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Neither the decision by US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to appoint a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, nor their choice of veteran American diplomat Richard Holbrooke for the assignment should come as a surprise to India. On the eve of the US presidential elections last November, this newspaper had reported on Obama's firm plans to appoint a high profile special envoy for the subcontinent. Nevertheless, New Delhi should note the speed with which the new administration has acted and the political capital it is investing in the project to bring order to the northwestern parts of the subcontinent.

Announcing the appointment on her very first day in the state department, Clinton emphasised the importance of "an integrated strategy" that treats the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single whole, and mobilises America's friends and allies from around the world to rejuvenate the faltering war on terror. To accomplish what many would consider mission impossible, Obama and Clinton have chosen Holbrooke, whose reputation as a diplomatic Rottweiler is well-established. With the stage now set for a major American diplomatic initiative in the subcontinent, New Delhi surely owes a wink and a nod to Obama and Clinton for not including Kashmir and India in Holbrooke's official mandate, despite the clamour for it among the think-tanks in Washington. The UPA government, which has been posturing against "third-party intervention" in Kashmir and went out of the way to put down the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, has been saved the political blushes.

Having covered its political flanks at home, the Manmohan Singh government now must turn to the substantive issues underlying the Obama initiative. That Washington did not mention India does not mean the Obama team has given up on its understanding that the security dynamic on Pakistan's western borders is linked to the situation on its eastern frontiers. It is one thing for New Delhi to object to the so-called "re-hyphenation" with Islamabad, but entirely another to ignore India's massive security interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan. New Delhi knows that it does not have the power to unilaterally alter the internal dynamics in Pakistan and Afghanistan. If India elevates strategic outcomes above the formalism of the diplomatic process, it will find every incentive to engage and support the Holbrooke mission to transform the badlands between the Indus and the Hindu Kush.