After China, are the US and Germany too wooing Pakistan — at India’s expense?

On the face of it may be an expression of the West’s unhappiness over the Indian ‘friend/ally’ not heeding to their appeals/order to honour their unilateral sanctions on Russia, over oil purchases at discounted prices in the wake of the Ukraine War. But the way the US and Germany expressed themselves on their Pakistan ties should show that there is more than meets the eye — indicating their coalescing desire to tick off India in ways they know, and at the same time take their subterranean trans-Atlantic competition for supremacy within the Western world, to South Asia, which remains the nuclear powder-keg of the world, despite the Ukraine War.

It began with the US when the nation’s envoy at Islamabad Donald Blome visited Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) and referred to it with the ‘Azad’ suffix, as preferred by the hosts. Alongside, the US State Department issued a Level-2 ‘Travel Advisory’, fourth being the highest, for American citizens to ‘exercise increased caution’ while travelling to India, owing to ‘crime and terrorism’ and not to visit the Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir.

By referring to ‘crime’, the US administration of President Joe Biden was trying to paint India black when indiscriminate shooting incidents in American campuses and streets by the nation’s citizens by itself has been spreading shock and killing more, on any given day. Foreigners too have died, but governments have been circumspect in issuing travel advisories of the kind — indicating that it is more a political weapon than a mere police statement.

Yet, on the issue of terrorism, the State Department statement shied away — and for the first time in years — to name Pakistan as the main source of cross-border terrorism in and against India, even if separately. Incidentally, the US administration did not issue a similar ‘travel advisory’ on Pakistan, where things are much worse, and even the economic situation is as unpredictable as in Sri Lanka a few months back.

Moving along, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin received Pakistan Army Chief Gen Qamar Bajwa at the Pentagon only days after he had ordered a ‘honour cordon’ to receive India’s External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar. Around that time, two US Coast Guard ships also visited Pakistan in a display of ‘strong relationship and cooperation’ between the two countries.

As stand-alone issues, barring the US envoy visiting POK and using the ‘Azad’ phrase, and also the timing of the ‘Travel Advisory’ when the ground situation did not demand it, the rest of America’s initiatives viz Pakistan could be termed as stand-alone affairs that could not be avoided in bilateral engagements between non-adversarial nations. But the US conduct and behaviour vis-à-vis Pakistan have lent themselves to a different interpretation after the US announced a $450-million redux package for American F-16 fighters, which Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has used only against India in the past, despite Washington’s promises to the contrary, to New Delhi.

That the US had not taken the Indian friend/ally into confidence, as has been customary, hurt Indian street and governmental sentiments as much as the purpose and impact of the American decision. In particular, NRI propagandists for increased bilateral ties should be looking the other way in this hour of huge domestic embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which had invested so much on the US relations since assuming power in 2014.

That the Modi dispensation has only been building up on the strengths inherited from the rival Congress government of two-term prime minister Manmohan Singh should ease political criticism nearer home but that does not alter the new situation on the ground. It is not only the US that has begun sniping at India after a long ‘honeymoon’ over the past years. Germany, otherwise docile, if not outrightly supportive of India in the past, too has joined the ‘K-game’, if the ‘Kashmir issue’ could be called so, that too in the midst of the Ukraine flux in its immediate neighbourhood.

Role and responsibility

It happened when German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock received her Pakistan counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Not only did the German Minister let the Bhutto-Zardari family political heir have his say, she also joined in, blaming India. Bilawal spoke about alleged human rights violations in Jammu & Kashmir. Baerbock, in her turn, said that Germany also had a ‘role and responsibility’ with regard to the Kashmir situation and supported ‘intensively the engagement of the UN to find peaceful solutions in the region’.

India has since promptly rebuffed the US, Germany and of course Pakistan. Where it was not Minister Jaishankar personally, MEA’s spokesperson Arindam Bagchi stepped in. At a joint news conference with Australian counterpart Penny Wong in Canberra, Jaishankar went as far as to point out how the West ‘preferred military dictatorship’ — a reference to US-Pakistan ties from the past — and did not supply weapons to India for decades. He sort of attributed the latter for the ‘long-standing relationship (with Russia) that has certainly served New Delhi’s interests well’. India has a ‘substantial inventory of Russian-origin weapons’, he explained in this regard.

Both the US and Germany are using Pakistan to their own ends, big and small. In the post-Cold War era, Washington wanted India against a rising China. Now after the commencement of the Ukraine War, it seems to be viewing India’s balanced diplomatic approach and ignoring the West’s dictum against importing Russian oil as defiance of its writ. Even in multiple UN votes, both in the Security Council and the General Assembly, India has voted against Russia only on procedural issues. On substantive matters, New Delhi has abstained. The West interprets it as a support for Russia, even though the Russian veto (alone) helped in the UNSC, and the UNGA votes supported Ukraine and the West, repeatedly.

Traditional sphere of influence

The US wants total loyalty from friends and allies, but India has repeatedly refused to fall into the slot. But in the changed scenario after the Ukraine War, India, especially EAM Jaishankar has been reacting sharply to the West’s pontifications, word for word, phrase for phrase. He did so earlier while in Europe, Slovakia to be precise, and in the US, both in the UN and outside, in his interactions with American audiences, and possibly American leaders, too, when he met.

