India's role in a multi-polar world - Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft

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olstering their legitimacy and stability. These ideas provide only an initial sketch of a regional security order for SSWA. But as Afghanistan searches for a measure of stability and engages the Taliban, as Pakistan and India seem ready to revive their security dialogue, and as Pakistan’s willingness to cooperate in stabilising Afghanistan is on the rise, now seems an opportune time to start planting the seeds of regional cooperation. The fledgling efforts of SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation - which includes Pakistan, India and Afghanistan amongst its members - to strengthen the security dimensions of its activities, offers a promising basis on which to work. CHARLES A. KUPCHAN is professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (2010). Through a billion voices: India’s role in a multi-polar world 49 The elements of success in Afghanistan | Charles A. Kupchan
Afghanistan: reversing the vicious circle Prem Shankar Jha Two months after American General Stan McChrystal asked for more troops and a longer commitment of US and NATO forces to Afghanistan, the Obama administration is in a state of perfect paralysis. Its “new” strategy for Afghanistan, announced with much fanfare in early December, is in tatters. The Taliban have grown stronger; no “moderates” have so far been weaned away from the main body. And the body count of both US and NATO troops has risen. Although the Pakistani army is now fully engaged in a war against the Taliban in its border region, it has come nowhere near the US goal of sealing the border with Afghanistan. Handing over responsibility for governance and counter-insurgency to a stable Afghan government remains a distant dream. Gen. McChrystal has conceded that a 132,000 Afghan police and military force will not suffice to keep the Taliban in check, much less get the better of them. As if this were not enough, the Karzai government has lost whatever little legitimacy it had once possessed. The political and military vacuum in the Afghan polity is therefore fully restored. The paralysis is taking a heavy toll on US credibility in Europe, where British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has openly declared that he will not send more troops to Afghanistan without a clear exit strategy.It is taking a huge toll on US credibility in Afghanistan where, with every passing day, it is reinforcing the Taliban’s conviction that it will win. It is taking a toll in Through a billion voices: India’s role in a multi-polar world 51 Pakistan where it is heightening the Pakistan army’s fear of being left to face the Taliban and Al Qaeda alone when (no longer if) the US and NATO pull out. But paralysis is taking its heaviest toll in the US itself where it is recasting Obama’s image from that of a decisive force for change into an indecisive prisoner of the status quo. Indeed, the spectre of a one-term president, unthinkable only six months ago, has begun to haunt liberals, not only in America but across the globe. The cause of the paralysis is a widespread awareness in Washington that while the military effort is failing, the political effort to create a stable regime in Kabul that will be able to take on the Taliban after the foreign troops go, is in no better shape. McChrystal’s proposal of a minimum additional commitment of three years has evoked little enthusiasm because almost no one believes its underlying premise any longer – that the war is being lost because the military effort has been inadequate. And no one believes that a government with little or no Pashtun participation in it can fill this vacuum, no matter how much time and money the west invests in enlarging, training and equipping Kabul’s armed forces and building up its capacity to govern. This is the key not only to understanding past failure but plotting future success. For the unrelenting military ”cleaning-up” campaigns that followed the fall of the Taliban, the various military surges of later years, the increasing use of drones to target individuals (which unleash a special kind of fury in those at the receiving end), and the resulting loss of civilian life have alienated ordinary Pashtuns, marginalised moderate tribal leaders and provided an unending supply of new recruits to the resurgent Taliban. Talking to the Taliban Obama will not be able to break the paralysis that grips his administration until he finds a way to reverse this vicious cycle and bring the Pashtuns back into the mainstream of Afghan politics. The only Afghanistan: reversing the vicious circle | Prem Shankar Jha
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Page 15 and 16: Continuity in change: India in a tu
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Page 23 and 24: Institutional imbalances: can globa
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Page 31 and 32: Growing pains: global adjustment ar
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Page 55 and 56: Section four Ensuring resource secu
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India's role in a multi-polar world - Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft

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