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US-Indian Relations in the Post-bin Laden World

This morning's FT reports that Osama bin Laden's neighbors in Abbottabad knew his house contained highly conservative residents, among them both Afghan refugees and Arabic-speakers. Moreover, locals knew that the house's residents bought food in large quantities at a time, had a taste for foreign beverages, burned all their trash and refused to allow their servants to hold second jobs with other employers. How did this not raise red flags? One neighbor, Jehangir Khan, reports that security in the area is heavy: “People are frequently asked to produce their national identity cards.” The case that Pakistan's intelligence is incompetent or complicit grows ever stronger.

Meanwhile, the discovery of Osama bin Laden deep in Pakistan, far from the Afghan border, is likely not only to sour US-Pakistani relations, but also - by extension - to strengthen US-Indian relations. Relations between the world's two largest democracies, though sometimes rocky (as in the case of India's recent rejection of US fighter planes), have general been positive in themselves; complications have primarily arisen from US support to Pakistan. If (or when) that support tapers off, US relations with India will likely continue to improve.

So where might we expect, or hope, for future US-Indian cooperation? Four areas come to mind:

• Anti-piracy operations. We have already seen the Indian Navy take strong actions against Somali pirates. Likewise, the Indian Navy is already active in the Strait of Malacca. The US takes keen interest in the freedom of the seas, particularly in these two regions. Look for growing collaboration between US and Indian forces here.


• Burma. The US has long tried to isolate the Burmese military junta, but a shift in US strategy and signs of possible change in the regime mean we can expect greater engagement in the future. India, by virtue of its border with Burma, has historically taken a more pragmatic approach to the Burmese junta. As American and Indian views converge, expect greater diplomatic and development cooperation.


• Terrorism. India's single greatest terrorist enemy is Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), whose primary aim is to drive India out of Kashmir. While the US is more interested in al-Qaeda, particularly Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), LeT is connected to the international network of Islamic terrorists, and thus the US and India have a common interest in fighting these forces. That Pakistan's ISI has often been a link in this chain complicates US-Indian cooperation, but if American ties to Pakistan decline, the door is opened for greater counterterrorism coordination.


• Africa. India has strong ties to Africa, particularly with such important nations as Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa. Given its historic participation in the Non-Aligned Movement, India enjoys a degree of trust on the African continent which is rarely afforded to the United States. India will be careful to safeguard that status, but the US would do well to support Indian efforts, as a means of aiding African development and as a counterweight to Chinese penetration of Africa. The US presence in UN peacekeeping operations is currently all but non-existent. With the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, however, expect US involvement in peacekeeping to rise somewhat in the coming years. Much of this will be in Africa, where India already participates in peacekeeping missions in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Côte d'Ivoire.

Leave Out the "China"

Those who have been following the news, not only in the last few weeks but for the last few years, know that Beijing has been doing a considerable amount of saber rattling at sea. In fact, China claims the entire South China Sea as sovereign territory. Well, I say we launch a simple campaign to resist Chinese encroachment on the international waters off her coast. Instead of calling them the "East China Sea" and the "South China Sea", why not simply the "East Sea" and "South Sea"? They don't belong to China, so why should we pretend they do? (Admittedly, there will be some confusion with the southern half of the Pacific Ocean, once known as the South Sea or Seas. But that's a bit of an archaic usage, so I think we can manage.)

Turkey's New Role in the World

An excellent article in today's FT raises a question which has been on the minds of many analysts of international affairs: Turkey's evolving role on the global stage.

The basic conundrum is this: is Turkey's growing confidence and departure from the American playbook a good thing or a bad thing? I submit that, by and large, it is a good thing.

I am indebted to George Kennan for pointing out that the US does not need to conquer the world; we simply need to prevent the bad guys from doing so. Thus, he argued that multiple centers of power were perfectly acceptable, so long as no more than one was Soviet. Indeed, encouraging other centers of power could be a good thing, diluting the Soviet share of the total.

Today the Soviets are no longer with us, thankfully, but threats remain from China, Russia and Islamist terrorism. Turkey can serve as a rival to all three. Thus, while I would like to see Turkey maintain good relations with the US, Greece and Israel, I welcome Turkish involvement in the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucus region and Central Asia as well. There will be times Turkey departs from stated American policies; there will be times we step on each other's toes. But we should weigh these costs against the benefits that Turkey brings. How else, for example, could we end up with a secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference coming from a NATO member?

Afghanistan: 1946

If you'd like to take a trip down memory lane, check out this pamphlet put out by the State Department in 1946. Much has changed, of course, but much has not, like the comment from the first page that "transportation to and from this landlocked country has always been slow and difficult."

The Security-Development Nexus

The new issue of Security Dialogue, a journal which "seeks to combine contemporary theoretical analysis with challenges to public policy across a wide ranging field of security studies" is now available online:


Special Issue on the Security-Development Nexus Revisited:
1 February 2010; Vol. 41, No. 1

Mapping the Security—Development Nexus: Conflict, Complexity, Cacophony, Convergence?
Maria Stern and Joakim Öjendal

Development and Security: Origins and Future
Björn Hettne

The Liberal Way of Development and the Development—Security Impasse: Exploring the Global Life-Chance Divide
Mark Duffield

The Security and Development Nexus in Cape Town: War on Gangs, Counterinsurgency and Citizenship
Steffen Jensen

The Bullet in the Living Room: Linking Security and Development in a Colombo Neighbourhood
Camilla Orjuela

Strategic Communication & Smarter Interrogation

I recently came across two interesting bits of national security information on the internet. The first was this interesting website on strategic communication. “Now what,” you rightly ask, “is that?” Well, one of the many useful things the website provides is definitions. In the case of this particular term, it refers to:

“The synchronized coordination of statecraft, public affairs, public diplomacy, military information operations, and other activities... to advance US foreign policy objectives.”

In other words, strategic communication involves making sure that your messages to foreign governments and populations are clear and consistent. All too often, American administrations from either party will forget about key components of strategic communication, or the whole thing. Messages from different governmental entities are frequently contradictory. Often they focus on traditional state-to-state diplomacy, to the neglect of public diplomacy. And they usually ignore the propaganda value of our deeds.

The Strategic Communication website is still a work in progress, and looks raggedy in sections, but there are a lot of good resources already, and I expect more to come.

The second thing I came across was this book, How to Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq by Matthew Alexander. I have not read it yet, but I am intrigued by the title and the reviews I have seen. Cruel and inhuman practices have caused many people to turn up their noses at the term "interrogation" - and rightfully so. But Alexander reminds us that torture is not the only means of obtaining information from captives. Indeed, smarter techniques not only avoid brutalizing the subject, but are also more likely to produce quality information. That is a lesson often lost in the polemics about interrogation.