The Bush Administration’s doctrine of pre-emption in Iraq seems to have come back to haunt it, with officials scrambling to justify why India cannot do the same with Pakistan.
“Attempts to draw a parallel between Iraq and Kashmir are overwhelmed by differences between the two situations,” Administration officials said in response to Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha’s statements citing the war in Iraq as justification for an Indian attack against Pakistan for continuing cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.
In a carefully prepared statement, U.S. officials said, “We recognize the very serious nature of the situation in Kashmir as our recent joint statement with Britain made clear, but the two situations were not comparable.”
The U.S. and its coalition allies took action against Iraq only after 12 years of United Nations Security Council resolutions — including the unanimously approved Resolution 1441, which was also strongly supported by India — failed to achieve Iraq’s disarmament, it said.
“These circumstances, which made the coalition action necessary in Iraq, do not apply in the subcontinent and should not be considered a precedent,” it said.
But the officials acknowledged that cross border infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir “has not stopped yet and it is something we have said needs to stop.” Washington was in regular touch with Islamabad and New Delhi “to ensure that the situation does not get out of hand.”
But in interviews with India Abroad, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), ranking minority member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and several South Asia analysts said the U.S. action in Iraq had established a precedent that could be cited for an attack on Pakistan. But according to Biden, it could also be used by China to attack India.
Biden told India Abroad that he was concerned that India’s angst over the U.S. action in Iraq, ignoring the United Nations and the international community, could imperil ties between New Delhi and Washington.
“The jury is still out on that,” he said. “It depends on how well we handle the aftermath. I am worried about what the reaction would be depending on what the situation is like, six months from now, or a year from now.”
“Any country may consider preemption if it believes itself faced with an imminent danger. But before making such a decision, it leaders need to think carefully, both about the risks they are incurring,” said Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But “in the final analysis, the Indian government has the responsibility to decide how to deal with its security challenges,” she said.
“Most American analysts — including, I believe, the senior levels of the Bush Administration— believe that war between nuclear adversaries is not an acceptable option. They also believe that it poses grave dangers to U.S. interests.”
“So when they spoke out,” she said, “they weren’t judging whether preemption is ever acceptable for India, or for anyone else. They were arguing in today’s circumstance, it would be a very dangerous action.”
“On that last point, I agree with them despite my objections to the administration’s preemption policy,” Schaffer added.
Karl F. Inderfurth, former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs and currently professor of international relations at George Washington University said, “When the U.S. announces that it is pursuing a course of action, which legitimizes preemptive or preventive action, how could the U.S. argue that other countries — whether it be India or anyone else— cannot also pursue a similar course of action? This would be a double standard. This would be hypocrisy.”
The action in Iraq had set “a very dangerous precedent and example for other countries,” whether in South Asia or “any other context,” said Inderfurth, adding that the current “running debate on Kashmir and Iraq and how they play into this would question of preemption was to be expected.”
“The U.S. warnings to India do not come as a surprise. Those in the Bush Administration who pushed for this war with Iraq, rightly or wrongly, see their case as being unique,” said Sumit Ganguly, professor of Asian Studies and Government at the University of Texas at Austin.
“More to the point, there is an unstated assumption that the United States as the leading global power has the prerogative of demolishing a pesky, difficult regime that has long troubled its neighbors, some of whom happen to be American allies of convenience, such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.”
“It is not prepared to concede this right to a regional power, India,” Ganguly said. “Furthermore, key members of this administration believe that Pakistan’s cooperation still remains crucial to the war on terror, and consequently, they cannot be seen as abandoning Pakistan despite its feckless support for terror in Kashmir and beyond.”
This strategy “of carefully trying to maintain good relations with India and Pakistan against the backdrop of the Iraq War and Pakistan’s support for terror in Kashmir, runs the risk of ruining much of the solid progress that has been made in Indo-U.S. relations over the past decade,” he warned.
