Beware the Provoked War

     Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited India and Pakistan last week. He warned that extremists are trying to destabilize the border between the two nuclear powers and start war. He praised Indian restraint following the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008, but observed that it would be difficult to sustain restraint a second time. The two countries experience continuous friction with one another in their competition for Kashmir and their relations with Afghanistan.

     Gates’ visit to India appeared to center on expanding American weapons sales to India, “rapidly emerging as one of the biggest purchasers of American-made weapons,” according to the Wall Street Journal (January 21, 2010, byline Yochi J. Dreazen). Gates is quoted to the effect that the U.S. has made “significant strides in developing a stable defense trade.” We also have given Pakistan some $3 billion in military aid to suppress the Taliban’s harboring of Al Qaeda, as well as $7.5 billion in non-military aid over five years.

      Consider the interwoven policy considerations:

- The United States is threatened by Al Qaeda’s efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction and continuing terrorist attack attempts. Pakistan, with Yemen, is Al Qaeda’s base of operations. If the Pakistan military will work to reduce this threat, we want to assist.

- Pakistan and India are enemies, stemming from competition to control Kashmir, religious rivalry, long hostility and mutual terrorist attacks. They have fought three wars since British colonial rule ended.. The long border between them is militarized and fortified. Arming one threatens the other. Arming both raises the ante.

- American arms makers have a huge profit stake in selling and/or giving weapons to both nations. Because weapons makers have spread arms manufacture into every Congressional District, American jobs and profits necessitate maximizing these sales. The Supreme Court has legalized corporate financing of political campaigns, so that opposition to a weapons based economy is futile.

- The United States supplies nuclear technology and fuel to India despite India’s unwillingness to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty or assure that weapons grade material will not be created. Global Security Newswire (January 27, 2010) quotes former Australian Foreign Minister Garth Evans saying that the U.S. “Did not demand enough of the Indian government in terms of issues such as nonproduction of fissile material or even nonresumption of [nuclear] testing.”

- India has aggressively staked out economic and diplomatic interests in Afghanistan where the United States is engaged in war, and Pakistan is convinced that India’s motivation is to gain leverage on Pakistan’s western border.

- The United States wants at all costs to avoid invading Pakistan, but uses drones that kill Pakistan civilians to attack Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan.

     Without trying to out-think military strategists, it is time for civilian populations to put their own survival first. Populations are, after all, the ultimate thing of value. It may be time to ask what citizens around the world can do for their own safety that their nations cannot or will not do, because they are too profit centered, religiously fixated, or politically snarled. The agency that is within citizen political reach and power, in all countries to a greater or lesser extent, is cities and towns. Municipal cooperation across borders to influence their nations’ policies, may prove the last resort.