>FT reported the total number of Indian attack helicopters as 32.
>Not enough to be more than a minor part of any offensive.
In a piece in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times, Howard French quotes two Pakistani sources that suggest a more than casual alliance between the U.S. and India:
>"India's relationship with Washington has acquired a real depth, it
>has become strategic and not just tactical, like Pakistan's," said
>Mushahid Hussain, a former Pakistani information minister. "Because
>of that, people felt that India couldn't possibly start a war. They
>were taken by surprise by India's sudden raising of the temperature,
>and only now are we awakening from the slumber."
>
>[...]
>
>THAT suspicion and frustrations toward the United States are rife in
>both countries is not surprising, given the fact that a major
>realignment of Washington's diplomatic positions in the region has
>been under way since the end of the cold war.
>
>"Pakistan may be the U.S. ally but India pulls more weight in
>Washington," wrote Hussain Haqqani, a commentator in The Nation, a
>Pakistani publication. "With the end of the cold war, American
>suspicions of a nonaligned India with close ties to the Soviet Union
>have dissipated. India's economic reforms have moved the country
>away from its quasi-socialist practices, opening a huge market of
>one billion potential consumers to U.S. businesses. From the U.S.
>point of view, Pakistan may be America's wartime ally, but it is
>India that offers the prospect of long-term friendship."
Are these just the 'plaints of a jilted puppet, or is a more profound shift underway?
Doug