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developed its own line toward Kabul, it is today acting in concert
with the US. Meanwhile, India is also working towards establishing
formal ties with NATO. For the first time, the Pentagon invited India
to take part in the two-week Red Flag air exercise, which is currently
underway in Nevada. And in September, NATO will deploy in southern
Afghanistan one of its seven ultra-sophisticated Airborne Warning and
Control System aircraft, capable of peering deep inside Pakistan.

On the eve of the US-India military exercises in Nevada, which also
includes NATO participation, the commander-in-chief of Russia's air
force, General Alexander Zelin, was quoted as saying that Russia's
strategic bombers may soon start patrolling the Indian Ocean. A
prominent strategic analyst at the Russian Academy of Science's
Institute of World Economy and International Relations Center for
International Security in Moscow, Vladimir Yevseyev, commented that
Zelin's statement was intended to "warn" India, as the US has "come to
regard the Indian Ocean as a zone of its priority interests".

In other words, though Indian rhetoric on Afghanistan is carefully
couched in terms of countering terrorism, Pakistan doesn't see it that
way. Instead, it views it in much larger terms as an Indian thrust,
supported by the US, as the pre-eminent regional power in South Asia.
In recent weeks, Pakistani military raised the ante along the Line of
Control bordering the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The
resurgence of tensions seems a calibrated move. Islamabad is sending
some signals.

Nasim Zehra, a relatively moderate, sensible voice in the Pakistani
strategic community, wrote recently, "It is time for Pakistan to
categorically state: enough of Pakistan bashing, enough of vacuous
Kantian moralizing in a Hobbesian world, enough of the do-more mantra
and enough of partisan analysis, enough of selective perceptions,
enough of double standards ... Pakistan will play 'as clean as the
world around it'. Take it or leave it. There is no 'going it alone'
for any of Pakistan's neighbors.

"No matter what anyone's GDP [gross domestic product] may be or their
nuclear arsenal, we are in this mess together ... That is the message
of the spreading militancy ... The region will unravel if the
governments in the area and those involved outsiders like Washington
do not make it a common cause to jointly work to address the causes of
growing militancy. The answer lies in a regional solution."

The message is simple: If Pakistan goes down, it will take India down
with it. There is no such thing as absolute security.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri
Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.