Straight and Steady
A strategy for dealing with India and Pakistan.

By NR Editors
From “The Week,” January 28, 2002, issue, of National Review

he conflict between India and Pakistan is a hard case, in part because America has a stake in both sides. India shares our interests in containing China, ensuring the free flow of oil, and fighting Islamic radicalism. It is a democracy whose elites speak English. (In surveys of public opinion, Israel and India had by far the most pro-American reactions to September 11.) Yet while an alliance with India may serve our long-term interests, our short-term ones dictate friendship with Pakistan. It has been helping us in the war on the Taliban and al Qaeda. While its government has sponsored terrorism in the past — and may well have links to the people who have been committing terrorist attacks against India in recent months — Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator in charge of it, may be sincere in promising to change its ways. Under the circumstances, including the limits on our ability to affect the situation, our policy of not tilting either way and trying to defuse the situation seems wise.