From the Bruce Reidel's transcript posted above:
Secondly, the United States now should engage in creative and dynamic regional diplomacy aimed at normalizing Pakistan’s borders, both east and west, and its situation in South Asia. I’ve already told you why Pakistan is unique in so many areas, but there’s one more. Pakistan, for a large country, has unrecognized borders east and west. In the East, the line of control between Azad Kashmir and Kashmir and Jammu remains an unrecognized international border. And
in the West, the Durand Line, the line between Afghanistan and Pakistan, has never been recognized by an Afghan government. Why should it? It was drawn arbitrarily by a British civilian more than 100 years ago. But it’s not normal and it’s not healthy for a country to not have borders. to not have secure borders it can live within. We keep asking Pakistan to secure its border with Afghanistan. It’s difficult to do that when the Afghan government still fails to recognize the legitimacy of the Durand Line. What should the United States do? Well, first thing it should not do is appoint a high-level special representative with the job of securing Pakistan’s borders. We need to do things that are very unAmerican in our diplomacy: subtle, sophisticated, and behind-the-scenes.
Secondly, we need to think about Pakistan’s border with India. India, after all, is the issue that has obsessed Pakistan for 60 years. Anyone who goes back and looks at how Pakistan was created, and at
partition, would understand that obsession. Sure, Pakistan has done a lot to create an enemy in India,
but we’re past that point. Paranoids do have enemies and these two countries are now enemies. The United States should not engage in mediation between India and Pakistan. That would fail in a nanosecond.
But what we should do is try to support the bilateral process between these two countries. Let’s try to restart what President Zardari tried to do in early and mid-2008. Small steps to reopen trade, to reopen
transportation links, to develop air service between Islamabad and New Delhi, hoping that small steps will lead to bigger steps. General Musharraf, after all, after he tried nuclear blackmail, a small conventional war, terrorism, also turned to diplomacy. He may have been a slow learner, but in the end he learned that the solution was a back channel between New Delhi and Islamabad. My suspicion is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh every night thinks, I wish I’d grabbed
Musharraf’s offer more energetically and taken it to the bank when I had the chance.
The United States cannot make this happen, but it can help with subtle, sophisticated, and behind-the-scenes diplomacy because this is the big idea America should stand for in South Asia. A South Asia that puts behind it the wars of the last half-century and begins to thinking about South Asia that is a shining South Asia. Not just for India, not just for
Pakistan, and not just for Afghanistan, but for all the residents of the subcontinent.
Think out of the box. So I went back to my office and told my staff we’re going to spend the weekend thinking crazy thoughts and we’re going to consult with a lot of people and ask them what out-of-thebox solutions are there to Pakistan. One out-of-the-box solution is we could buy them off. What is it that Pakistan wants so badly that if we give it to them, they’ll do anything we want? I asked a lot of people. For example, how about a civilian nuclear power deal like
India has? All the nonproliferation people blanched and said horror of horrors, how could we do that? But when I asked experts what would Pakistan’s reaction be, they all universally said the same thing: Pakistan
would say thank you very much. Now you’ve given us what you owed us and we’re even and we can start over.
In other words, you got nothing for it other than we’re back to square zero
Now, that dialogue should have red lines in it. There should be behavior which we are clear with Pakistan we won’t tolerate. And there ought to be "or-else"s, very specific "or-else"s. If there are members of the Pakistani Intelligence Service who we believe are involved in international terrorist attacks, we should put them on the U.N.’s list of
wanted individuals involved in terrorism. According to David Headley’s interrogation by the Indians and by the Department of Justice, there’s a Major Iqbal out there. Major Iqbal ought to be on the list by the United Nations and by the United States of terrorists we’re looking for, not sanction Pakistan, not sanction the Pakistani army. That’s a real or-else
that’s personal and serious, but that ought to be the exception
MR. RIEDEL: First, I agree with everything Michael has said. How is it done? General Kayani was here, the chief of army staff, just two months ago. I wasn’t in the meeting between General Kayani and President Obama, but my understanding is that General Kayani said, in effect -- and these are my words, not his -- you’re not addressing my
strategic imperatives. You’re not addressing the issues that matter strategically to me as the chief of army staff of Pakistan. What I think he was trying to say is India. India, India, India. By his own definition General Kayani has said he is the most India-centric chief of army staff that Pakistan has ever had, and that’s quite a statement
to make given some of the chief of army staffs Pakistan has had. How do we address it? We address it by trying to help
Pakistan and India get back to the back-channel negotiations that they
worked on in 2005/2006.
Is it impossible? I don’t think so, and here’s the reason I don’t think it’s impossible. On the Pakistani side, I think President Zardari understands the importance of this. I can’t speak for General Kayani, but I know that General Musharraf included General Kayani in his back-channel negotiations. He was part of the process. On the Indian side, which is where right now the logjam is -- because it’s the Indians who, quite rightly, in the wake of Mumbai, said how can we trust these people? On the Indian side, we have a prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and a leader of the Congress Party, Sonia
Gandhi, who I think understand one critically important fact: A jihadist Pakistan is the globe’s worst nightmare of the 21st century. For Americans it’s a nightmare on the other side of the planet. For Indians it’s a nightmare next door.
