The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat by Vali Nasr Read Free Book Online Page A

India most favored nation (MFN) trade status; Pakistan and India literally lifted entire clauses and passages out of the Transit Trade Agreement to craft their own trade agreement. If all goes well they will get to a transit-and-trade agreement of their own. The Transit Trade Agreement had done good for the region; America had built the foundation for something positive that impacted daily lives.
    Holbrooke was elated when the trade deal was signed. Clinton congratulated him for once again pulling a rabbit out of the hat. But the White House was silent. This kind of diplomacy was not part of their game plan. They did not know what had happened, or why it would matter to the war. In those days, achievements such as this did not endear Holbrooke to the White House. Instead, the president’s staff treated the accord as a nuisance. Or at least they did until a few weeks later when, hard-pressed to show any progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they suddenly discovered the Transit Trade Agreement. But they still remained oblivious to the potential of diplomacy.
    Holbrooke was undeterred, however. He thought that, in time, the White House would come around and then would be glad to find that all the pieces were already in place. So he started talking to all the countries that mattered, and made repeated requests to be allowed to talk to Iran as well. He crisscrossed the region, and in every capital asked his hosts to lay out their interests in Afghanistan, explain how they saw the region’s future, and let him know what they thought of reconciliation. Then he focused on how to create the overlap of interests. He talked about all this with Clinton and had her support, though the rest of Washington either didn’t know or didn’t care.
    The thorniest issue was India. India and Pakistan had distinct interests in Afghanistan and were deeply suspicious of each other’s intentions. They had backed opposite sides during the Taliban’s war on the Northern Alliance in the 1990s and continued to see Afghanistan’s future as a zero-sum game that could change the balance of power between them.India had invested more than a billion dollars in the development of Afghanistan and was keen to keep its foothold there. Pakistan thought that any Indian presence in Afghanistan would inevitably give India a base in its strategic rear. Indians complained about Pakistan’s support for terrorism and the Taliban; every conversation with Pakistanis on India’s role in Afghanistan seemed to end with charges that India supported Baluch separatists operating out of Kabul.
    Still, Holbrooke thought that it was possible to get past mutual recriminations and focus the two on an Afghan settlement that both could live with. He did not want to solve everything between India and Pakistan—he knew that he would never get a visa to Delhi if he touched the third rail of Kashmir. Concessions on that territorial dispute, over which India and Pakistan in 1999 fought what so far is mercifully the world’s only ground war between two nuclear-armed states, were definitely not on the table. But he thought there must be a sliver of mutual interest in Afghanistan, extremely narrow though it may be, enough to keep both India and Pakistan on board with a diplomatic outcome. So every chance he got, Holbrooke pushed his Indian and Pakistani counterparts to explain their red lines, revise them, and explore the potential for engaging one another on Afghanistan.
    After a lot of back and forth, Holbrooke persuaded General Kayani to agree in principle to talks with India over Afghanistan and Afghanistan only. Holbrooke took that concession—which was not much but enough to work with—to Delhi. The Indians had said all along that they would talk to Pakistan if talks remained focused on Afghanistan and did not include other issues. I remember Holbrooke talking through how India and Pakistan could arrive at their sliver of Venn-diagram overlap during dinner with his Indian