For over four decades now, India has looked on helplessly as all its efforts to promote peace, economic cooperation and regional economic integration in South Asia through SAARC, were thwarted by Pakistan. South Asia remained the least economically integrated region in our immediate neighbourhood, thanks to Pakistani obstructionism. Backed strongly by Afghanistan and Bangladesh, India decided earlier this year to boycott the SAARC Summit, scheduled to be held in Islamabad. This occurred after the Uri terrorist attack. It reinforced moves by India to build communications and energy links sub-regionally with Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan.
All our eastern neighbours (including Myanmar and Thailand) across the Bay of Bengal, who are members of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), were invited for the prestigious BRICS Summit in Goa, signalling to the world that India regarded BIMSTEC, where Pakistan is not a member, and not SAARC, as the prime institution for regional cooperation, in our neighbourhood. The surgical strike across the Line of Control has, meanwhile, created uncertainties in Pakistan, about how we will react in future, to cross-border terrorism. Continuing Indian inaction on cross-border terrorism can no longer be taken for granted by Pakistan, or by the international community.
These moves this year have accompanied steps for closer ties with Japan and ASEAN countries to our east and Afghanistan, Iran, the Gulf Arab States and Israel to our west. While differences with China over its growing military profile in Pakistan and the Indian Ocean Region have continued, both India and China ensured that tensions across the Sino-Indian border don’t rise. In 2017, the primary focus of attention—not only in India but across the world—is going to be on the policies of the new US Administration, headed by the mercurial Mr Donald Trump. His strident anti-Muslim rhetoric has the over 1.6-billion Muslims worldwide concerned and bewildered.
There are also uncertainties on American policies across Asia. US allies like Japan and South Korea have been left astonished by Trump’s assertions that the US would not bear the costs of having to defend them. Moreover, he appears to have totally confused the Chinese by threatening to impose restrictions on China’s exports and on Chinese companies investing in the US.
He has been seen as having reached out to the President of Taiwan (which runs contrary to US policies since 1979), while lashing out at China’s policies in the South China Sea. At the same time he has, with great fanfare, appointed one of his Republican Party colleagues, known to be friendly to China and personally known to President Xi Jinping, as his Envoy to China. The US, being a global power, fashions its ties with India, on the basis of its worldview. The US has, from the days of the Bush Administration, built a growing strategic partnership with India, because India provides a viable balance of power to a growingly assertive, powerful and militaristic China. It is on this basis that the US has expanded military ties with India, supported our Permanent Membership of the UN Security Council and shown increasing support for our efforts to deal with terrorism.
Washington and New Delhi are virtually on the same page in backing the government in Afghanistan to deal with Pakistan-backed Taliban terrorism. While Mr Trump has spoken to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, his comments while talking to Mr Nawaz Sharif have left Indians, Pakistanis and Americans alike, dumbfounded. Moreover, his aides designated for high office in the Pentagon and White House hold differing views on crucial issues like relations with Russia. Deciphering what Mr Donald Trump intends to do will, in itself, be a complex exercise in 2017!
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