We do not have to wait for January 20 to see how the people of South Asia, particularly in India and Pakistan, will react as history is made in Washington. The streets and sitting rooms across the two countries will witness much excitement over the event, as people watch the inauguration of Barack Obama's presidency on the television and talk about it everywhere. A hope for change - that is how a preponderant majority of them will see it.

    The streets and sitting rooms, however, do not constitute the states of the region. The establishments and elites here are not going to let all that excitement stop them from a cold evaluation of the consequences of the Obama takeover, of what the unprecedented American vote spells for their own vested interests.

    The establishment in Pakistan, not confined to the Parliament and government in Islamabad, awaits the onset of the Obama era with particular concern. The Pakistani masses, hoping that Obama's Muslim heritage will make him less intolerant of Islam, may be listening for his middle name during the swearing-in. The hope may linger on even if they do not hear anything like "Hussein." The establishment will be looking for less symbolic evidence of the policy of the 44th president of the USA towards this far-off part of the world.

    The large place the region occupies in Obama's current foreign policy landscape is already known. A Pakistani expert, Ahmed Rashid, has recently pointed to this in an article captioned "Obama's Huge South Asia Headache." Author of a much-discussed book, "Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation-Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia," and an invitee to the dinner hosted by Obama last week for foreign policy specialists, Rashid identifies Pakistan as the main regional problem for the new president.

    Rashid said, "The biggest threat emanates from Pakistan, which former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has described as an 'international migraine' where nuclear weapons, terrorism, political instability and poverty all collide." He added, "All these regional problems threaten to undermine the world's stability - as does the presence of global jihadists who will intensify their operations in Europe, Africa and Asia in the coming year (2009)."

    Rashid, like many others in Pakistan, prescribes a policy of stabilizing and strengthening the elected civilian rulers as the most effective pill for the migraine. He noted, "The army, which dominates nuclear and foreign policy, continues to believe in a national security agenda that sees thwarting and confronting India as its foremost challenge." In contrast, "The civilian government headed by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) is determined to change the parameters of this doctrine by making peace with India and Afghanistan and concentrating upon developing the country."

    He said what is practically unsayable for even the civilian rulers about the most notorious part of Pakistan's military establishment. "Other power centres such as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have become almost a state within a state, while local and foreign jihadist groups - who now control vast tracts of territory in northern Pakistan - have their own agendas."

    Rashid is not the only well-wisher to warn Obama against a policy concentrating fire on the Taliban in Afghanistan. He argued, "Clearly the world can no longer afford to focus indefinitely on Afghanistan while allowing the rest of the region to sink further into confrontation and instability - especially when many of those problems are now deeply interlinked."

    He suggested an interventionist policy that may not be easy to implement when he said, "Unless there is peace between India and Pakistan, the crisis in Afghanistan cannot be resolved and unless Central Asia is included in a developmental regional process, parts of it will slip further into anarchy." All this has been occasioned by Obama's earlier proclamation of a resolve to shift the main theater of the "war on terror" from Iraq to Afghanistan, and plans to deploy 30,000 more US troops across Pakistan's Western border over the next 18 months. Earlier, on August 1, 2007, Obama had caused much consternation by threatening to use military force, if necessary, against al-Qaeda in Pakistan even without Islamabad's consent. Those were the days when his then Democratic rival and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called him "naive" in foreign policy matters.

    Obama gladdened many Pakistani hearts subsequently by hinting at reviving efforts at American intervention or assistance towards a settlement of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. On September 6, 2008, however, he riled the same Pakistanis by charging that Pakistan had misused US aid for the "war on terror" to prepare for "war on India."

    While Obama may fine-tune his formulas and formulations on Afghanistan and the India-Pakistan issues, he is unlikely to shed his repeatedly reiterated fears about nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, particularly in Pakistan. His concerns were sought to be addressed in a recent interview to The New York Times by Gen. Khalid Kidwai, in charge of Pakistan's nuclear security. The general described the nuclear security system in his country as "foolproof."

    He and other Pakistani experts have also dismissed apprehensions of infiltration by the jihadis into the nuclear program - with Kidwai even taunting the US about its own air force losing track of some its nuclear weapons for a tense 36 hours in 2007.

    India's nuclear hawks have hastened to cast doubts on Kidwai's credibility on this score. K. Subrahmanyam, for example, wrote, "Kidwai has been doing this job since 2002, interacting extensively with the American media, think tanks, the Pentagon and State Department to persuade them that Pakistani nuclear weapons were quite safe and there were no risks of them falling into the hands of jihadis. But the Americans are not convinced."

    "The US fears," he said, "that some groups could try to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India in the hope that the Pakistani military would transport nuclear weapons closer to the front lines where they would be more vulnerable to seizure. When the 26/11 attacks occurred in Mumbai, officials told Sanger (the New York Times reporter) that one of the attackers' motives might have been to trigger exactly that series of events."

    The US claims to have spent $100 million in aiding Pakistan to improve the safety and security of its weapons. But the Pakistanis have reportedly refused to accept direct technological help for fear that any electronic locking mechanisms from the US could have devices to disable their weapons.

    Obama, of course, has not voiced analogous concerns about India's nuclear arsenal. But the Indian jingoists and militarists are evincing no great joy at his advent in power either. They have yet to come to emotional terms with the end of the George W. Bush era.

    The Kashmir issue had come in handy earlier for the backers of Bush. Prominent security analyst C. Raja Mohan, for example, argued that "while rejoicing over Obama's waving of the stick at Pakistan, India omitted to note the 'carrot' dangled in the shape of a third-party intervention in the Kashmir dispute." Particular objection was taken to the vague proposal of the US sending someone like former President Bill Clinton as a special envoy for Kashmir.

    Some far-right admirers of the outgoing US president now recall that he was considerate about India's feelings, and not on Kashmir alone. A columnist, known for his closeness to former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, illustrated the point in an article captioned "Mourning the End of the Bush Era?" Taking to task David Miliband, visiting UK foreign secretary, who had criticized the concept behind Bush's "war on terror," the article said, "If this is a foretaste of the Obama order, India will have reason to mourn the passing of the Bush era."

    This is a takeoff from Prime Minister Manmohan's Singh's tender and touching tribute to Bush in Washington in September 2008: "The Indian people deeply love you." The tribute was, really, to the determination the 43rd president had displayed in forcing the US-India nuclear deal on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and forging a bipartisan consensus in US Congress on it.

    On the deal, Senator Obama had articulated serious concerns, but, as a candidate for the country's top post and as the president-elect, extended it "firm support." In a letter to Singh in September 2008, however, he added, "I will work with the US Senate to secure ratification of the international treaty [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty] banning nuclear weapons testing at the earliest practical day, and then launch a major diplomatic initiative to ensure its entry into force." He also promised to "pursue negotiation on a verifiable, multilateral treaty to end production of fissile material for nuclear weapons," known as the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).

    If Obama sticks to these stances, he will only deepen the nostalgia of the nuclear militarists for the neocon regime that the American people have thrown into the dustbin of history.