India must continue to 1) talk with Pakistan, 2) initiate confidence-building measures with Pakistan and 3) increase people-to-people exchanges between our two countries.
This is not because our hearts bleed FOR Pakistan, (our anger and frustration against the U.S. trained and funded ISI are justified), but because this three-point defensive strategy would be strategically the most effective policy to further India’s stability and prosperity in the region and elsewhere.
At the same time India must increase its vigilance and security a thousandfold. A “If You See Something Say Something” defensive safety strategy that directly involves We The People. This is the most urgent priority. The People are the eyes and ears of a country in its fight against terror attacks. Example Who caught Kasab? Mumbaikars. The People.
Top security at home and vigorous confidence-building across the border must go hand in hand.
Let the India Govt. DECOUPLE the recent terror act from its resolute policy to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan.
Q. Which is the country that continues to destabilize South Asia? The USA. The US will continue to exploit its ‘special” relationship Pakistan.
Pakistan, being vulnerable to terror within its own borders (masterminded by the Soviet-era, US-trained ISI and Taliban) and now, because Pakistan is bankrupt as well,
a weakened Pakistan will play to the spin of the U.S. The Pakistan Government has fewer options and is controlled by the ISI.
The flagrant U.S. abuse of democracy during the Bush-Cheney regime is hard evidence that the U.S. is neither an exponent,
proponent nor emissary of democracy and cannot be trusted or collaborated with by the world’s largest democracy.
It is up to India to continue to deploy, display and demonstrate her superior foreign policy expertise, and thereby outmaneuver the neo-imperial US in our own geopolitical region.
This expertise has been honed by long and ethically consistent post-colonial
Global South experience dating back to the Non Aligned Movement (NAM, an historic coalition of revolutionary liberatory, post-colonial nation-states of Asia and Africa, which was
disparaged by Condoleezza Rice last year in New Delhi).
That’s the way to go.
