Only the really smart can survive a game hopping back and forth between the past and present. That’s what happens in Albert Lomorisse’s Risk -
the strategic board game in which players protect their Napoleonic-era borders with modern armies. The game is still being played on the ground in South Asia, where the past has not completely vanished and the future has not yet arrived. Today, our part of the world is a picture of chaos: armed militia in the mountains and jungles; nuclear-armed regimes; grinding poverty; spiralling food prices; and people swinging towards violent ideologies. We might be living in exciting times, but we are still playing a life-size version of Risk, the game, with pawns from our past.
But, the world is about to change. A new mantra – Yes We Can! – is becoming a universal slogan and Barack Obama’s doctrine of involving “you” in decision-making is about to change global politics. Can South Asian nations — still settling old scores with their zero-sum games — see the change coming? If yes, what kind of change would they like to see in Obama’s world?
Sitting in his modest office in Kathmandu’s central district, Singh Durbar, Dinanath Sharma, spokesman for the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist), seems quite certain that nothing is going to change. “We are against American imperialism and Indian expansionism. America has not abandoned imperialism and India has not abandoned expansionism,” says Sharma, quoting from a recent Maoist document that opposes foreign interference in its internal affairs and urges the party “to be serious about nationalism”. Sharma, a soft-spoken Maoist ideologue, is merely summarizing the dominant view in the Nepali capital, which is also the headquarters of the beleaguered Saarc.
‘Foreign interference’ and ‘nationalism’ are touchy issues in South Asia. The conflicts here revolve around these issues and blinker our worldview. So bogged down is Sri Lanka in a bloody battle with its separatist Tamil rebels that it cares little about what’s happening in places like Darfur. Bangladesh, always a struggling democracy, has neither time nor energy to think about the bombings in Gaza as it deals with its generals and fundamentalists. Bhutan is far too happy with its unique happiness index to worry about the global financial crisis, and the Maldives has to prevent itself from drowning before it can pay attention to anything else.
That leaves India and Pakistan (at each other’s throat since 26/11) and Afghanistan – caught in the crosshairs of a war – to articulate South Asia’s worldview under President Obama. Both New Delhi and Islamabad would want him to be on their side. “The US strategic engagement with India will continue. Obama will have to treat India and Pakistan separately, but with caution. We can’t forget that Pakistan is very important for America’s geo-political interests in the region,” says Uma Singh, professor of South Asian studies at JNU.
Clearly, our worldview doesn’t go beyond our noses. But now there are huge expectations from the next president. “The US must engage with South Asia in an enlightened way. The Americans should not come here just to protect their interests, but also make sure there is development and stability in the region,” says Prof Ataur Rahman of Dhaka University.
Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid holds a similar view. Obama and other Western leaders will have to adopt a “comprehensive approach that sees the region as a unit with interlocking development issues to be resolved, such as poverty, illiteracy and weak governance”, he wrote in a recent article titled ‘Obama’s South Asian Headache’.
The other part of this headache is China – the world’s biggest nation with the largest army and now the third biggest economy – that towers over the region. While Obama has largely remained silent on China and nobody knows for sure how he plans to engage it, Nepal and Pakistan would be quite happy to see Beijing grow as a counter force to Washington.
The Nepali Maoists believe that the US is trying to encircle China through India. “It is clear from the nuclear deal that American imperialism is moving ahead in South Asia through Indian expansionism,” says Sharma, indicating the kind of world order the Maoists expect to see under the new US administration. The view from Dhaka is hardly different. “A new world order can’t emerge from the old world order. I don’t think that under Obama, there will be a clear departure from the existing system. Even if a new order emerges, it will be slow and gradual,” says Prof Rahman.
But, India should be more practical on these issues, says Prof Singh. “On Iran, India should not play second fiddle to the US and protect its own interests in the Gulf. Despite the border dispute, India-China relations have grown and will continue to do so. India should develop its ties with China irrespective of the US.”
Despite the economic gloom, there is hope that Obama’s can-do spirit will give the world a chance to become a better place. But, in South Asia, the mantra still is: “No, We Can’t’. Here, we can make gains only at the expense of others. India’s attempt to dehyphenate itself from Pakistan has failed. We are back to playing our zero-sum games, with smaller players such as Bhutan and Bangladesh getting sucked in as well. We are still settling past scores with present methods. That’s our worldview. It involves huge risk, but this is the only game we know.
Posted by saravanesh 
Posted by saravanesh 
Posted by saravanesh 