The United States encouraged
India in early 60s to develop a nuclear device to fight China without
comprising its commitments as a Soviet ally. In the era of Cold War, as we all
know, India was a bitter opponent of the USA and a close ally of USSR. India
remained staunch ally of USSR till disintegration of the Soviet empire in 1991.
During Afghan jihad (1979-89), when Afghans were fighting Soviet occupation
forces with the help of Pakistan, US and Saudi Arabia, India was a sworn enemy
of the US. Due to its alliance with USSR, India was a target of Afghan fury
during and after the jihad. In fact, Taliban regime which came into being after
departure of Soviet Army was opposed to India and was allied with Pakistan. It
was due to pro-Pakistan regime in Afghanistan that the country was considered a
strategic depth by Pakistani strategists.
Americans are, however, warming
up to India in spite their past relations. This warming up is taking place at
the expense of Pakistan which has so far remained more allied than the NATO
allies of the US. Some analysts dub this sudden change of hearts as a
compulsion of realist politics; Pakistan has outlived its utility after
Afghanistan end-game and the US needs India to contain China in the Pacific.
But it has now been emerged
that the US was trying to win Indian hearts from the very beginning. There are
two factors which brought the two countries together; John Kenneth Galbraith, the American Ambassador to
India appointed by President Kennedy and India’s humiliating defeat in
Indo-China War of 1962. Galbraith befriended Nehru during his tenure. He
rendered great help to India in its hour of distress and kept Pakistan away
from taking advantage of India fragile position as a result of devastating
defeat at the hands of Peoples Liberation Army.
It was the same Ambassador
Galbraith who was very close to former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
This friendship was carried forward by his son Peter W Galbraith till Benazir's tragic assassination.
According to an article by Bruce
Riedel, an analyst and a career CIA officer in The
National Interest, Indi-China war also posed a crisis for America’s young
president, John F. Kennedy, who had entered office determined to build a strong
U.S. relationship with India. But his attention that fateful autumn was
diverted to a more ominous crisis—the one involving Soviet efforts to place
nuclear missiles in Cuba—that unleashed a dangerous nuclear face-off with the
Soviet Union. Thus, Kennedy confronted two simultaneous crises, one far
overshadowed by the other at the time and also later in history.
According to this article, when
Kennedy became president in January 1961, the United States and India were
estranged democracies. In the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy promised a
departure from Eisenhower’s foreign policy and as a senator had sponsored
legislation to increase food aid to India. And so it wasn’t surprising that as
president he sought to woo India and its leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, into a
closer relationship with Washington that didn’t require any formal
anticommunist commitment from India. He sent his friend John Kenneth Galbraith
to New Delhi as U.S. ambassador. Like presidents before and after, he tried to
befriend both India and Pakistan and had invited Pakistan’s president Mohammad
Ayub Khan to visit the United States twice during his thousand days in office. The
Kennedy team hailed Pakistan as a reliable ally against communism and a model
for development in the Third World.
But it was the India
relationship that most preoccupied Kennedy as he contemplated U.S. relations
with South Asia. Galbraith’s appointment put a Kennedy man and a firm advocate
of his New Frontier at the center stage of U.S.-Indian relations. No president
since has sent such a close friend and high-powered representative to New Delhi
as ambassador.
According to Bruce Riedel, the
most important development in the relationship emerged with the Chinese
invasion of India in October 1962 to seize control of territories it claimed
along the 3,225-kilometer border. The Chinese forces, superior in leadership
and weapons, routed the Indian Army, which retreated in confusion from the
Himalayas. The situation was most precarious in India’s easternmost regions,
which were linked to the rest of the country only by a narrow land connection
north of what was then East Pakistan. After maintaining its neutrality in the
Cold War for fifteen years, India found itself the victim of a Chinese invasion
it was powerless to halt. Nehru was devastated. He reluctantly turned to the
United States and Britain, asking for immediate supplies for the Indian Army.
In his panic, he also requested the deployment of American bombers to repulse
the Chinese advance. America unexpectedly found itself arming both Pakistan and
India, with no assurance they would not use the weapons against each other.
It is clear from Galbraith’s
diary that Washington was surprised by the Chinese invasion. But, with the U.S.
bureaucracy fixated on the life-and-death duel over Cuba, Galbraith was given
almost no instructions from the White House or State Department during the key
period of the Indo-Chinese crisis. Thus, he became the main decision maker on
the American side, a role he relished. Working closely with his British
counterpart, as U.S. diplomats typically do in South Asia, Galbraith fashioned
a response that backed India and delivered much-needed military assistance to
the Indians. Once a request for aid was formally transmitted, the first
American shipments of military support arrived by air four days later. British
support came as well.
Chinese intentions were
impossible to decipher. After their initial victories, they paused for several
weeks. Then they attacked again with devastating results, driving the Indians
back in the East. Had they pressed on in the most vulnerable sector, they could
have cut off Assam and eastern India and linked up with East Pakistan. Even
Calcutta was at risk. Nehru asked for more aid—a dozen squadrons of American
fighters and two squadrons of bombers—to redress the imbalance. In his
desperation, he sought direct American military intervention, at least in the
air. This would have meant war with China.
