Road to Peace

Flowing from these developments would be the logical surmise that neither the United States nor China, beyond notional rhetoric, would stamp on India’s sensitive toes on Kashmir. It would endanger their respective national security interests which spin on the axis of a global power-play rather than Pakistan-centric calculations.

Pakistan’s policy establishment has to recognise that India today enjoys the geopolitical status of a “Swing State” in global power play, which neither the United States nor China or Russia can ignore.
Comparatively, this reality bestows greater leverages to India as opposed to Pakistan’s strategic utility to the United States or China.

Contextually then, in light of the strategic reality check, Pakistan’s national interest lies in the Pakistan Army’s hierarchy jettisoning its twin fixative obsessions and mindsets of ‘Strategic Equivalence’ with India and annexing ‘Kashmir’ for Pakistan.

Pakistan’s Peace Dialogues with India, commencing with the Neemrana Dialogues and the follow-ups over seven decades have all floundered on the two mindsets. This has resulted in Pakistan’s economic under-development and the country not attaining its full potential as a politically viable nation state.

Logically, therefore, after meandering aimlessly for seven decades as a ‘rentier state’, first with the United States and now more sinisterly with China, and failingly internationalising the Kashmir issue, and after four wars with India to no avail, the Pakistan Army must deeply introspect in 2021 on the credibility of its conflictual approaches to India and the value of sustainable peace with India.

Pakistan in 2021 for the Security, Welfare and Honour of 200 million Pakistanis and a bright future for Pakistan, should traverse on the ‘Road to Peace’ with India - the road less taken by Pakistan in the last 70 years of its existence.

Contentious issues need to be put aside for history to solve as Pakistan’s ‘Iron Brother’ ---China puts to India. Mindsets long blinkered by hatred and deep mistrust need to be replaced.

Notably, while on this aspect it needs to be recorded that only once a Pakistani PM won general elections on an election plank of Indo-Pak peace and that was former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif of PML-N. But as he was approaching the end of his second back-to-back prime ministership and was ousted by the Establishment by what I then termed as a ‘Judicial Coup.’

The people of India have deep friendship and affection for the Pakistani people as the Indians view them as like their own. One can daresay that the average right-thinking Pakistani shares the same sentiment as evident from political events outlined in the foregoing. Then why do the chasms persist?

In brief, the ‘Road to Peace’ with India can be sustainably journeyed by Pakistan when it allows ‘Geoeconomics’ to prevail over “Geopolitics’ for which India would be ever-willing to underwrite and contribute. Pakistan only has to tap into India’s tremendous powerhouse of economic growth and new vistas of peace and trust would follow in its wake.

Once the Pakistani policy establishment recognises the value of ‘Geoeconomics’ being the predominant determinant of its India-policy approaches and over-riding ‘Geopolitics’ and its attendant conflictual appendages, the resultant spin-off in its wake would be increasing Pakistan-India economic interdependence and widening and intensified economic, social and cultural exchanges between the peoples of India and Pakistan.

Also, needing highlighting is that Pakistan must shed its obsessions that it can enlist the United States or China or the Islamic Ummah to prevail over India to arrive at peace arrangements with Pakistan as per past Pakistan Establishment blueprints.

Peace between India and Pakistan necessarily has to be a bilateral process without any external interventions.

Concluding, one would like to stress that the first steps towards sustainable peace between two nations like Pakistan and India, with a conflictual history, are the most difficult to take. But then history is replete with examples where visionary leaders have sprung up at crucial moments in a nation’s history to alter the conflictual courses long adopted.

India patiently awaits for that moment in Pakistan’s history where a visionary Pakistani leader emerges in Pakistan to drastically alter the directions of Pakistan’s policy approaches to India and transform Pakistan from a “Garrison State’ with a ‘siege mentality’ and impel Pakistan towards a genuine democratic future at peace with itself and at peace with India.