For nearly eight years, Bush consciously kept Kashmir off the bilateral, regional and international agenda. Despite repeated pressures from Islamabad, Bush refused to interpose himself in the Indo-Pak negotiations on Kashmir. This helped persuade Pakistan to embark on productive bilateral talks with India.

Obama might well change all this. In the Foreign Affairs article last summer, outlining his foreign policy agenda, Obama not only talked about Kashmir but linked it to Pakistan’s Afghan policy. Consider Obama’s dangerous argument in full:

“I will join with our allies in insisting — not simply requesting — that Pakistan crack down on the Taliban, pursue Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and end its relationship with all terrorist groups. At the same time, I will encourage dialogue between Pakistan and India to work towards resolving their dispute over Kashmir and between Afghanistan and Pakistan to resolve their differences and develop the Pashtun border region. 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.”

Put simply, Obama appears to be offering American diplomatic activism on Kashmir in return for Islamabad’s cooperation in fighting al-Qaeda and Taliban. Taken together with Pakistan’s renewed rhetoric on United Nations resolutions on Kashmir, this suggests a possible deterioration in the international environment on J&K during an Obama presidency.

Indo-US relations have surged in the past few years because Bush broke with the traditional American policy on nuclear weapons and Kashmir. This, in turn, was rooted in Bush’s recognition of democratic India’s exceptionalism and his perception of it as a rising great power.

... contd.