WITH a new military leadership in place, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is

resuming the business of civil-military consultations on national security and

foreign policy matters. After a rocky military transition late last year, it is
important that the civilian leadership establish a stable but frank dialogue
with the incoming military leadership — the absence of dialogue having
potentially profound consequences for internal political stability and external
policy challenges. On Tuesday, the PM articulated a familiar message for the
region: peaceful coexistence and economic integration. Little, as usual, is
known about the specifics discussed or indeed if there is a policy-level rethink
taking place. What is clear is that a reset in relations with Afghanistan and
India is needed and the new civil-military combination must find ways to first
stabilise and then improve ties with the countries.

To be sure, both the Afghan and Indian governments have veered from
unhelpfulness to outright hostility towards Pakistan in recent times. The virtual
freeze in Pakistan’s ties with those countries owes a great deal to the apparent
belief in India and Afghanistan’s leaderships that not only is Pakistan part of the
regional problem but that it cannot be part of cooperative solutions. With
unreasonableness dominating in Kabul and New Delhi when it comes to Pakistan,
the leadership here has had few opportunities of late to try and reset ties. But
neither should policymakers here be in denial about Pakistan’s contribution to the
regional impasse. Before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani turned hawkish on
Pakistan, he had virtually staked his presidency on reaching out to Pakistan. And
while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a long record of hawkish
pronouncements on national security and foreign policy issues, it was the same Mr
Modi who made a surprise stopover in Lahore on Christmas Day a little over a year
ago. In comparison, a known would-be peacemaker such as prime minister
Manmohan Singh was unable to visit Pakistan during his ten years in office. The
positive risk-taking by the leadership of those two countries has not been
reciprocated by Pakistan — even if Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has an apparent
desire to do so.

While it is possible to overstate the value of grand gestures or bold statements,

perhaps now is the time for the Pakistani leadership to test the regional appetite for
a cooperative approach to security problems and economic opportunities. Border
and boundary tensions are unacceptably high on all sides and endless trading of
accusations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and India and Pakistan on cross-
border militancy needs to be meaningfully addressed. Political pessimists and
security hawks in all three countries notwithstanding, the oldest of realities still
applies: if political and security cooperation is not sought between the three
neighbours, spoilers find ways to drag the relationships even further into darkness.
A new-look national security team in Pakistan should attempt a new-look
approach.