Barack Obama's Kashmir thesis!

Given its vastly improved relations with the United States and Pakistan, India has no reason to press the panic button. Yet it should be quickly flagging its concerns with the foreign policy team of Senator Barack Obama, should he be declared the Forty-fourth President of the United States on Tuesday night.

In an interview broadcast on MSNBC, Obama suggested that his administration would encourage India to solve the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan, so that Islamabad can better cooperate with the United States on Afghanistan. Obama’s definitive thesis comes in three parts.

“The most important thing we’re going to have to do with respect to Afghanistan is actually deal with Pakistan. And we’ve got to work with the newly elected Government there (Pakistan) in a coherent way that says, terrorism is now a threat to you. Extremism is a threat to you. We should — try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they (Pakistan) can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants”. India entirely agrees with the first two elements but should strongly object to the third.

For months now, New Delhi has been assessing Obama’s seeming hard-line towards Pakistan, including a threat to bomb terrorist bases there if Islamabad failed to act against the al-Qaida and the Taliban. India, however, has paid less attention to the carrot

Obama was offering Pakistan—American activism on Kashmir in return for credible cooperation in Afghanistan.

Obama’s remarks on Kashmir are by no means off the cuff. They have been remarkably consistent since he launched his presidential campaign. In the first comprehensive articulation of his world view in the journal Foreign Affairs during the summer of 2007, Obama argued, “If Pakistan can look towards the east (India) with confidence, it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban.”

If Obama’s Kashmir thesis becomes the policy, many negative consequences might ensue. For one, an American diplomatic intervention in Kashmir will make it impossible for India to pursue the current serious back channel negotiations with Pakistan on Kashmir, the first since 1962-63.

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