http://acorn.nationalinterest.

in/2008/12/09/hurting-the-pakistani-economy/

Hurting the Pakistani economy

12.09.2008 Posted in Economy, Foreign Affairs, Security shouldnt be an objective in itself R Vaidyanathan, a professor of finance at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, suggests twelve steps to shock and awe the Pakistani economy. Many of them are, in and of themselves, powerful instruments to destabilise Pakistan. Many of them can make credible threats, because carrying them out will hurt India, albeit to a much lesser extent that they hurt Pakistan. The problem, though, is that Prof Vaidyanathans arguments are premised on a stable Pakistan not being in the interest of world peace, leave alone India and that if Pakistan is dismantled and the idea of Pakistan is gone, many of our domestic (religious) issues will also be sorted out. The counter-argument is that it is an unstable Pakistanunstable since 1947that is the cause of much of Indias, and the worlds security problems. It is the lack of an internal reconciliation, a sense of purpose beyond being Indias doppelganger and a lack of stability that lies at the root of its ending up as an international migraine. Plus, unless it is possible to be very sure that the post-Pakistan set-up will somehow be more stable, and less jihadi export-oriented, dismantling Pakistan cannot be in Indias interests. [See this article] So while attempting to bring about a collapse of Pakistan is undesirable, many of Prof Vaidyanathans prescriptions lend themselves for coercive diplomacy. They allow India to pursue a variety of punitive and coercive policies in a calibrated manner, without raising military tensions. For instance, it would be untenable for the international community to disagree that all economic aid to Pakistan must be made contingent on its government meeting concrete deliverables, like extraditing terrorists that live in the open in its territory. In fact, The Acorn has long argued that the greatest failure of the peace process was that it distracted attention from the important objective of creating a range of flexible policy instruments that could not only be turned on and off, but also fine-tuned and targeted. To modify B Ramans words a little, the capability to cause a divided Pakistan, a bleeding Pakistan, a Pakistan ever on the verge of collapse without actually collapsing-that should be our objective till it stops using terrorism against India.