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183
Ignoring widespread international objections, China obliged.42 It is not hard
to imagine similar patterns in the future: Washington assisting India, Beijing
helping Pakistan in response.
Such a dynamic seems all the more likely because Pakistan considers China
to be its closest international ally. This is nothing new. There can be no dis-
counting the fact that Beijing has provided Pakistan with strategically critical
military and nuclear technologies.43 At times, China has also served as a signif-
icant diplomatic lifeline and buffer against outside pressure. Most egregiously,
Beijing has repeatedly blocked the United Nations (UN) from placing a number
of Pakistanis on official global terrorist lists, including members of Lashkar-e-
Taiba (LeT).44 China’s friendship with Pakistan makes Indian aggression far
less likely. For this reason alone, many Pakistanis tend to welcome a strong,
assertive China – especially one that takes a tougher line against India.
Just two weeks after the killing of Osama bin Laden, when U.S.-Pakistan
relations were especially tenuous, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
embarked on a state visit to Beijing. “We are proud to have China as our
best and most trusted friend,” he told his hosts, “and China will always find
Pakistan standing beside at all times.”45 Not a trip to Beijing goes by without
Pakistanis reciting their time-worn mantra that Pakistan enjoys an “all-weather
friendship” with China that is “higher than the mountains, deeper than the
oceans, sweeter than honey, and stronger than steel.”
By coincidence, I was in Islamabad for a research trip the nerve-jangling
week after the May 2011 U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. I got my
own dose of Pakistani views about China. At a mildly contentious roundtable
discussion with Pakistani pundits, journalists, academics, and retired officials,
one of the participants suggested that China would undoubtedly fill America’s
shoes if the United States ever abandoned Pakistan. Having been to Beijing
a month earlier where there seemed to be a lot less enthusiasm about such a
scenario among Chinese officials and scholars, I recommended that Pakistanis
should pay close attention to how China’s other prot ég é, the famine-plagued
hermit kingdom of North Korea, had fared under Beijing’s wing. The point
was taken, but grudgingly.
Pakistanis and Chinese may claim deep, abiding friendship, but in their
rhetorical excesses, both tend to mistake China’s hardheaded realism for
42 Glenn Kessler, “Washington Objects to China-Pakistan Nuclear Deal,” Washington Post, June 14, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/14/AR20100
61404680.html.
43 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 287.
44 In a May 16, 2012, author’s interview with Hamid Gul in Islambad, the former ISI director claimed that only Chinese assistance kept his own name off the United Nations’ list of international terrorists. See also Mukund Padmanabhan, “China’s ‘Hold’ Stopped Designation of LeT, Jaish Leaders,” The Hindu, June 7, 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/
article2082626.ece.
45 Chris Buckley, “Pakistan Plays China Card with Prime Minister’s Visit,” Reuters, May 17, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/17/us-china-pakistan-idUSTRE74G0KT20110517.
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No Exit from Pakistan
generous altruism. In Pakistan’s major wars with India as well as in more
recent Indo-Pakistani crises, Beijing’s assistance has been marginal. China has
been more likely to counsel Pakistani restraint than to back its leaders to the
hilt. China is undoubtedly useful to Pakistan, and China’s rising power makes
it even more attractive to its weaker neighbor, but if Pakistan were forced to
rely upon Beijing as its sole patron, the professions of friendship – on both
sides – would ring increasingly hollow.
Even so, for U.S. leaders, the rising Chinese dragon makes friendship with
India more appealing and complicates relations with Islamabad. Why not sim-
ply accept this trend? Why not let China tend its troubled Pakistani ally while
America cultivates the far more fertile Indian soil?
pakistan as spoiler
The main problem with a firm American tilt away from Pakistan and toward
India is that it encourages Pakistan to play the spoiler. To be sure, Pakistanis
will make their own decisions about how to interact in the region, many of
which will have little to do with what Washington says or does. Islamabad
could decide, for instance, to pursue accommodation with New Delhi, or the
two may fall back into hostility. Either course of action could be driven by
unexpected events or by internal political and strategic considerations that the
United States cannot control.
All things equal, however, if Islamabad sees no particular upside potential
to cooperation with the United States, it will be more likely to devote itself
to upsetting the American apple cart, starting in India. That dynamic would
be all the more likely if Islamabad perceives the United States as an outright
adversary, one that is undermining Pakistan’s security and supporting the rise
of a hostile neighbor. Under such circumstances, Pakistan would, like Iran and
North Korea, seek opportunities to thwart U.S. interests.
America’s fascination with India is founded on the expectation that the
world’s largest democracy is on its way to becoming a major global power.
