Why is this Times of India TOI report calling the Asia Society's Pickering-led group an "independent task force?" It's NOT *independent* because it promotes the dominant, exceptionalist, supremacist US foreign policy perspective in which the US places itself front and center of every regional and inter-regional strategy, so that the US can continue to manipulate the nation-states in the South Asia region, to further US global dominance, market fundamentalism and militaristic foreign policy.
India would do very well to stick steadfastly to PM Manmohan Singh's line that Pakistan needs to guarantee *extra-state* actors on its soil like the LeT and the TeTP, as well as *state* actors like the ISI, will NOT foment and deploy terrorists against the world's largest democracy.
The US and its think tanks can think till they tank! India must continue to carve her own way out of the mess created by the colonial Brits and the neo-imperial US. India and Pakistan need to persevere in order to engage directly, with pre-conditions against Pak terrorism and without 3rd party US-led NATO interference. The civil societies of both our countries have to vigorously persuade our leaders, over the short and long term. Sustainable prosperity cannot happen without this extended civil society effort. That means you and me.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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Times of India copyright
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-indispensable-regional-actor-US-report/articleshow/4363594.cms#write
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/US/US-think-tank-asks-Obama-to-acknowledge-Pak-as-N-power/articleshow/4362884.cms
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Back from the Brink? A Strategy for Stabilizing Afghanistan-Pakistan
An Asia Society Task Force Report
April 2009
http://www.asiasociety.org/taskforces/afpak/
http://www.asiasociety.org/taskforces/afpak/Afghanistan-PakistanTaskForce.pdf
Asia Society copyright
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