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COPYRIGHT 2001 JAI Press, Inc.
When our eight-person congressional staff delegation flew into New Delhi on January 9, 2000, four months had passed since Congress lifted economic sanctions against India for its May 1998 nuclear weapons test. It had been three months since the United States rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, although Washington was still pressuring India to sign. [1] A week before our arrival, India had exchanged three Kashmiri Islamic terrorists for 160 hostages hijacked aboard India Airlines flight 814. And as our plane landed, the seventeenth Karmapa, the second most prominent Tibetan lama behind the Dalai Lama, fled Tibet for India. The Times of India captured this crisis-to-crisis atmosphere in a front-page cartoon depicting a cabinet meeting in which one Indian minister turns to another and whispers: "He [Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee] is talking about the hijack crisis out of habit! This meeting is about solving the Lama problem." [2]
E. M. Forster once advised a friend traveling to India: "As for being bored, don't mind it . . . . You will never get hold of anything in India unless you experience boredom." [3] I was never bored in India, but still managed to "get hold" of a few things. Most notably, I reached three conclusions after our serial briefings by India's Defense Planning Staff. First, the United States should recognize the worldwide threat posed by Pakistan's support of radical Islamic terrorism. This observation, combined with Pakistan's Kargil border war against India and subsequent military coup in 1999, convinced me that President Clinton should not have visited Pakistan during his South Asia trip in March 2000. The Pakistanis must be made to realize that regional actions have global security consequences. Secondly, India must relent in its fifty-year-long opposition to international involvement in solving the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. Thirdly, assuming that India agrees to international participation, the United State s should offer itself as an honest broker in this matter and devote the same level of attention and resources to resolving it as it has to the Middle East peace process. By doing so, Americans could both reduce future threats of terrorism against themselves and move toward strengthening their post--Cold War relationship with India, whose importance to Asian and indeed global stability will only increase.
Pakistan, Pistols, and the "Balkanization" of India
The Indian Ministry of Defense is housed in South Block, one of three government buildings that includes the former British viceroy's house on Raisani Hill in New Delhi. Called by one architectural historian "the most wonderful architectural undertaking of modern times," these massive structures stand as a monument to the British Raj. [4] A combination of Classic and Renaissance styles in sandstone, topped by Indian motifs of domes and minarets, and surrounded by elephant-shaped topiary, it is a magnificent layout reminiscent of (and in my opinion surpassing) the grandeur of Washington's Capitol Hill. Once inside the ministry, however, we dodged pigeons flying down the halls on the way to our first military briefing. Designed in 1913 and completed in 1930, well before air conditioning, the building includes numerous openings to catch the breeze in a climate where temperatures can reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit. It seems that the ministry has not yet succeeded in enclosing the building.
When we sat down in an air-conditioned room, naval stewards served tea with milk and sugar before officers from India's Defense Planning Staff began an efficient audio-visual briefing, which proceeded like an order of battle. [5] First, a navy commander explained in rapid-fire fashion, with the aid of detailed geographic transparencies, that India has 7,600 kilometers (km) of exposed coastline where "enemies" could land and 15,000 km of inland borders abutting six other nations, as well as a maritime border with the island of Sri Lanka. [6] Of these neighbors, Pakistan's border perimeter is six times smaller than India's, while India's common border with China runs 3,440 km. China, the commander added, also illegally holds 40,000 square km of Indian territory as a result of its invasion in 1962. Although India enjoys good relations with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, all those states are dominated by the Chinese. Moreover, ballistic missiles have rendered virtually meaningless the Himalayas as a phy sical barrier between China and India. Finally, since China has close military relations with Pakistan and both countries possess nuclear weapons, India is caught in...
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