India must continue to 1) talk with Pakistan, 2) initiate confidence-building measures with Pakistan 3) increase people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.
This is not because our heart bleeds FOR Pakistan, (our anger and frustration against the U-S-trained and funded ISI are justified), but because the above 3-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. An "If You See Something Say Something" defensive strategy that directly involves We The People. This is the most urgent priority. Security at home and confidence-building across the border must go hand in hand.
Let the India Govt. DECOUPLE the recent terror act from its admirably 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, which dates back to the creation of SEATO in the Dulles era of the U.S. State Department. Pakistan, being vulnerable to terror within its own borders (masterminded by the Soviet-era, US-trained ISI & Taliban) and because Pakistan is now bankrupt as well, a weakened Pakistan will play to the spin of the U.S. The Pakistan Govt. has fewer policy options and the Pak govt. is allegedly controlled by "rogue elements" within the ISI.
The flagrant U.S. abuse of Democracy in South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan) and West Asia (I never call it the Middle East) during the Bush-Cheney regime is hard evidence that the U.S. is neither a proponent nor emissary of Democracy and cannot be trusted or collaborated with by the world's largest and most vibrant democracy.
It is up to India to deploy, display and demonstrate its superior foreign policy expertise and thereby outmaneuver the neo-imperial US in our own geopolitical region.
India's foreign policy expertise was honed by long and consistently ethical post-colonial Global South membership experience dating back to the Non Aligned Movement (an historic coalition of formerly oppressed revolutionary liberatory nation-states of Africa and Asia, disparaged by who else? Condoleezza Rice last year in New Delhi).
Let's take 3 and continue to be free.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.Blogspot.com
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