Balancing US Interests in India and Pakistan
Convincing the Pakistani military to focus its attention on the Afghan Taliban and associated groups has so far proved unsuccessful. The Obama administration's reliance on economic incentives and regional peace initiatives, such as a dialogue with India on Kashmir, has failed to deliver tangible results. Instead, India's footprint within Afghanistan has expanded, leaving Pakistani elites ever more anxious. Balancing Indian and Pakistani interests in South Asia remains a top priority for Western governments, and most importantly the US. In the current milieu this will require shifting Western bureaucratic focus from the age old and seemingly intractable Kashmir dispute to maintaining the peace within Afghanistan. This article outlines why this shift should be considered, and how the India--Pakistan trust deficit might be bridged.
Pakistan on the brink
The massive suicide bomb that destroyed the Marriott hotel in Islamabad on 20 September drew international attention to three crises – security, political and economic – that are challenging Pakistan and its leadership. The rise of a local Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan is a major concern. So are ongoing political uncertainty and an economic crisis that saw Pakistan ask the International Monetary Fund for a $7.6 billion loan in November.
In Search of Hugo Chávez
ALMOST AS SOON as a collapsing bridge forced the government of President Hugo Chavez Frfias to shut down the only highway linking Venezuela's main airport and capital city in January, the recriminations began. Ch avez's opponents accused him of wasting the country's oil bonanza on politically driven projects abroad while neglecting infra structure at home. His supporters, in turn, charged the traditional elite that governed before him with squandering resources and ignoring fundamental needs for decades. In fact, both sets of charges were nearly identical. And both were right. Venezuela's leaders, Ch avez as well as his predecessors, have long been guilty of misplaced priorities. As with so many things today in Latin America's most politically polarized society, they all share the responsibility for failing to maintain what is arguably the most important stretch of road in Venezuela. Just before Chavez took office in February 1999, Gabriel Garcfa M arquez accompanied him on a flight to Caracas from Havana, Cuba, where the Venezuelan president-elect had visited with Fidel Castro. "I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had just been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men," the Colombian Nobel laureate later wrote. "One to whom the caprices of fate had given an opportunity to save his country. The other, an illusionist, who could pass into the history books as just another despot."