Why India-Pakistan could be a big headache for the next POTUS

How will (and should) the United States respond if the Indo-Pak border flares up further? Another terror strike on India’s mainland could send all calculations awry.

In contrast to Trump’s vague generalizations, Clinton has a keen understanding of how Pakistan’s “deep state” has for decades used terrorism as a virtual weapon of asymmetric warfare against India. In June 2014, Clinton told me in an interview that elements within the Pakistani Army and its main spy agency, the ISI, “were under the mistaken view that having these kinds of proxies vis-à-vis India, vis-à-vis Afghanistan was in Pakistan’s interests, not just the military’s interest, but in their sovereign interest.” She went on to compare this to “keeping poisonous snakes in your backyard expecting they will only bite your neighbor’’ as a commentary on how jihadists and obscurantists had begun to devour Pakistan from the inside.

As secretary of state, Clinton  announced a $10 million bounty for information leading to the arrest of Hafiz Saeed, key architect of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai on Nov. 26, 2008 and the Pakistan-based head of the Lakshar-e-Taiba. One-hundred and sixty-six people were killed in the 72-hour siege, including six Americans. Clinton told me she was struck by how “difficult” it must have been for India to show “restraint” after the attacks.

That restraint can no longer be taken for granted — that’s India’s messaging to Washington. Given Clinton’s proud mention of monitoring the operation that took out Osama bin Laden from his hideout in Pakistan (“While you were hosting ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ Donald”), there is an expectation in India that she will bring some of her famed hawkishness to her administration’s Pakistan policy. No blank checks on military aid; stringent economic pressure to shut down terror groups; and a foreign policy grammar that doesn’t club India and Pakistan together, or worse, separate them only by a hyphen.

In September, in a closed-door Virginia fundraiser, Clinton warned of the dangers of a jihadist coup in Pakistan and the possibility of “suicide nuclear bombers.” She gets it. Which means in her early days in the Oval Office, Clinton may need to do some plain-speaking with Pakistan much sooner than she had bargained for.