If India were still the impoverished backwater of the 1960s, ’70s, or ’80s, no
one in Washington would give it the time of day. Fortunately, India overcame
some important domestic obstacles to economic success in the early 1990s. It
averaged a real annual growth rate of 6.6 percent from 1990 to 2010.46 Even
when Indian growth rates slipped in 2012 and early 2013, there were signs
that the challenge would be met with more market reforms – like opening the
country to retail giants like Wal-Mart – rather than backsliding.47
46 “India’s Annual Average GDP Growth at 6.6% in 1990–2010,” Press Trust of India, August 18, 2011, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/economy/article2369380
.ece.
47 Gardiner Harris, “India Backs Foreign Investment in Retailing,” New York Times, September 14, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/business/global/india-backs-foreign-investment-in-retail-sector.html?ref=asia.
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185
Unfortunately, India has not yet found a way to overcome the obstacles
posed by its region. On every border, it faces weak or difficult neighbors.
Among them, Pakistan has already shown that it can make India bleed in
ways that, if expanded and intensified, would threaten U.S. hopes for a strong,
vibrant partner in New Delhi
. India’s long, porous borders, weak defenses,
and open society will expose it to Pakistan-based terrorism for the foreseeable
future. A belligerent, nuclear-armed Pakistan could keep India in or at the
edge of crisis, distracting its leaders and depleting its resources from the vital
business of economic development.
India’s vulnerability to Pakistani disruption was painfully evident in 2001–2.
After Pakistani terrorists attacked in New Delhi and Kashmir, India mobilized
half a million troops along the border. But India’s saber rattling spooked the
international diplomats and business community as much or more than it
did Pakistan. Foreign corporations and their investments fled for the exits. If
Pakistan were to make these sorts of events routine, over time international
investors and corporations might choose to steer clear and invest in less dan-
gerous parts of the world. The fact that India and Pakistan are nuclear-armed
only raises the stakes.
The crisis was costly in other ways as well. India’s 2001–2 military mobi-
lization alone came with a price tag of more than $1.4 billion, over 10 per-
cent of the national defense budget.48 Tragically, even without engaging the
Pakistani army, nearly 800 Indian troops died and 900 Indian civilians lost
their lives, most in land mine blasts.49 Other Pakistan-based terror attacks
have also imposed huge costs. By one estimate, the November 2008 raid by ten
LeT fedayeen on Mumbai, India’s financial capital, may have inflicted as much
as $100 billion in business losses.50
Fortunately, the businesses of Mumbai bounced back quickly. India can
absorb the cost of major terrorist attacks, as long as they remain sporadic. If,
however, terrorism is sustained at a high level, the long-term economic costs
48 “Prakaram Cost Put at Rs 6,500 Crore,” Business Standard, January 23, 2003, http://www
.business-standard.com/india/news/prakaram-cost-put-at-rs-6500-crore/176617/. For comparison, the FY2011 U.S. military budget for operations in Afghanistan was $113.3 billion, which represented 16.53 percent of the total FY2011 U.S. defense budget. See Amy Belasco, “The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations since 9/11,” Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2011, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf. For the FY2011 U.S. defense budget, see “United States Department of Defense: Fiscal Year 2012
Budget Request,” Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller), February 2011, http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2012/FY2012_Budget_Request_Overview_Book
.pdf.
49 “Parakram Killed More than Kargil,” Times of India, August 2, 2003, http://articles
.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003–08–02/india/27173886_1_indo-pak-border-mines-cross-
border-terrorism; Praful Bidwai, “A Failure India Cannot Afford,” Frontline, May 24 – June 6, 2003, http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2011/stories/20030606003310300.htm.
50 “Terrorist Attacks Will Further Weaken a Slowing Indian Economy,” India Knowledge@Wharton, December 11, 2008, http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=
4339), p. 4.
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No Exit from Pakistan
would be significant, if not necessarily easy to estimate or measure. Israel’s
historical experience is a good case in point. By one estimate, terrorism in
Israel from 2001 to 2003 resulted in a 10 percent drop in GDP per person.51
In another case, separatist terrorism in the Basque country of Spain led to a 10
percent decline in GDP per person.52 Net foreign direct investment also tends
to drop in countries afflicted by terrorism. Between 1975 and 1991, terrorism
reduced net foreign direct investment in Spain by 13.5 percent annually and in
Greece by 11.9 percent annually.53
Pakistan’s ability to play a spoiler extends beyond provoking violent crises.