MS. SEROHI: Hi. My name is Sima Serohi. I’m an Indian journalist. You say that Kayani thinks that -- you know, Kayani is one of the most India-centric generals. What do you understand by that? Is he saying that, you know, India’s about to wage war on Pakistan? Given the history, all of the wars been started by Pakistan, the most recent being in
Kargil. So what does this -- I mean, I don’t understand it. Most Indians would say that this is just an excuse for not doing anything. And if helicopters are the most important things they need, how come the U.S. is giving them, you know, sophisticated things that might be used against India?
The other question’s about Kashmir. Do you think if Kashmir were resolved tomorrow, would -- do you think the Pakistani army would sort of sever its ties with terrorists? And would peace return? Many Indians would not be convinced of that.
MR. RIEDEL: Let me deal with the second question first, Kashmir. Of course not, any more than resolving the status of the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem will resolve all the problems of the Middle East. If the bar is what policy solution solves everything, then even Brookings can’t give you an answer. (Laughter)
Would it move in the right direction? Yes, of course it would. Kashmir has been a poison between India and Pakistan for 60 years. I think that’s why Prime Minister Singh tried to find a way to resolve it with Musharraf. It’s not the be-all and end-all. Nothing is. But it’s important. We don’t have to start with Kashmir either. What I talked about is let’s build trade routes, let’s open transit routes. You know, you can fly from here to New York every hour on the hour. Well, in theory you can. In reality, when you get to Reagan, usually you can’t, but in theory you can fly every hour. You can’t do that between Delhi and Islamabad. How many flights are there from Delhi to Islamabad a week? A handful.
That’s not a healthy situation for two countries. General Kayani. General Musharraf picked General Kayani in 2008 to be his chief of army staff not so that he would move off into exile in London. He thought General Kayani was going to be able to ensure that he could continue in office. Now, if General Musharraf can’t read General Kayani, I can’t read General Kayani. I don’t pretend to know what he thinks. I’ve met him. I think he’s a sphinx. He’s not unique. After all, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto handpicked General Zia to be chief of army staff and Nawaz Sharif handpicked Pervez Musharraf to be chief of army staff. My point is trying to read chiefs of army staff, maybe Shuja Nawaz can do it, but I can’t do it, so I don’t try to.
What I’ve heard him say is this is my strategic imperative. It is not secret that India is the obsession that motivates Pakistani army behavior more than anything else. That doesn’t have to be in a good way or a bad way, it’s a reality, so let us deal with that obsession. Helicopters. I think you were alluding to F-16s, and here I want to make a policy point. We decided to give Pakistan F-16s back in the Reagan Administration. Pakistan doesn’t have advanced attack
helicopters. It doesn’t have drones. So when they fight the militants in Swat or Waziristan, they use the platform they have, which is an F-16. It’s not the optimal platform. When they started doing (inaudible) in Swat, Pakistani pilots were given a photograph taken on the ground of the target and they taped it inside the cockpit, and their mission was go bomb that thing. That’s insanity. After Swat, they came -- the Pakistani air force came to us and said we need to have the advanced radar systems and guidance systems to be able to do a proper job. Now, that was a hard policy decision for the Obama Administration, a very tough policy decision. Because the same radar systems, the same advanced avionics that allow you to attack a target in the Swat Valley will also be perfect for attacking an Indian armored column in the Punjab someday. But these are the kind of real-world decisions that we have to make about Pakistan. I think the Obama
Administration did the right thing. It gave them those avionics, which may come back to haunt us someday, but in the real world it was the right decision to make
SPEAKER: Hi. I’m also a journalist from India. President Hu visits Washington today and the U.S. and China have enough bilateral hurdles and issues to work out over the next two days, but is there any role the China can play to help the U.S. get out of this quagmire they’re in in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
MR. RIEDEL: Absolutely. Pakistanis like to say that America treats their country like a tissue: use it and throw it away. They actually have some other examples, but I won’t use those in this audience. (Laughter) When they talk about China, they say China is the all-weather ally, higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the Indian Ocean. China is Pakistan’s most important source of military equipment, conventional and unconventional. They have to be part of this. China is, after all, a party to the Kashmir dispute. It holds part of Kashmir. At least pre-1947 Kashmir is held in Chinese hands.
China’s relationships with both Pakistan and India are shifting in important ways. China no longer sees Pakistan and India as a game in which Pakistan is used as a foil against India. It hasn’t given up that, but it also sees India just like the rest of the world sees it: the economic salvation of mankind in the 21st century is those 500 million Indian middle class who are going to go out and buy something that you want bought in your country. That new dynamic in the relationship between Islamabad, Beijing, and New Delhi is something we ought to be trying to leverage. It’s part of the big diplomacy that I’m talking about. China needs to be there, Saudi Arabia needs to be there, the United Arab Emirates needs to be
there. We got to bring all the players who have an input into the process and all of those who have a stake in its outcome
