Stephen Philip Cohen

Good morning. The lights were off for awhile and guess if we had turned the air conditioners off then wewould have resembled the situation in both Islamabad and New Delhi these days — no lights, no electricity,very hot.

From an American perspective, there have been three major regional problems that have bedeviled Americanpolicymakers. These are negative interests.

The first has been Kashmir. Right from the very beginning the United States was engaged in the Kashmirissue. We made a significant attempt to solve it in the '50s — the Eisenhower Administration was deeplyinvolved in negotiations. Then the Kennedy Administration made a major attempt to bring India and Pakistantogether in some kind of dialogue on Kashmir. By 1964-'65, we had really given up on Kashmir and since thenthere's been no significant American initiative on Kashmir.

The other issue is the question of nuclear proliferation. This was a growing concern in the CarterAdministration. The Reagan Administration looked at it. The Bush people followed it. I think American policyreally made this the central focus, America made this the central focus of American policy in the ClintonAdministration and the policy then evolved into the phrase "cap, roll-back, and eliminate" nuclearweapons. That really guided our policy towards South Asia, towards India and Pakistan for a number of years.

More recently, of course, there is the war on terrorism which has not only brought our attention to SouthAsia but our forces to South Asia with the unique situation of American military forces being in both Indiaand Pakistan at the same time and our relationship with those two countries has been changed. We regard bothas allies in this war on terrorism even though they have strong disagreements between each other.

There are of course many positive interests and I don't want to leave the impression that our interests inSouth Asia, especially India and Pakistan, are negative. There are a lot of positive interests. These have tobe balanced, of course, with our concerns.

The evolution of the so-called war on terrorism in South Asia has made us vulnerable to pressure from bothIndia and Pakistan. The Pakistanis for many years have argued that a nuclear war in South Asia could takeplace over Kashmir and Kashmir was officially declared to be the flash point of South Asia by several Americanadministrations. So the Pakistanis have argued that America must put pressure on India to resolve the Kashmirdispute, or at least to get the Indians to talk about Kashmir.

After 9/11 the Indians took that argument and turned it inside out. They argued that terrorism was theleading possible cause of war in South Asia, that Pakistani-supported terrorists in India and Kashmir couldtrigger war between India and Pakistan which could then lead to nuclear detonations by one or both countries,and of course we've seen India putting tremendous coercive pressure on both Pakistan and the United States forthe past five months by military buildup which I think is now beginning to recede. I think there's still thechance of a war, but clearly India has just announced that its navy is going to be pulled away from Karachiand it's allowing Pakistani air flights. So I think the risk of war is probably dropping.

India refused any role in South Asia, rejected any role in South Asia, but in 1999 it accepted an Americanintervention in Kargil where we put tremendous pressure on Pakistan.

I think the U.S. has really three options in South Asia from this point onward. The first is thetraditional policy, the good old fashioned simply love them and leave them policy. We left South Asia in 1965after the India-Pakistan War. We left it in 1972 after we intervened briefly on the side of Pakistan in thewar between India and Pakistan. And we left it again in 1989 after the first Afghan war. All things beingconsidered, this is probably what we would do. All other things being considered, it's probably what we woulddo again. There don't seem to be any vital American interests in South Asia, that is nothing of direct threatto the United States except for possibly events that might occur in Pakistan.

Kargil brought us back into South Asia and really there was a chill towards India. We didn't ignorePakistan completely, but we saw the Clinton Administration then the Bush Administration begin to see India asa rising Asian power, did not see much value in a relationship with Pakistan.

The war on terrorism of course transformed that perspective and Pakistan became a front line state in thewar on terrorism, not only for the war in Afghanistan but clearly for the evolution of Pakistan or thedeterioration of Pakistan into a state which was itself the source of international terror. And as we've seenthe [Guidian Ebb], the other day in fact, has been trained in Pakistan partially, and Pakistan has been atransit point and a training center for a number of al Qaeda and other radicals.

So the first option really was to pull out. The second option was to remain engaged but tilting towardsIndia. A third option really is to engage India and Pakistan but ignore Kashmir. I think that's where theAdministration seems to be heading. As long as we need Pakistan as an ally in the war against terrorismclearly there will be a military relationship and a political relationship with Islamabad, and thisAdministration still sees India as a rising major Asian state.

So I think at the minimum we're going to have a closer relationship with India, the beginning of militarycooperation possibly even nuclear cooperation in the future. As the Indian economy revives, the hope thatthere will be much greater U.S.-Indian economic ties. And in the case of Pakistan there is the promise,although not yet the delivery, of significant economic assistance to Pakistan to help rebuild thisinfrastructure. There could be, and I underline the could, after the elections in Pakistan in October therecould even be renewed military assistance to Pakistan if that's the price the Pakistanis want in order to keeptheir cooperation and keep American forces in Islamabad.

So the third option I think really, and most likely, is to engage India and Pakistan as best we can butignore Kashmir.

The fourth option has been one that has been raised periodically and it's been rejected by successiveAmerican Administrations, and that is to add Kashmir to the mix. To attempt to bring India and Pakistan if notto the bargaining table at least to a process by which they can deal with the Kashmir issue in one form oranother.

