Familiar interventions in an unsettled region

The war on Iran is part of a serial effort at regime change by force. India must start building alternative scenarios of West Asia, the influence of major powers, and broader geostrategic and geoeconomic futures

- Jawed Ashraf

As this conflict shows, war has doubtful efficacy as a deterrent, but strong incentives for escalation.

(AFP)

In November 2012, then National Security Advisor (NSA) Shivshankar Menon and I met President Barack Obama's NSA Tom Donilon in Phnom Penh on the margins of the East Asia Summit.

With the Arab Spring raging and Syria descending into internal conflict, Menon asked Donilon how Sunni fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan were reaching Syria, with land access across Iran and Iraq denied, warning that a destabilised Syria would turn into a worse terrorist sanctuary than Afghanistan.

Donilon replied that the US would first get rid of (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad, then deal with terrorism. Assad would last until December 2024, but a devastated Syria became a sanctuary for virulent terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al Nusra Front. That was just one example of the US's sequential approach that disregards secondary consequences.

The US use of Islamist insurgency with Pakistan's help against the erstwhile Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s made Pakistan a hub of terrorism and transformed the security environment in South Asia, with a lethal rise in terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir after the Soviets left Afghanistan. The US invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 temporarily uprooted Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But the US outsourced the Afghanistan project to Pakistan and turned its attention to Iraq, with disastrous consequences. After invading Iraq on March 20, 2003, the US declared victory on May 1, but was trapped by a massive insurgency for years, and left Iraq in shambles and with increased Iranian influence. The elimination of Gaddafi in the wake of the Arab Spring fractured Libya and turned the Sahel region of Africa into an ungovernable theatre of terrorism, coups and external competition.