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Rice Ignores South Asia in Foreign Policy Speech

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice--who recently met India's External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and her counterpart Brajesh Mishra--made absolutely no mention of South Asia in what was billed as a major foreign policy speech.

It was only in the question and answer session that she referred to the subcontinent in less than half a line, saying that Washington had major concerns about nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation in South Asia.

There was no mention about the upcoming Agra summit between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan's military leader Gen.Pervez Musharraf, or even a general remark about what the Bush Administration's policy toward South Asia would be.

The basic thrust of her speech delivered at the National Press Club here was a strong argument for a new concept of deterrence, obviously to sell President George W.Bush's proposed national missile defense (NMD) system.

It's not surprising therefore, that Prof. Stephen P.Cohen, head of the South Asia program at the Brookings Institution--has said that the new administration was still "groping for a policy of South Asia," and asked facetiously whether one could expect it to be ready even at the end of Bush's tenure at the White's House.

According to Rice, with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989, "the strategic world we grew up has turned upside down," and consequently the world has "fundamentally changed."

It was therefore imperative "to move beyond the Cold War framework; we need to find a new strategic framework with the Russians in accordance with today's threat and with the fact that Russia is no longer the enemy."

Since the old Cold War paradigm is obsolete, "We must deal with today's world and today's threat, including weapons of mass destruction and missiles in the hands of states that would blackmail us from coming to the aid of friends and allies."

"We need to protect today,"she added, "against threats through a comprehensive strategy that includes strengthened non-proliferation and counter-proliferation measures, as well as a new concept of deterrence that includes defenses and a small nuclear arsenal. And we need to recognize that just as peace is not the absence of war, stability is not a balance of terror."

Although not mentioning Pakistan by name, Rice noted that there has been "a very large scale spread of ballistic missile technologies across the world, thanks in large part to the North Koreans who sell a lot of ballistic missile technology around the world, and it's time to get moving" on countermeasures.

In recent reports to Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has categorically stated that North Korea had transferred ballistic missile and ballistic missile technology to Pakistan and that at least one if not more of the missiles that Pakistan claims to have indigenously produced are either North Korea's Nodong missiles or clones of it.

Rice made it clear that the Bush administration, despite the loud protests from across the world,including many of Washington's allies in Europe, would move forward on a missile defense research, development, testing and evaluation program.

What was needed today was not the "same offensive forces....when there was a Soviet Union and we had an implacably hostile enemy," but "defenses and we need to find a new strategic relationship with the Russians," she said.

Rice said it was time for the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Defense Treaty between the United States and the erstwwile Soviet Union to be junked.

President Bush had made no bones about the "anachronistic" nature of the treaty, which "enshrines our hostile relationship with the Soviet Union rather than our promising new relationship with Russia."

"We should not be tied to a Treaty from 1972, where we are not able to explore defenses against the new threats; the threat of ballistic missiles from places like North Korea or Iran," she said.

"We want very much to move cooperatively with the Russians and other interested parties beyond the ABM Treaty to a new strategic framework that is more appropriate to the present day."

President Bush "is confident he can bring others around to his way of thinking, that it is time to stop the balance of terror as the basis of the relationship and move to a fundamentally different relationship."

"At the NATO meeting in June,"she claimed,"there was a new receptivity to the idea of defenses," and without mentioning India or any other country by name---despite Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's recent trip to New Delhi and other Asian capitals to brief these governments on the NMD---added:"across the board, our continuing conversations with other friends and allies in Europe and Asia, and with the US Congress, are proving to be substantive, respectful and educational. There is real movement here in terms of the debate."

President Bush would discuss missile defense once again with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the the upcoming G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, "and these conversations will continue," she concluded.

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