The elements of a process which would allow us to do this are now in place. We do have close relations withboth India and Pakistan, closer relations with both than we've had for many many decades. There's good reasonto expand our relationship with India. It's important that Pakistan be retained, that we retain ourrelationship with Pakistan. We don't want to see it deteriorate any further as a state.

Finally, there's a whole array of Kashmir proposals on the table. I won't go into these. Certainly NavnitaChadha knows these much better than anybody else around here, but there are a whole series of proposals thathave been floated about Kashmir for many decades.

But what are the spoilers for any new American initiative? Whether it is a peace process or simply aslightly elevated form of diplomacy. I think there are three.

In India, the Indian hawks want to destroy Pakistan. This has emerged now in the past five months. Thevoices that were very quiet in India about Pakistan have now come out in the open and it's a substantialconstituency in India for the destruction of Pakistan, or for the transformation of Pakistan into a pliable,subservient state to India. In other words destroy the Pakistan army, eliminate Punjabi dominance, really tocreate a revolution in Pakistan, and of course the Indians would like us to do that on their behalf. I don'tthink the Administration is quite prepared to take on that task.

In the case of Pakistan, Pakistani hawks want all of Kashmir. If they can't have Kashmir they want tocontinue to bleed India. As far as they're concerned, the true ultra-hawks in Pakistan, they see India as anartificial creation and they see this kind of Islamic pressure on India as clearly weakening the Indian stateeventually leading to its destruction.

So both India and Pakistan are on the extremes, I think. The radicals or hawks or militant, whatever youwant to call them, who would like to break up a peace process, who do not want to see a step by stepnormalization of India-Pakistan relations which might or might not include Kashmir. Again, here the analogywith the Middle East I think is very appropriate where you get people on both sides who question thelegitimacy of the other side.

I think the third obstacle to a more consistent and coherent American policy towards South Asia, includingpossibly Kashmir, really is in Washington itself. No American Administration has thought of undertaking thelarger task of addressing South Asia as a whole. I think that when asked, I think before the war on terrorismmost people in the Bush Administration would probably have said this is too much for us. It's not where thereare vital American interests.

Furthermore, besides a lack of interest in the region, although certainly it's been elevated since 9/11,furthermore there's a practical question of the time available for policy. It's clear that this Administrationis trying to juggle many balls at the same time. They're trying to pursue a peace process in the Middle Eastthat has collapsed; they're trying to prepare for a possible war against Iraq; they're certainly fighting awar against terrorism. In a number of different countries around the world, while the popularity is very high,they know that this could be [evanescent], and I think that adding a South Asia peace process to this mix maybe simply too much for them.

So it could be that even with the best of intentions this Administration or any American Administrationwould find it simply too much of a burden to take on another region and the problems of another part of theworld.

Let me stop there.

James Steinberg: Before you do, Steve, maybe you could say a word about you think if the U.S. were to pursuethat option what would the substantive content of a U.S. mission —

Stephen Philip Cohen: I think substantively, my own view, and I've shifted my opinion on this, is that we shouldfairly early move towards a position of accepting the Line of Control as essentially the final line betweenIndia and Pakistan.

This is something that the Indians privately have said they would accept. Publicly they reject it. And theIndian hawks in fact would like to see all of Kashmir. They'd like to see all of Pakistan in a sense eitherdestroyed or weakened.

So if America made this proposal that the Indians have privately made, India would certainly reject itinitially. But in the long run might come to accept it. The bigger problem would be in Pakistan. I thinkPakistani public opinion and Pakistan especially among the hawks really sees Kashmir as one of Pakistan's [raisson][inaudible]. Pakistan's support for Kashmir is one reason why Pakistan exists. To me that view is suicidal.That Pakistan stakes it future on Kashmir or getting Kashmir. Pakistan itself is going to be a questionableproposition.

But another part of an American plan besides coming out with some view of Kashmir should be, I think,massive significant economic assistance to Pakistan because I think Kashmir needs this kind of assistance torebuild its civilian institutions. An expanded military relationship with India. And to me, as the track wentahead, I don't think there would be a security problem. I think that India could grow militarily and Pakistan,but as long as Pakistan began to modify its position on Kashmir or accept essentially what has been the Lineof Control, the international border for the past 53 years, I think that the Indians would regard thesituation as satisfactory.

Indians don't want to be bogged down in South Asia. They'd like to play a larger Asian role. The first ofthe Asian [factors] to reform their own economy. But that's a separate policy brief.

I think a package sponsored by the Americans plus other countries, and I do think that other countries haveto be involved with this. Certainly the Japanese, the Chinese, our close allies in Europe, all of thesecountries really have to be reading from the same text to make a credible peace process, as is the case moreor less in the Middle East. You can't have different major powers going in different directions, then India orPakistan would defect and be able to turn to others to get out of it. So I think it has to reach a larger, Iwon't say global, but a process which was seen by most of the major allies and Russia and China in pretty muchthe same way.

James Steinberg: Thank you Steve.

Navnita?