A halfdozen terrorists’ attack on India’s parliament – a leadership massacre was averted by minutes – has forced U.S. policymakers’ hand and led the Bush Administration into direct mediation.

India has given Islamabad an ultimatum to suppress two Pakistan-based organizations dedicated to “liberating” Moslem Indian Kashmir. Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf, denouncing the attack, has warned any precipitous action by New Delhi will bring a strong riposte.

That could be a fourth Indo-Pakistan war, and an accidental nuclear exchange. In growing hysteria, both sides have traded cavalier charges – Pakistan that the attack was staged by New Delhi. And from India, that it had Musharraf’s backing, allegedly managed by Islamabad’s intelligence body, the ISI, once Washington’s conduit to the anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan and later the handmaiden of the Taliban.

In an effort to defuse the situation, the U.S. has called on Musharraf to act. And, as the Indian media interpret it, President Bush has not cautioned restraint on the Indians as in the past – as after a similar attack on the Kashmir assembly resulting in 30 deaths. Indian politicians compare the situation to the Israeli Palestinian crisis where Washington has increased pressure on Arafat to bring his terrorists to heel.

For some time the U.S.’ growing commitment in the Subcontinent has seemed “inevitable”, despite the Bush Administration’s well-known distaste for just such endeavors.

Picking up where the Clinton Administration’s strategists left off, well before 9/11, the new Administration had endorsed a new relationship with India. A decade after the collapse of India’s ally, the Soviet Union, it was said, “the world’s two largest democracies” were “natural” allies. Growing U.S.-Indian commercial relationships as New Delhi tried to escape its long infatuation with Soviet planning, and the mutuality of concern about China’s emerging role in Asia, were to seal a new strategic bond. In effect, the U.S. would recognize India’s persistent claim to South Asia hegemony – including a UN Security Council permanent seat.

Then came 9/11 and Washington’s need to go after “terrorism with a worldwide reach”, and Pakistan’s essential role in pursuing the first part of that strategy in Afghanistan. Contrary to predictions he would bring down his regime, Musharraf moved into strategic alliance with the U.S. That collaboration – as witness the current U.S. takeover of an airbase in Pakistan’s Baluchistan, something the Pak leader earlier said he would not do – has grown. In return, a bankrupt Pakistan has seen aid floodgates open – if so far no military components – both bilaterally and at the international lending agencies.

The Indians view all this as a betrayal of their early endorsement and offer of full cooperation on the U.S. anti-terrorist campaign and their Kashmir troubles with Pakistan-based infiltration. New Delhi’s anti-American claque, heavily embedded in the career foreign service and the presidency, calls for a more balanced strategy, even possible collaboration with the Chinese in opposing “superpower hegemony”. That has not stopped continued American efforts, especially by an enthusiastic CINCPAC command, to push for increasing military cooperation.

Nor is the increasingly muddled relationship only three-cornered. Moscow’s move in behind the B52s to carve out a roll for itself behind the Northern Alliance has raised eyebrows among those who know the history of the Afghanistan imbroglio. In effect, Moscow seeks to exploit the ethnic differences between those Afghans north of the Hindu Kush and the Pushtuns along Pakistan’s border. The three most important members of the new interim government – interior, defense, and foreign affairs, all in the hands of the anti-Pakistan Northern Alliance – went to New Delhi even before they met Interim Prime Minister Kargai. Before his nomination, India had already announced a $100 million loan for rehabilitation. Indian “experts” have arrived in Kabul – along with a large coterie of Russian “specialists”. Prime Minister Vajpayee stopped off in Moscow to consult with President Putin – and to sign several huge long-term weapons purchases and other agreements – before meeting President Bush on the terrorism issue earlier this fall.

To the Pakistanis, this looks like Moscow-New Delhi nutcracker ploys against Islamabad that were part of Afghanistan geopolitics during the whole pre-Taliban period and, in part, led to Islamabad’s sponsorship of the radical fundamentalists.

Given the importance of the region, India’s more than a billion people, Pakistan’s critical role in the Islamic world and in the anti-terrorist campaign, the two countries’ interdependence [India has more Moslems than Pakistan’s total population], and the threat of nuclear warfare, the Bush Administration has little choice but to engage. But quicksand requires special caution.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.