U.S. Must Make South Asia a High Foreign Policy Priority or Face Crises in the Region That Will Pose Major Threats to U.S. National Security
By experts and staff
- Published
October 30, 2003 - After the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the massing of a million men on the borders of nuclear-armed India and Pakistan in 2001, the critical importance of South Asia to global and U.S. national security is absolutely clear. Securing a moderate Muslim state in Pakistan, consolidating and deepening increasingly important U.S.-India ties, actively encouraging peaceful relations between India and Pakistan, and ensuring an Afghanistan where terrorists can never again find shelter must be priority foreign policy goals for the United States.
To capitalize on the opportunities and to address the dangers that these countries present for U.S. interests, a Chairmen’s Report of the Independent Task Force on India and South Asia co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Asia Society calls on Congress and the Bush administration to adjust U.S. policy toward the region and give it sustained, high-level attention.
The Task Force was co-chaired by Frank G. Wisner, former U.S. ambassador to India, Nicholas Platt, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and current president of the Asia Society, and Marshall M. Bouton, President of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations; it was co-directed by Dennis Kux, Senior Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Mahnaz Ispahani, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Among the key findings and recommendations:
- Pakistan presents one of the most complex and difficult challenges facing U.S. diplomacy anywhere in the world today. Its political instability, entrenched Islamist extremism, economic and social weaknesses, and dangerous confrontation with India have cast dark shadows over the nuclear-armed nation. Even though Pakistan offers valuable help in rooting out al-Qaeda remnants, it has failed to prevent Islamist terrorists from using its territory as a base for armed attacks on Kashmir and Afghanistan. The United States has a major stake in a stable Pakistan at peace with itself and its neighbors and should be prepared to provide substantial assistance toward this end. The extent of U.S. assistance, however, should be calibrated with Islamabad’s own performance and conduct.
- India, with its democratic political system and decade of steady economic advance, holds out the prospect for long-term political and security ties and substantially expanded trade and economic relations with the United States. The medium term policy challenge for the United States and India is to complete the transition from past estrangement through engagement on to genuine partnership.
- Given the dangers inherent in festering India-Pakistan rivalry, the United States should become more active in trying to help the two nuclear-armed enemies manage their differences. Their hostility, and its most neuralgic point, the dispute over Kashmir, remains the gravest threat to regional peace and U.S. interests. India’s most recent proposals to Pakistan, although limited, and the overtures to the Hurriyat group are encouraging moves. In the short-term, the goal for U.S. diplomacy should be to help start a bilateral process of India-Pakistan negotiations. A plausible place to begin would be working out a comprehensive cease-fire along the Kashmir Line of Control (LOC), the most likely flashpoint of wider conflict.
- Given the nuclear proliferation risks in South Asia, the executive branch should be conducting a searching review to examine possible ways to find a place for a nuclear India and Pakistan within the global nonproliferation framework. In the meanwhile, it should be working to ensure tighter controls against leakage of sensitive nuclear technology and material.
- In Afghanistan, reconstruction has stalled partly because of inadequate resources, but mainly because of deteriorating security outside Kabul, especially in the Pashtun areas bordering on Pakistan. The Task Force recommends that much more be done to improve security and to strengthen the capabilities of the central government. In particular, the United States should be actively supporting:
Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, national membership organization and a nonpartisan center for scholars dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas so that individual and corporate members, as well as policymakers, journalists, students, and interested citizens in the United States and other countries, can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.
The Asia Society is America’s leading institution dedicated to fostering understanding of Asia and communication between Americans and the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. A national nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization, the Society provides a forum for building awareness of the more than thirty countries broadly defined as the Asia-Pacific region.
Contact: Lisa Shields, Vice President, Communications, (212) 434-9888