Kissinger’s View On India, Pakistan and the U.S.

Joining me now to talk about all this, the complicated geopolitics of it, is the former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who worked with both countries during the Indo-Pakistani war in 1971, and has maintained ties to the region since then.

Henry, thank you for doing this.

HENRY KISSINGER, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: A pleasure to be on.

ZAKARIA: You know that, whenever one of these terrorist attacks takes place, the Indian government often casts aspersions on the Pakistani government. In this case, there does appear to be some significant link to Pakistan.

How should India handle this, in your view? Should it try to deal with it at a domestic level? Should it—how can it not involved Pakistan and implicate it?

KISSINGER: Well, the Indian government is in a very complicated situation. It’s of course aware that there are 150 million Muslims living in India. And therefore, the possibility of terrorism becoming an established fact in India is something that has to be of deep concern to any Indian government.

Secondly, there are elections coming up in April, in which particularly the governing Congress Party will have to prove that it is a vigilant defender of Indian security.

And thirdly, there’s the objective situation that you described at the beginning, of the relationship between India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the region. In the abstract one would say that this could be an opportunity in which Pakistan and India get together to suppress terrorism, and in which Pakistan learns that its situation becomes increasingly precarious, if they can be plausibly blamed for supporting or not suppressing terrorism.

On the other hand, this is sort of a schoolbook solution, because the Pakistan government may not be strong enough to do this, and it’s going through a difficult process of civilianizing itself.

ZAKARIA: You put it exactly right when you said that this could forge cooperation, it seemed to me. But it is a bit of a textbook solution. That is to say, it ignores the fact that there are deep historical enmities and national interests.

I mean, when you’ve dealt with the Pakistanis, do you feel that—or the Indians, really—that there is enough—there is a relaxation of suspicion that might allow for some kind of cooperation here?

KISSINGER: Barring this incident, based on my recent visit to India, I had the impression that the Indians were thinking seriously about re-forging their relationship with Pakistan, if it could be done on a basis that protects their security. This incident will make it very tough for them to do this.

On the Pakistani side, the problem is that the new president of Pakistan—civilian, the husband of the assassinated Bhutto—has made some very positive, formal statements prior to this incident. On the other hand, his capacity to implement any of this was extremely questionable, since his control of the army seems to be very limited.

Ideally, one would—what might happen out of this crisis is that all countries will come to the view that, unless these terrorist cells are suppressed, the world will be intolerably risky.

Now, I know one cannot suppress all terrorist cells. But if all the key governments would agree not to permit on their territory any of these organizations, which are used to collect funds and to transfer weapons, then the freedom of movement of the terrorists and their capacity to plan operations would be severely limited.

And India is a country of such crucial importance to the stability of the region and to the progress, one would say, of the world, that they cannot be asked to submit themselves to periodic hit- and-run attacks, which in this case were obviously carefully planned and very professionally executed. So, they could not result largely from local conditions.

ZAKARIA: We will be back with Henry Kissinger right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: We’re back with Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state, to talk about the implications of the terror attacks in Mumbai.

Henry, how should the United States handle this?

KISSINGER: We have to know what we really think about this situation. And this can only be done by the closest cooperation between the incoming and outgoing administrations. It cannot be defined entirely by the Bush administration, even though we have only, obviously, one president at a time.

Secondly, India has to know that we are committed to its stability and to its security, and that we are prepared to discuss with them cooperative measures—always leaving them in the position that they are the ones that are designing the policy for their own security.

Third, we should have a very serious conversation with Pakistan. Pakistan has been a traditional friend. We have cooperated with Pakistan. They helped us in the opening to China in an indispensable way. And they were cooperative in many phases of the war on terror.

But they have to understand that they cannot—that it is an ultimate threat to their own security if they permit conditions to exist on their territory, where it simultaneously threatens all the major neighboring countries.

And where Pakistan has a right to be told that we respect its territorial integrity, that we discourage attacks on its territorial integrity, but that in the end, it has to be a good citizen in its neighborhood, especially with respect to the threat that is now becoming paramount simultaneously in Afghanistan and significant in India.

And it has to understand, in my view, that its biggest security threat now are the entities that it is permitting or tolerating on its own territory. We should act here as a friend, but we should make clear what our understanding of the situation is.

ZAKARIA: When I have talked to some Pakistani military people, privately they will say to me, “Look, the problem is you Americans. One day you will leave, and we will be left in the neighborhood. And here is what the neighborhood looks like to us—an India that will dominate us, an Afghanistan that would be allied with India and allied with Russia. So, we have to maintain some options.”

In other words, there is a basic geopolitical sense that having an unstable Afghanistan may help Pakistan, having some ability to destabilize India cheaply through the use of jihadis benefits Pakistan.

Can we—can the United States really change that strategic conception in Pakistan?

KISSINGER: It cannot change that perception in a week or two, or a month or two.

A prerequisite for any successful policy in the region is to contribute to the conviction, and bring about the conviction, that we are not going to withdraw from the region. We may withdraw troops from this or that place for tactical reasons, but that we will remain a major factor in the region for our own self-interest, because the radicalization of the whole region would ultimately threaten American security and wellbeing.

Secondly, to keep Afghanistan in turmoil and India under constant threat will, in the long run, destroy Pakistan’s security.

The notion that India’s only foreign policy is the destruction of Pakistan—which might have had some foundations in the early years of the independence—will not be relevant really in the role that India will be playing on the global scene. And it cannot be in the Indian interest to add more disaffected Muslims to its own area of control.

So that I could imagine—and I had the impression on my visit to India—that, were it not for this incident, a discussion of a long-term, constructive relationship between India and Pakistan is possible. And the United States could contribute to that in a significant way.

The problem will be how to manage the next three to six months without their getting out of control, because one could imagine that the idea will arise in India that they must take very drastic measures to prevent the repetition of recent events.