The decades-long Indo-Pakistani conflict blocks normal trade and commerce
and hurts economic growth in both countries. Pakistani economist Shahid
Javed Burki has determined that India will lose an average of 2 percent per
year of GDP growth between 2007 and 2025 unless regional trade barriers are
eliminated.54 That amounts to a sizable $1.5 trillion loss (over 25 percent) in
India’s GDP by 2025.
Pakistan also stands in the way of India’s overland access to energy-rich
Central Asia and the Middle East. India simply cannot meet its projected energy
demands by domestic reserves alone.55 Indian dreams of gas pipelines from
Turkmenistan and Iran may never come to fruition, but they stand no chance
at all if Indo-Pakistani tensions rise.
For a nation like India, in which over 400 million people live on less than
$1.25 per day and where a decade of 10 percent growth is needed to liberate
roughly 40 percent of the population from poverty, such lost opportunities
take on added meaning.56 India’s needs are as vast as its growing population.
Economic losses from terrorism and regional conflict could determine whether
51 Zvi Eckstein and Daniel Tsiddon, “Macroeconomic Consequences of Terror: Theory and the Case of Israel,” Journal of Monetary Economics, 51, no. 5 (June 2004), pp. 971–1002.
52 Alberto Abadie and Javier Gardeazabal, “The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country,” American Economic Review, 93, no. 1 (March 2003), pp. 113–
132.
53 Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, “Terrorism and Foreign Direct Investment in Spain and Greece,” KYKLOS, 49, no. 3 (1996), pp. 331–52.
54 Shahid Javed Burki, South Asia in the New World Order: The Role of Regional Cooperation (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 180.
55 The Indian government estimates that it will need to import between 29 and 59 percent of its energy by 2031–2032. See “Integrated Energy Policy, Report of the Expert Committee,”
Government of India, Planning Commission, New Delhi, p. 45.
56 According to the World Bank, in 2005 the number of poor people living on less than $1.25 per day in India was 456 million. That makes for a national poverty rate of 42 percent in 2005.
Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen, “The Developing World Is Poorer, but No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty,” Development Research Group, World Bank Group (August 2008), http://siteresources.worldbank.org/JAPANINJAPANESEEXT/Resources/5154971201490097
949/080827_The_Developing_World_is_Poorer_than_we_Thought.pdf; “India Needs Larger
Number of Creative Leaders: Former President Kalam,” IANS, July 5, 2011, http://economic times.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/india-needs-large-number-of-creative-leaders-former-president-kalam/articleshow/9112459.cms.
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India remains preoccupied with its own internal troubles or turns into a country
that is willing and able to take on global challenges.
Could Pakistan really spoil the Indian dream? Some Indian strategists dismiss
the threat. They ask, “What about South Korea?” It is true that South Korea
demonstrates that extraordinary economic progress is
possible even next door
to a hostile, nuclear-armed dictatorship. Israel has also succeeded in spite of
its hostile neighborhood. This argument, however, overlooks the tremendous
costs of defending South Korea and Israel over decades. In each instance, a
huge burden was shouldered by America. The question is whether India, alone
or in partnership with the United States, would be able to manage a similar
feat, and at what price.
Pakistan also poses a special sort of threat to India because of its histor-
ical and cultural connections. There is an often unspoken fear in India that
the extreme and violent ideas that have gained so much traction in Pakistan
could also win over a greater portion of India’s Muslim community. Num-
bering nearly 180 million, India’s Muslims have so far proven remarkably
averse to radicalization, but if that ever changes the consequences would be
dire.57 India’s Muslim community is, by-and-large, a disadvantaged minority
that has suffered through bouts of communal violence and holds legitimate
grievances.58 India has already experienced sporadic instances of homegrown
Islamist terrorism, some of which bore the hallmarks of Pakistani inspiration
or material support.59 Pakistan the spoiler would almost certainly intensify its
efforts to exploit this point of Indian vulnerability.
Pakistan could play the spoiler in other ways as well. The analogy with
Northeast Asia is instructive. The Korean peninsula is especially dangerous
because it has become a possible flashpoint for conflict between the United
States and China. Pakistan could turn into something similar. Imagine, for
instance, if a Pakistan-based terrorist group managed to pull off a catastrophic
attack in the United States. China, as Pakistan’s primary backer, would find
itself in the middle of the ensuing conflict. Pakistan’s erratic behavior, not to
mention its inadequate control over terrorists on its soil, could make it espe-
cially tough for Beijing to restrain. Even if the Pakistani pot does not boil over,
China’s military and nuclear assistance to Pakistan could still become a greater
57 Figure on India’s Muslim population from “The Future of the Global Muslim Population,”
Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, January, 2011, http://features.pewforum.org/muslim-population-graphic/#/India.
Daniel S Markey Page 39
