A New, More Dangerous Crisis Abuts Afghanistan

After more than three months of single-minded concentration on defeating terrorism, the Bush administration faces a potentially more dangerous foreign policy crisis in the confrontation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

Unlike with the Sept. 11 attacks, which produced a quick military response, the administration must move far more subtly in trying to mediate between two countries that are playing key roles in the war against terrorism.

Foreign policy experts say the administration will have to engage in the sort of high-risk diplomacy it has so far shunned, putting Washington’s prestige on the line to defuse the crisis, which was sparked by an attack on India’s Parliament two weeks ago. New Delhi blames Pakistan-based militant groups for the assault.

The risk could hardly be higher: the immediate threat of a shooting war between two nuclear powers. Thousands of Americans fighting in the Afghan campaign from bases in Pakistan could be caught in the cross-fire, perhaps even coming under nuclear attack.

President Bush said Friday that the administration is “working actively to bring some calm in the region, to hopefully convince both sides to stop the escalation of force.” But so far, the U.S. effort has been confined to telephone diplomacy by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Foreign policy experts say that might not be nearly enough.

“It’s time for Powell to get off the phone and get on the plane,” said Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council staff member. “This is the most important foreign policy challenge that we face right now.

“Diplomacy textbooks call this the ‘spiral model’ of war,” Daalder said. “Neither side is willing to step back from the brink. The thing escalates and escalates and escalates until it either explodes or someone helps them to step down.”

As the world’s remaining superpower, the United States is the only country with enough prestige to nudge India and Pakistan back from the brink, said Daalder, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But that would require a much more intensive effort than telephone conversations, he said.

So far, the Bush administration has been reluctant to take on that sort of high-profile diplomacy. Powell has traveled to hot spots such as the Middle East far less often than his recent predecessors did. Daalder said the administration appears unwilling to launch initiatives unless there is an assurance of success, something that is clearly lacking in the current crisis.

Since 1947, when India and Pakistan broke free from the British empire, they have engaged in two wars over the disputed region of Kashmir, which is also at the center of the current conflict. The earlier confrontations were of only peripheral concern to Washington, disturbing the calm that diplomats cherish but not damaging any vital U.S. interests.

“In the previous times, the U.S. relationship with both countries was of a much more general nature,” a State Department official said. “We had a security relationship with Pakistan that was focused in a general way against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. With the Indians, we had proper relations but we didn’t have a close cooperative relationship.

“This time around it is very different,” said the official, who declined to be identified because of department policy. “We have a close relationship with both. Pakistani cooperation is at the heart of everything we are doing in Afghanistan. With the Indians, relations have improved greatly over the years. It matters more than it used to if they fight or not.”

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently underlined the problems the India-Pakistan conflict could cause for the U.S. effort to defeat Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network. Rumsfeld said that if the confrontation escalates, Pakistan might redeploy the troops guarding its border with Afghanistan to prevent the escape of Al Qaeda fighters.

Moreover, he said, “we’ve got thousands of Americans, military as well as civilian, in Pakistan, and clearly the bases where many of the military people are located would conceivably be--” He didn’t finish that thought, perhaps unwilling to state the obvious, that some bases could come under nuclear attack.

The administration’s overarching effort to enlist virtually every country in the world in a coalition against terrorism complicates its effort to defuse the India-Pakistan crisis, analysts say.

“They all signed on against terrorism, but they all have their own agendas,” said Lawrence J. Korb, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “They say, ‘We supported you--now we need your help.’

“Pakistan is much more concerned about Kashmir than they were about Al Qaeda,” added Korb, a ranking Pentagon official in the Reagan administration. “The United States is also trying to cultivate India. Now the Indians are saying, ‘It’s just like the Cold War--you are supporting Pakistan against us.’ ”

Korb said Bush and his aides appear far better at devising short-term tactics than at establishing long-term strategy.

“Everybody talks about this experienced national security team,” Korb said. “Tactically they are good, but strategically they are not.

“Look at the situation before Sept. 11. They alienated a lot of people by trying to go it alone,” he said, referring to unilateral actions the administration took on several issues.

Korb said the administration deserves high marks for establishing the broad anti-terrorism coalition. But in the process, he said, “we are getting involved with a lot of unsavory countries, making compromises” on basic principles.

In the long run, some experts say, the administration’s tactics might not work even in its fight against terrorism.

“The current tensions between India and Pakistan are a grim warning that the U.S. war on terrorism will often force us into the middle of regional quarrels and conflicts where one nation’s terrorist is another nation’s proxy,” said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on military strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“As we have seen in the Israel-Palestinian turmoil, combating terrorism cannot be separated from a broader conflict and may result in major further escalation,” he said. “At the same time, this crisis threatens Pakistan’s ability to secure its border and our ability to hunt down Osama bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda.

“It has been very easy to talk about ‘victory’ in Afghanistan,” he said, “but it is becoming all too clear that real victory in a global war on terrorism will be far more difficult, far more complex and take years of additional effort--if not decades.”