There ensued many anxious
moments in New Delhi, Washington and London until China unilaterally announced
a cease-fire on November 19, 1962. Kennedy never had to answer the request for
air power. The war was over; India was humiliated; Nehru was devastated. But
U.S.-Indian relations were better than ever before. America’s approval ratings
among Indians soared from 7 percent at the start of the war to 62 percent at
the end.
Galbraith’s Memoirs make it
clear that, even as he faced the Chinese threat, he had to devote an equal
measure of his energy and skill to managing Indo-Pakistani relations. Pakistan
promptly sought to exploit India’s distress. Ayub’s government suggested to the
American embassy in Karachi that Pakistani neutrality in the war could be
assured by Indian concessions in Kashmir. Implicitly, an Indian refusal would
bring Pakistan into the war. China tried to sweeten the deal by offering a
nonaggression pact with Pakistan. Galbraith writes that throughout the crisis:
My concern . . . was about
equally divided between helping the Indians against the Chinese and keeping
peace between the Indians and Pakistanis. . . . The nightmare of a combined
attack by Pakistan and China, with the possibility of defeat, collapse and even
anarchy in India, was much on my mind.
In short, at a defining early
moment in U.S.-Indian relations, when China and India were military
adversaries, America found itself trying to manage the Indo-Pakistani rivalry
to avoid Armageddon in India. Pakistan was outraged that America was arming its
rival and wanted to be bought off in Kashmir. Working with his American and
British counterparts in Karachi, Galbraith persuaded India and Pakistan to
begin a dialogue on Kashmir. Nehru reluctantly agreed. Galbraith describes him
as a much-diminished prime minister. He had devoted his entire life to Indian
independence but now was forced to rely on Washington and London. American
C-130s were delivering vital military aid, and an American aircraft carrier,
USS Enterprise, was visiting Madras to show tangible support.
Galbraith suggested to Kennedy
in one of his private letters that the United States and United Kingdom seize
the opportunity to quietly move toward a Kashmir settlement. Galbraith opposed
a territorial settlement; he envisioned a much more subtle deal that would
transform the entire nature of South Asian politics, a fundamental
rapprochement based on regional cooperation that would make Kashmir largely
irrelevant.
JFK was determined to keep a
strong alliance with Pakistan even as he improved ties with India. But as U.S.
arms flowed to India in the wake of the Chinese invasion, the U.S.-Pakistani
connection began to sink. Islamabad did not want an ally that armed both sides.
It had not joined SEATO and CENTO to see American arms flowing to its archrival,
India. Ayub feared the American arms sent to India were rapidly diminishing his
qualitative advantage over his rival, and he was right.
Not surprisingly, Pakistan
turned increasingly to China. After the border agreement, Pakistan signed an
aviation agreement with the Chinese, which broke an American-inspired campaign
to isolate that communist nation. Pakistan International Airlines began regular
flights between Dacca and Shanghai. The Kennedy team responded with the first
of what would become a long list of sanctions on Pakistan—canceling a deal to
upgrade the Dacca airport.
The Sino-Indian war had one
other major consequence: India moved closer to its decision to develop a
nuclear deterrent. Nehru had begun a nuclear-power program early after
independence and acquired reactors from the United States and Canada. But he
insisted India would use them only for peaceful purposes. His worldview held
the use of nuclear weapons to be unthinkable. But in the wake of the Chinese invasion,
the first Indian voices emerged in favor of a nuclear-weapons program. The
opposition party called for the development of the bomb to deter further
Chinese aggression. Nehru still demurred, but the path to a peaceful
nuclear-explosive test had begun.
Meanwhile, the Americans also
came to realize that the United States and India likely would need the bomb in
order to stop another major Chinese invasion. In 1963, Kennedy met with his
military advisers shortly before his death to review options in the event of
another Chinese attack. Secret tapes record Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara telling Kennedy, “Before any substantial commitment to defend India
against China is given, we should recognize that in order to carry out that
commitment against any substantial Chinese attack, we would have to use nuclear
weapons.” Kennedy responded, “We should defend India, and therefore we will
defend India if she were attacked.”
THE KENNEDY era underscores
several key points about U.S. diplomacy in South Asia. First, it is virtually
impossible to have good relations with both India and Pakistan. We may want
them to stop being rivals, but they can’t escape their history and geography.
Almost every American president has sought to have good ties with both, though none
really has succeeded because it is a zero-sum game for two rivals who cannot
abide America being their enemy’s friend. When we give one country a
substantial gain, like the 2005 U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, the other
feels hurt and demands equal treatment.
Second, China is our rival for
influence in the region because it has the capacity to frustrate American
goals. For Pakistanis, China is the “all-weather friend” that they can rely on,
unlike the unreliable and quixotic Americans. China provided Pakistan with key
technology to build the bomb in the 1970s while America was trying to prevent
Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons. Today, Beijing is building new
reactors to fuel the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world in Pakistan.