Some in the US may even see in the independent Indian thinking, the possibility of an early revival of the old, Cold War era ties between the other two. It is farther from the truth. Yet, they may have an argument, as throughout their ties, the Soviet Union treated South Asia and the Indian Ocean Region as India’s ‘traditional sphere of influence’ for India’. The Indian premise collapsed after the end of the Cold War, even though the India-US geo-strategic ties have flourished exponentially.

During the contentious Cold War period, India ended up siding with Moscow mainly because, the US-led West having chosen Pakistan as their submissive South Asian ally first, began branding India as a ‘fellow-traveller’ of the Soviet Union even though India’s socialist credentials and preferences those days were steeped in ground realities of a life after British colonialism. In geo-political terms, the Indian foreign policy India identified the Soviet Union’s relative weakness against the US as its ‘strategic strength’. All of it ended, post-Cold War.

In ways, post-Cold War, India and the US shared strategic concerns and interests, flowing from an over-ambitious China, which was also getting equally empowered in political, economic and military terms, mainly through unthinking largesse from the West since the late seventies. India could (have) argue(d) that the US President Richard Nixon’s secret visit to China, using Pakistan as a base in 1972, started off it all — and was also designed this way after India had snubbed the US Seventh Fleet in the closing days of the successful ‘Bangladesh War’, the previous year.

Global ambitions, reach

Germany has no such China concerns, at least not yet. Germany, France and the original old-world members of the European Union (EU) may also feel that way just now as they do not yet have the global reach, even if they already have global ambitions, which they all have had through centuries until the end of the Second World War. Hence, China is not as much a threat to a continental power like Germany though for the years and decades to come, western Europe had seen itself as taking over the leadership of the ‘free world’ from an ever-weakening America.

In the immediate context, Germany seems wanting continued Pakistani assistance in getting friendly Afghans out of reach from the Taliban rulers. Yet, given its long-term assessment of an emerging global order, Berlin and Brussels, together and separately, seem to have attested to the geo-strategic importance of South Asia, and the need to have a dependable ally at the mouth where Pakistan is situated. Having possibly understood the inherent limitations in trying to woo India, for more reasons than one in the post-Cold War years, it should not surprise anyone if nations with greater ambitions and deeper pockets seek out Pakistan’s arm.

There may however be a deviation between the American and trans-Atlantic German/European approach. The US needs to woo back Pakistan possibly back to its camp, having given up on that nation as an ally of China in geo-strategic terms and a source and base of international terrorism, which targets nations and regions beyond India, which alone was of immediate Islamabad interest.

Course correction or what

In what reads like a belated re-thinking or course-correction of the new-found American policy, President Biden, addressing his Democratic Party’s campaign committee meeting, dubbed Pakistan as ‘one of the most dangerous nations in the world’. A White House statement quoted him as saying, “What I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world, Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

Pakistan did not lose time, with Foreign Minister Bilawal declaring that they were summoning the US Ambassador to register their protest over Biden’s remark, especially after former Prime Minister Imran Khan held incumbent Shehbaz Sharif ‘responsible’ for the ‘total failure’ of the government’s foreign policy. Bilawal sought to drag in India unnecessarily when he declared, “Pakistan is adamant on ensuring its integrity and safety. If questions are to be raised then they should be over Indian nuclear weapons.”

News reports ahead of Biden’s statement had said that Pakistan was likely to be removed from FAFT’s terror-funding grey list’, after four years. How it works out on the ground remains to be seen now. The latest news is that the US mission in India has released hundred thousand work-related H & L visa-appointments, which was not forthcoming despite repeated Indian requests at multiple levels.

How far India is going to be impressed, if at all, also remains to be seen. But before Biden, American policy-makers have given a free lesson for India that when it came to Pakistan, the leopard had not changed its spots, whatever the prism-like perception that they might have wanted India to have in these past years without Osama bin-Laden.

Until commencement of the current phase, China alone used to be seen as a reluctant suitor for Pakistan, as the former needed the latter in the context of their independent India relations/adversity.  Beijing should also be conscious of the fact that if the chips are down, Pakistan needs it more than the other way round. Even theoretically, for China to negotiate border peace and resolution with India would be more difficult if it sought to tie up with Pakistan. The India-Pakistan border solutions and peace are more complex than the physical realities on the ground, which however is the case with China.

Sitting on a powder-keg?

Of course, Pakistan needs the US and the West the most now, for its economic revival after China’s BRI had failed the nation, even if it were not a ‘debt-trap’ as the West wants Islamabad to believe. Islamabad can do with additional funding from Europe, from nations such as Germany — and that comes with a price, which Islamabad has readily given and has also extracted vis-à-vis the Indian adversary.

Thus, Pakistan finds itself in an uncanny and unplanned position to be able to dictate terms to multiple partners, namely China with which it has an ‘all-season’ relationship, the US, with which it has been a love-hate tie all along, and now Germany, if both take their bilateral mood forward. But it also means Pakistan may be sitting on a powder-keg, and could get caught in the cross-fire of friendly fire. India will have to only sit it out, in such a case!

The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and commentator. Views expressed are personal.

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