It was perhaps going to be inevitable that Pakistan would be disappointed by US President Barack Obama’s visit to India, though strictly speaking, it should have expected it. The outburst by Pakistani officials afterwards was perhaps also inevitable, though it will probably not prevent it from happening.
Pakistan has assumed US support in its six decades of trying to get India to let the Kashmiri people exercise their inherent right of self-determination, but that has been eroded under two pressures. It is not so much that India too is a democracy, as that India is central to its pivot East. There are considerable imponderables involved, such as the role of Russia in this complex, as well as China. Russia is maintaining relations with India, even as it has fallen away from its heyday as a superpower, and is also realigning itself with China, which sees itself as being isolated by the US, (which needs India to contain China, which it sees as its biggest rival in its pivot East).
Pakistan was not visited by President Obama, something which provided Punjab Governor Muhammad Sarwar an occasion to resign, as he expressed the Diaspora’s feeling that this was a diplomatic failure. This may well reflect a Diaspora feeling, though that in turn might well be fuelled more by how India has won more traction in the US through the large number of migrants it has sent there.
The complexities of the BJP’s relationship to this Indian Diaspora is worth noting. It derives both funding and support from it. And while the BJP is a proponent of Indian independence, it is also more willing to bow to American dictates. It is a strong supporter of Israel, which it sees as an exemplar of how a foreign country might exploit the American political system for its advantage. It also learns from Israel in how it suppresses the Palestinians whose homes it has occupied, it having a similar problem with Kashmir. There are two significant differences: first, Israel does not have the same great-power pretensions as India; second, India exists even if it ends its illegal occupation (Israel does not).
However, the recent visit did not affect Pakistan because of Kashmir, but it showed that the Indo-US relationship was developing at the cost of Pakistani interests. First, Obama almost seemed in a hurry to announce the strengthening of the Indo-US nuclear accord. This is an area where Pakistan has requested parity, but has not been granted it. However, Pakistan seemed most riled by Obama’s announcement of US support for India’s bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Pakistan’s assertion was true that India had not implemented, as it was bound to, the UN resolutions on Kashmir, but its corollary, that India should not get permanent UNSC membership, is subject to realpolitik. Of the present permanent members, only China is likely to oppose it. It is also the only permanent member not to supply arms to India. In an implied insult to Pakistan that the US agreed to joint manufacturing of drones with India.
It was perhaps an obligation for Pakistan to have COAS Gen Raheel Sharif’s visit to China to act as a counter. General Raheel’s visit was probably not a sudden one, but its coincidence with Obama’s visit to India sent two important signals. First, that Pakistan’s alternative leadership is not so much another politician or party, but the military. Second, that the military, to which the US has historically turned, is more committed to China, which it sees as the rising superpower, rather than the US, which it sees as the declining one.
Obama’s going to India, and not visiting Pakistan, at this juncture of the US’s War on Terror, is very important, because it should show Pakistan how the US views India: it is the country that must now be pleased, the one on which the bets are placed. Pakistan must now expect pressure on it from the US to increase, pressing it to fall in with Indian wishes.
Even if it does so, it should not expect the US demands to stop, not unless the Indian ones do. Those will not, because the BJP is trapped into a hostility with Pakistan that will make it ultimately demand the undoing of the Partition. This is especially true of the BJP under Narendra Modi, whose West Coast roots link him more closely to Veer Savarkar, the head of the group which assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, and which viewed the Partition as the cutting into pieces of ‘Mother India’, than to the previous BJP leadership, which was more oriented towards the Cow Belt. It does not make sense for Pakistan to continue to seek US support, especially since it seems so bent on supporting India, to the extent that it will help it in its neighborhood disputes, Kashmir being one of the leading ones.
At the same time, Pakistan seeking China’s support is not likely to yield it as much support as it wants. India is already working on this, and the announcement of a visit to Beijing by Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, fresh on the heels of the Obama visit, was very much meant to seek its support. There is a logic to their conflict, for they are neighbouring Asian giants, but there is also a logic to their cooperation as emerging superpowers. The day Pakistan will find itself in difficulties is if China sees this logic, and throws its weight behind India. It might not only be behind India on the Kashmir issue, but also be willing to blame Pakistan for unrest in Urumqi province. As China is pursuing a stringent policy there against Muslims, it is only a matter of time.
Pakistan might try to allay Chinese concerns by working against any Uighurs who might struggle for liberation, but that would provide India the opportunity of tarring Pakistan with the brush of terrorism, as it has always done throughout the US War on Terror. On the other hand, Pakistan first tried to use the Uighurs against the USSR, and has done its best to suppress them when they tried to liberate their homeland after the Afghan jihad was over.
Pakistan is faced once again with the failure of the USA, as a world power, to deal with India’s insincerity and aggressiveness, as shown in its being such a bad neighbor. Pakistan’s hopes that the USA might press India to a just solution of the Kashmir issue, are to be dashed as the USA, scrambling for Indian markets and to make it a regional policeman, tries to curry favour with it. The ruling elite in Pakistan might be dependent on US goodwill, but the people are not, and thus instead of looking to a new master, might be more willing to seek a solution more in line with their aspirations, rather than the elite’s. The USA will be as troubled as them at the prospect of a Pakistan not willing to take its orders as it seems today.