Nuclear Neighbourhood

With a fifth of the world's population between them, deep distrust and the never ending threats and posturing, a question on a BBC forum that caught my interest was, "Should Pakistan and India engage in dialogue?" It's a valid question especially considering that there are many who are deeply apathetic about the situation in South Asia and for varying reasons feel that talking to the neighbour has never quite yielded desirable outcomes. Personally, whatever we think of the political game play, it would be very worrying if Pakistan and India didn't speak. Why is this so? Well it's because they are nuclear powers for one.

Here's a comment left by a contributor called Vejain (at 11:56am on 17 Feb 2010) on Soutik Biswas's blog that he writes for the BBC. The comment is in relation to the stalemate between India and Pakistan:

The US is responsible for creating this morass of mind-boggling proportions. Had it not been for US's insatiable thirst for showing its might to the "commies" it would not have got involved in Vietnam and Afghanistan. After it was ignominiously defeated by the North Vietnamese with China's help, the US tried a different tack. As USSR was perceived a bigger threat to capitalism and as there is no love lost between China and USSR, why not get China on its side? Thus the policy of "engaging" China rather than isolating it. To be bedfellows with China they used Pakistan as the go-between. As a result of this 'engagement' China became the world's factory for manufactured goods - at the cost of decimating industries of the West and almost destroying their economies.

CIA and its progeny ISI did manage to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, but in the process created the Taliban monster. Now the US is facing two self-inflicted monsters – Chinese hegemony and ISI delinquency. One has destroyed its economy and the other is thwarting its efforts in Afghanistan by inventing the so-called good Taliban and bad Taliban!!

Food for thought, I guess.