in this instance that means General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief, is the country’s de facto ruler. 

Of course, this revelation is no surprise given the history of Zardari making dramatic overtures to India – such as enunciating a no-first use nuclear weapons policy or proposing to send Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, to New Delhi for consultations in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attacks – only to have Kayani immediately quash the overtures.  Still, it is bracing to read that only months after he had been duly elected as president, Zardari apparently feared that the military would assassinate him, that he had made arrangements for his sister to lead the Pakistan’s People Party in the event of his death, and that Kayani was contemplating ousting him from office.   Or that, as a November 2009 dispatch relates, a top government leader worried that the military establishment was intriguing to bring down Zardari’s government.

Second, while most would agree that Pakistan would be better off if genuine democracy took root in the country, the portrayals contained in the dispatches once again highlight the fecklessness of the country’s civilian leaders.  An October 2008 cable relates that Britain’s then-Chief of Defense Staff believed Zardari was “clearly a numbskull,” while a senior British diplomat described him as having “not much sense of how to govern a country…I fear he talks and talks but not much happens.”  A high-ranking official at the British Defense Ministry added that Zardari “does not know what to do and is waiting for someone to provide him a solution,” and Gordon Brown’s foreign and security adviser concluded that it is clear he is “not running the country.”  A January 2009 cable reports that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was particularly contemptuous of Zardari’s leadership skills, saying “when the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”  And in February 2009 the U.S. charge d’affaires in Islamabad warned Washington that “Zardari continues to play politics while his country disintegrates.”

Third, the dispatches offer a sharp critique of U.S. efforts to engage the Pakistani military given the entrenched nature of the India-Pakistan strategic rivalry.  Much to New Delhi’s consternation, Washington has sent billions of dollars of military assistance to Pakistan over the past decade in an attempt to purchase the ending of Islamabad’s support of jihadi groups in Afghanistan.  But in a September 2009 note, then U.S. ambassador in Islamabad Anne Patterson argued that “there is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups, which it sees as an important part of its national security apparatus against India.”   She went on to declare that:

“money alone will not solve the problem of Al Qaeda or the Taliban operating in Pakistan.  A grand bargain that promises development or military assistance in exchange for severing ties will be insufficient to wean Pakistan from policies that reflect accurately its most deep-seated fears.  The Pakistani establishment, as we saw in 1998 with the nuclear test, does not view assistance … as a trade-off for national security vis-a-vis India. The lack of faith in USG [U.S. government] intentions in Pakistan and in relation to India makes such a bargain untenable in the eyes of the Pakistani establishment.”

Fourth, the cables highlight how both India and Pakistan, in varying degrees, distrust U.S. policy, as well as the vast gap that exists between perceived U.S. influence in Pakistan and the actual reality.  Beginning with the Obama administration’s early attempt to project itself as the mediator of the Kashmir issue, New Delhi has feared that Washington, in its search for a way out of Afghanistan, may cut a deal with Pakistan at the expense of Indian interests.  Indian elites took great umbrage at the August 2009 assessment by General Stanley McChrystal, then commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, that “increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India.”  New Delhi’s concerns will not be assuaged by reading that Patterson in September 2009 similarly counseled that:

“we need to reassess Indian involvement in Afghanistan and our own policies towards India, including the growing military relationship through sizable conventional arms sales, as all of this feeds Pakistani establishment paranoia and pushes them closer to both Afghan and Kashmir-focused terrorist groups while reinforcing doubts about U.S. intentions. Resolving the Kashmir dispute, which lies at the core of Pakistan’s support for terrorist groups, would dramatically improve the situation. Enhanced USG efforts in this regard should be considered.”

Yet if India is wary of Washington’s intentions, U.S.-Pakistan relations are fraught with deep distrust.  Then Vice President-elect Joe Biden is quoted in a January 2009 cable as expressing doubts about whether the two countries even shared “the same enemy.”  In a February 2009 dispatch, Ambassador Patterson acknowledged that U.S.-Pakistan relations are “based on mutual mistrust. Pakistan hedges its bets on cooperation because it fears the U.S. will again desert Islamabad after we get Osama Bin Laden; Washington sees this hesitancy as duplicity that requires we take unilateral action to protect U.S. interests.  After 9/11, then President Musharraf made a strategic shift to abandon the Taliban and support the U.S. in the war on terror, but neither side believes the other has lived up to expectations flowing from that decision. The relationship is one of co-dependency we grudgingly admit – Pakistan knows the U.S. cannot afford to walk away; the U.S. knows Pakistan cannot survive without our support.”

The dispatches also illustrate Pakistan’s proclivity for conspiracy theories involving the United States.  In his new book, Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward reveals that Zardari in May 2009 insisted that terrorist attacks inside Pakistan were really being instigated by the United States in order to wrest away control of the country’s nuclear assets.  The same theme appears in a May 2009 cable in which Ambassador Patterson tells Washington that a bilateral agreement to remove spent nuclear fuel from an aging Pakistani reactor is being delayed due to Islamabad’s fears that local media “would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.”  This mindset is exemplified in two other cables.  In February 2008, Patterson reported that Nawaz Sharif, currently leader of Pakistan’s main opposition party, thanked Washington for “arranging” General Kayani’s appointment as army chief, causing her to remark that “the fact that a former prime minister believes the US could control the appointment of Pakistan’s chief of army staff speaks volumes about the myth of American influence here.”  A June 2009 cable pointed out that “the common man (and most importantly the youth) is just as likely to point to America as the nation which has twisted Pakistan’s collective arm, leaving it weak.”

Fifth, the dispatches cast light on India’s military deterrence capabilities vis-à-vis Pakistan.  In 2004, the Indian army unveiled the “Cold Start” military doctrine, which focuses on deterring Pakistan’s use of jihadi proxies against India by holding out the threat of swiftly-mounted but calibrated military responses against Pakistani territory.  Complaining that it is further evidence of New Delhi’s ill intent, Pakistan points to Cold Start to justify its obsessive focus on India, much to the frustration of U.S. officials who want more Pakistani troops devoted to the fight against militant groups.  A year ago, then Indian army chief General Deepak Kapoor highlighted efforts to operationalize the doctrine, which in turn caused Kayani, his Pakistani opposite number, to proclaim the need for an “India-centric” military posture. 

The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, along with India’s new army chief, General Vijay Kumar Singh, has denied that Cold Start even exists as a military goal.  But the issue generated enough concern within the U.S. government for Timothy Roemer, the ambassador in New Delhi, to cable back his own assessment.  He notes in a February 2010 report that New Delhi “failed to implement Cold Start in the wake of the audacious November 2008 Pakistan-linked terror attack in Mumbai, which calls into question the willingness of the [Indian government] to implement Cold Start in any form and thus roll the nuclear dice.”  He added that the strategy “may never be put to use on a battlefield because of substantial and serious resource constraints” and that Pakistani knolwedge about Cold Start “does not seem to have prompted them to prevent terror attacks against India to extent such attacks could be controlled.  This facts calls into question Cold Start’s ability to deter Pakistani mischief inside India.”  That Pakistan is also developing tactical nuclear weapons, as disclosed in a November 2009 dispatch from the embassy in Islamabad, is another factor auguring for Indian military restraint in the event of another Mumbai-type attack.

One final note deserves mention.  Even if the release of the cables is a source of embarrassment for U.S. foreign policy, there may be one salutary effect for Indian diplomacy.   According to a media report, the foreign ministry in New Delhi, a bastion of long-winded bureaucrats, has directed its officer trainees to study the dispatches as models of incisive reporting and analysis.