Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar reportedly told members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on External Affairs last month that the South Asian Association For Regional Cooperation (SAARC) “is on pause; we have not pressed a full stop on it. It is on pause because of Pakistan’s approach.” He then added that the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is now India’s primary platform for regional integration.
SAARC consists of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, while BIMSTEC involves Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. In other words, BIMSTEC drops Afghanistan, the Maldives, and Pakistan and replaces them with Myanmar and Thailand. SAARC fell apart in 2016 after India refused to attend that year’s summit in Islamabad in the aftermath of the Uri terrorist attack that India blamed on Pakistan. It’s been moribund ever since.
By contrast, every other region in the world has embraced the multipolar trend of regionalization through their own respective platforms, thus making South Asia the conspicuous exception. Nevertheless, as Jaishankar supposedly added in his parliamentary remarks, BIMSTEC is still alive, well, and nowadays India’s preferred platform for regional integration. No irreconcilable differences exist between its members unlike the role that the Kashmir Conflict plays for SAARC’s India and Pakistan.
BIMSTEC also has its own regional connectivity megaproject, the Trilateral Highway between India, Myanmar, and Thailand, whereas SAARC has no such analogue such as an Indian-Central Asian corridor via Pakistan and Afghanistan for example. Moreover, SAARC involves the ASEAN countries of Myanmar and Thailand, thus making it an interregional cooperation platform. These three factors understandably make BIMSTEC much more attractive in Indian policymakers’ eyes than SAARC ever was.
This background enables one to better appreciate the importance of Jaishankar’s latest remarks about SAARC. Confirming that India’s participation therein is only “on pause” implies the possibility of it being reactivated under different regional political conditions, namely a thaw in tensions with Pakistan, though that would have to involve meaningful progress on resolving the Kashmir Conflict. None appears on the horizon barring an unforeseen breakthrough due to how divergent their positions have become.
Pakistan’s support of what India considers to be terrorists is the primary problem from Delhi’s perspective while Islamabad’s is India’s treatment of the Kashmiris that it considers to be colonial abuse. They also have polar opposite views on the subject of a UN-supervised referendum. Another major issue is India’s revocation of Article 370 in August 2019 that removed Indian-administered Kashmir’s autonomy and bifurcated the region. Pakistan believes that was illegitimate and counterproductive to peace.
Although both states are nuclear powers, India is rapidly rising as a Great Power in the global systemic transition to multipolarity while Pakistan has been experiencing socio-political and even nowadays once again terrorist turmoil over the past three years since the post-modern coup against Imran Khan. Their separate trajectories at this pivotal moment reduce the odds that India would be the one to make concessions aimed at resuscitating SAARC and raise the comparative odds of Pakistan doing so instead.
That said, Pakistan hasn’t yet shown any serious signs of wanting to do so, nor would it make any such decision rashly. The Kashmir Conflict isn’t just a military issue, but also a means of reinforcing the legitimacy of whatever political clique is formally ruling Pakistan at any given time. Championing a maximalist resolution in Pakistan’s favor is a genuinely popular policy at the grassroots level, likewise, signaling anything that can even remotely be interpreted as an intent to compromise is very unpopular.
Resolving the Kashmir Conflict through a compromise might also not appeal to powerful Pakistan’s military leadership. Peace with India could lead to cuts in defense spending, thus gradually eroding their institution’s influence. It would also make Pakistan less likely to intervene in China’s support if its “iron brother” gets embroiled in a hot war with India. China, as Pakistan’s top investor, could leverage its financial influence to dissuade the military from compromising in order to not lose that back-up plan.
These ulterior interests impede a compromise solution to the Kashmir Conflict even though such an outcome would unlock unparalleled economic opportunities for Pakistan. Political normalization between India and Pakistan also isn’t on the horizon, to say nothing of a deal on Kashmir, since it would require Pakistan to accept India’s revocation of Article 370. SAARC therefore likely won’t be resuscitated anytime soon, and the longer that it remains moribund, the more important that BIMSTEC becomes.
