Den Beste again

Den Beste concludes too much from an absence of evidence, but his description of medium-term strategy seems sensible. I've two caveats: one I mentioned before; that trying to seduce moderate Moslems away from radical Jihadism with materialism/secularism is not going be be very successful. Materialism is just not a very substantial religion, and reaction against "the great Satan (deceiver)" will feed and not starve the fundamentalist urge. We need to have a plan to modify Islam itself.

The other caveat is that we have no good picture of what goes on behind the scenes. The claim "all politics is local" has some validity, and any time we rely on locals for assistance in war or government (all the time) we put our interests at stake in local disputes for power. It isn't all that hard to find cases where a plan goes awry because one person figured he would be better off, never mind what happens to his own country (and our soldiers): the infamous French leaks during the Balkan war springs to mind.

Thus I'd not expect us to take India into our confidence. We might tell them some things, but nothing that could be used to ruin our plans.