Obama’s first crisis

When he announced his national security team on Monday, Obama reaffirmed his solidarity with India that he had earlier conveyed to Manmohan Singh. He also declared that “the situation in South Asia as a whole and the safe havens for terrorists that have been established there, represent the single most important threat against the American people”.

During the campaign, Obama articulated the proposition that Afghanistan can’t be stabilised without addressing the problems insidePakistan. He also pointed to the relationship between the crises on Pakistan’s western and eastern frontiers.The Mumbai attacks are likely to reinforce his conviction that South Asia needs an integrated approach. If the Bush administration is unable to manage the crisis in the next weeks, it could well be the first order of diplomatic business when Obama is sworn in next month.

At the moment though, American attention will be riveted to Indo-Pak crisis management rather than conflict resolution. Although Rice is not traveling to Pakistan in an obvious mediatory effort, India knows Washington is fully engaged with Islamabad on defusing the gathering tension. Obama promised that his “administration will remain steadfast in support of India’s efforts to catch the perpetrators of this terrible act and bring them to justice”.

Rice’s options

Rice is no stranger to South Asian crises. When terrorists attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001, Rice was the national security adviser to President Bush and was instrumental in pressing Pakistan to ban Lashkar e Toiba and other anti-India terror groups operating in Pakistan. To defuse the Indo-Pak military confrontation in 2001-02, Rice got Musharraf to promise that he will put a permanent end to cross-border terrorism.

This time she will have to do a lot more. Dr. Singh has already heard many positive words from Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari about cracking down on anti-India terror groups. If Zardari can’t match his words with deeds, Manmohan Singh will have to make good of his threat to extract a cost from Pakistan for the attacks.

Before her arrival in New Delhi, Rice demanded that people responsible “must be brought to justice”. Having named names in a demarche to Pakistan on Monday, India’s fingers are crossed. The big question is whether Rice has something credible to offer, in terms of concrete Pakistani actions.

Hillary innuendo

While the Indian American community is pleased that Obama has nominated Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, sections of the American media have begun to question her potential objectivity in managing the Indo-Pak crisis.

Within a day of her nomination as America’s top diplomat, the US news agency AP ran a story casting doubt over Hillary’s credentials. Quoting unnamed diplomats in Washington, AP said, “Clinton’s close ties with India forged during her years as a US senator and presidential candidate could complicate diplomatic perceptions of her ability to serve as a neutral broker between India and its nuclear neighbour, Pakistan.”

Clinton has seen a lot worse to be fazed by this India innuendo. New Delhi, which has dealt with Washington with enough intensity over the last decade, knows that personal connections are useful in a diplomatic sense but rarely decisive in strategic terms.

As Hillary takes over from Rice next month, the US and India are confronted with the gigantic challenge of altering Pakistan’s internal structures. Without that neither the US nor India will be safe from terror.

The writer is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.