Kashmir Dispute Between Pakistan and India - Essay Example

One can see from this episode that while the diplomatic intervention was quite late, having arrived when the two parties were already on a tension level that was dangerously close to a full-scale war, America as the third party had within its means to diffuse the tension, and act as a superpower and disinterested party to which both Pakistan and India can turn to as a kind of referee. There is no lack of political will, at least on the part of the United States, and at least in this one instance.

Though it came a bit late, this one incident can be looked at as a kind of reminder that if needed, at least the US can be counted on to rise to the occasion again. Elsewhere too we see that the US was also instrumental in trying to apply the lessons from the Cold War by trying to get the two countries to participate in CSBMs, or Confidence and Security Building Measures (Nayak and Kepron, 2006, pp. 13-22; Khan, 2002). Pakistan-India Analogy with US-Soviet Union: ValidityOn one level, the analogy of the Pakistan-India relations with that of the US and Soviet Union are valid, to the point where theories on deterrence, and dealing with the paradox known as “stability-instability” as it applies to the two South Asian countries.

The literature is expanding and is being used as a reference to deal with the complex dilemmas facing India and Pakistan, as far as deterrence theories culled from the long cold war between the US and the Soviet Union. In this sense, the analogy has some validity. The analogy is a good starting point, so that deterrence theory can be confirmed and expanded/adapted to the realities of the Pakistan-India conflict (Confidence-Building Measures, n.d.). On other levels, it is also evident that the analogy falls short, and is not always adequate to deal with the realities on the ground.

For instance, where Confidence and Security Building Measures or CSBMs have had some success in the case of the Cold War, with India and Pakistan those have had relatively little success, and the reason cited is that the conditions for eliciting mutual trust were not met, and were substantially different. In other words, the contexts were different (Miskel, 2012; Khan, 2002). The reading is that CSBMs required a level of trust in order for them to have any chance of taking root. In the case of the US and the Soviet Union, deterrence measures evolved with the unique set of elements all coming together to build a kind of trust that the two parties had achieved a level of transparency in order for trust and a sense of control to develop.

Such were lacking, and still are lacking at present, between India and Pakistan (Miskel, 2012).