US Risks Returning to Its Traditional Policy of ‘Hyphenating’ India With Pakistan Under Biden

Since the Cold War, successive US administrations have been accused of “hyphenating” India and Pakistan ties, meaning that they espoused a policy of striking a balance in Washington’s relations between New Delhi and Islamabad.

US policy regarding India and Pakistan’s differences has manifested itself in the form of heeding to Pakistan’s concerns on the Kashmir dispute, with several US presidents, including Donald Trump, offering mediation to resolve the dispute.

This has caused friction with New Delhi, which has consistently maintained that the Kashmir dispute is a bilateral issue and has rejected external interference.

However, as the Trump administration entered into negotiations with the Taliban* towards the end of the so-called War on Terror, the US became increasingly concerned about Islamabad’s “double-speak” on terrorism, with Trump even suspending Washington’s military assistance package to Islamabad in 2018 for its covert support of the Taliban.

After coming to power in 2020, the Biden administration refused to normalize ties with then-Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, who complained that he didn’t receive a single call from the US president in spite of Islamabad being a key ally in the so-called War on Terror.

Khan has since maintained that he was ousted from power in a parliamentary no-confidence motion that had been “instigated” by the Biden administration.

Ties between the US and Pakistan have, however, normalized to an extent since Shehbaz Sharif came to power in April, with Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari paying two visits to Washington to meet his counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In their most recent meeting on Monday, Blinken told Zardari the importance of managing a "responsible relationship" with India.

Now, Indian military veterans have doubled down on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s concerns over increasing defense cooperation between the US and Pakistan, arguing that the Biden administration might be at the risk of again “hyphenating” New Delhi and Islamabad as part of its policy towards the region.

“For most part of the last decade, the US looked the other way when India raised concerns about cross-border terrorism backed by Pakistan. The US is only concerned about its own interests, or the terrorism which affects it directly,” Major General Shashi Bhushan Asthana, an Indian Army veteran who is currently a military domain expert at New Delhi-based think tank United Services Institution of India, told Sputnik.

Asthana explained that much of the US military equipment that Islamabad procured from the US while being a “major non-NATO ally” during the so-called War on Terror, was used as a means to “deter India”, which has always had a stronger conventional military than Pakistan.

“To an extent, we were deterred,” he said.

“All the American military hardware acquired by Pakistan has meant to increase the fighting capacity of Pakistan at its eastern flank with India,” the military veteran stated.

The former Indian General also recalled a dogfight between Indian Air Force’s (IAF) MIG-29 Bison jet and Pakistan’s F-16 which took place over the Jammu and Kashmir region in February 2019. New Delhi claimed that one of its pilots downed a more advanced F-16 jet during the aerial encounter.

Explaining the geostrategic significance of Pakistan for the US, Asthana reckoned that the US will always keep an “option” open in Pakistan, regardless of friction between the two Cold War allies since 2018.

“The US will always need a land route to Afghanistan that it might use in case of a contingency and to maintain a counter-terrorism strike capability. The US has also in the past used Pakistani airspace to carry out over-the-horizon counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan under a pact signed after 9/11,” Asthana said.

The Indian expert continued that as far as Pakistan is concerned, its military-to-military relationship with the US has always remained strong.

Asthana also argued that “cooperation” with the US would help Pakistan tide-over the current economic crisis caused by depleting forex reserves and exacerbated by the devastating floods.

He alleged that the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) will not disburse the recently-approved $1.1 billion bailout funds to Pakistan without a “nod” from the US government.

The geopolitical expert claimed that a bailout package from the US and western institutions is the “best hope” for Pakistan to sustain its economy as Beijing has so far not made any assurance to restructure its loans to Islamabad. By some estimates, it accounts for 30 percent of Pakistan’s overall foreign debt.

“A continued US-Pakistan relationship serves the interests of both sides,” said Asthana.

Air Marshal (retired) Muthumanikam Matheswaran, who heads the Chennai-based think-tank Peninsula Foundation, echoed these sentiments, claiming that continued defense cooperation between Pakistan and the US would also help the Biden administration keep Islamabad close in view of the “all-weather” friendship between Islamabad and Beijing.

"Given historical background of US influence and past military to military relations, Pakistan's military, particularly PAF, continues to prefer US weaponry," Matheswaran added.

* under UN sanctions over terrorist activities