India paying the prize for Donald Trump's Nobel fixation: US scholar

TOI correspondent from Washington: Characterising Pakistan army chief Asim Munir as "Osama Bin Laden in a suit,” a former Pentagon official has excoriated US President Donald Trump for his embrace of a Islamabad even as the White House and State Department remained silent on Munir's provocative nuclear threat made on US soil over the weekend.

There hadn't been a peep from the White House after Munir warned at an event in Florida that as a nuclear power, Pakistan would take half the world down with it if it faces an existential crisis, following up on his threat to target Indian infrastructure and businesses if it impeded the flow of waters to Pakistan and impose war from the east.


Instead, Munir was rewarded with the state department designating the Baloch Liberation Army as a foreign terrorist organization, a long-standing Pak demand despite its long-standing credentials as a fountainhead of terrorists who have attacked US interests and assets.

In guarded remarks, the State Department, which appears to be out of the loop over the White House ardor for Pakistan, said the US relationship with both nations is good, "and that is the benefit of having a president who knows everyone, talks to everyone."

The Trump administration's sudden embrace of the Pakistani military, driven ostensibly by business interests as much as tactical need to counter Iran and China, has incensed many regional scholars who see it as a short-sighted and dangerous move by the US President that does not seem to have the full backing of the US diplomatic community or lawmakers.


"Donald Trump is a businessman... he's a real estate broker. So he's used to the horse trading and the back and forth. Morality doesn't come into play. Ideology doesn't come into play," Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute told ANI on Tuesday.


While many analysts say the MAGA supremo's punitive moves against India on the trade front is driven by its protectionism and his distrust of the BRICS group, Rubin believes he is also miffed by New Delhi's resistance to his mediation efforts between India and Pakistan that Trump thinks will win him the Nobel Prize.

"He looks at this as something which will show the world that he's better than Obama, he's better than Carter, he's better than Clinton. He really is a man with very, very little self confidence. And the Pakistanis, Israelis, Azerbaijanis, Armenians ... they've played to his ego and convinced him that he truly deserves this. Unfortunately, India will pay the price as he puts his efforts into overdrive," Rubin said.

Talks with New Delhi have been consigned to the margins currently as Trump is focused on getting Ukraine to bend to a Russia-dictated peace deal even as he backed down yet again in the trade war he initiated against China, throwing out another 90-day extension on imposing tariffs even as Washington is pawing the ground seeking more talks.

Rubin says the American approach to peacemaking in the subcontinent is flawed because it looks at terrorism through the lens of grievance that can be addressed with a diplomatic formula, a combination of bribes and concessions and so forth.

"They don't understand the ideological underpinnings of many terrorists. There is no amount of concession that can be given to Pakistan that is going to change the ideology of a Asim Munir or the Pakistani elite, which he represents," he said, describing the Pak Army chief as "Osama bin Laden in a suit."

Dubbing Pakistan as a "failed state held together with band aids," Rubin said the lesson the US should draw from Munir's incendiary remarks is that the country is teetering and the US should manage its decline, lest it cause a nuclear war.

"Just like SEAL Team Six entered Pakistan to take out Osama, it's coming near time when in a future administration, other SEAL teams should enter Pakistan to secure its nuclear weapons because the alternative is simply too great to bear," he said.


Rubin is the author, among other books, of “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes,” a salutary message that has fallen on Washington's deaf ears as it has courted Pakistani military rulers like Yahya Khan, Zia-ul Haq, Pervez Musharraf, and now Aseem Munir, over the past half century -- at the expense of its civilian governments.