not set the parameters for everything the United States does in South Asia; the
endgame and aftermath of the war in Afghanistan and the persistent challenge
of international terrorism will command Washington’s attention for at least the
next several years. But the tide is turning, and even as these issues retain their
salience, in the coming decade America’s leaders will have to see them within
the context of a broader global agenda over which Beijing will hold increasing
influence.
lessons from the cold war
Contemplating the future of Sino-American relations immediately conjures rec-
ollections of past great power rivalries. America’s Cold War with the Soviet
Union defined the global strategic context for four decades after the Second
World War. To be sure, the current U.S.-China relationship has some obvi-
ous and important differences from that U.S.-Soviet conflict. Unlike the United
States and Soviet Union, whose economies were walled off from one another
and governed by fundamentally different principles, Americans and Chinese
buy, sell, lend, and borrow from each other on a massive scale. That entan-
glement makes violent conflict less likely. It also rules out a Cold War–style
containment strategy.30
Even so, Americans can draw some useful historical analogies from the
Cold War experience. The global competition with Moscow influenced how
Washington assessed the strategic importance of South Asia. The United States
came and went from South Asia, driven by what it thought was needed to
contain Soviet power, not by any inherent interest in either India or Pakistan.
Cold War history also shows that both India and Pakistan viewed American
support as another dimension in their own bilateral conflict. The Americans
thought they were fighting communists; India and Pakistan knew they were
fighting each other. Any move by Washington to help one side was understood,
rightly or not, as a tilt away from the other. A 1957 review of U.S. South Asia
policy by the National Security Council explained that “Pakistan’s membership
in SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization] and U.S. military assistance to
Pakistan are interpreted by many [in India] as U.S. intervention in these issues
on behalf of Pakistan.”31 According to Field Marshall Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s
army chief (1951–8) and first military dictator (1958–69), “The crux of the
30 Ashley Tellis explores these complicating factors of the U.S.-China relationship in his overview chapter to Strategic Asia 2011–12. See Ashley J. Tellis, Travis Tanner, and Jessica Keough, eds., Strategic Asia 2011–12: Asia Responds to Its Rising Powers (Washington: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2011), pp. 17–20.
31 “Statement of Policy on U.S. Policy toward South Asia,” NSC 5701, January 10, 1957 in Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, http://history.state
.gov/historicaldocuments.
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From the Outside-In
179
problem from the very beginning was the Indian attitude of hostility towards
us: we had to look for allies to secure our position.”32
If not for Moscow, Washington might have had a very different sort of
relationship with both India and Pakistan. If not for Indo-Pakistani enmity,
American cold warriors might never have had to pick sides between New Delhi
and Islamabad. In short, America’s struggle with the Soviet Union embroiled it
in an otherwise avoidable regional dispute. If this past history is any guide to
the future, it suggests that U.S. competition with China and unresolved disputes
between India and Pakistan may again lead American leaders to pick sides in
South Asia.
Picking India
During the Cold War, America usually tilted in Pakistan’s favor. By the time
President Clinton made his landmark March 2000 trip to South Asia, however,
the opposite was true. He spent a glorious five days in India and a tense five
hours in Pakistan.
Standing before the Indian parliament, Clinton delivered a soaring speech
received by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with the words, “Mr. Presi-
dent, your visit marks the beginning of a new voyage in the new century
by two countries which have all the potential to become natural allies.”33 In
his inimitable style, Clinton then went on to charm local Indian audiences
at joyous receptions around the country. Rajasthani villagers showered the
beaming president in a colorful blizzard of rose petals. Clinton was in his
element. The president hit the perfect note with India at precisely the time it
was eager to chart a new, far friendlier path with America. Indians still recall
the visit fondly.
There would be no wading into adoring crowds in Pakistan. To the contrary,
fearing a terrorist attack on the first visit by any American president in over
thirty years, Clinton arrived in an unmarked Gulfstream jet that trailed a decoy.
Behind closed doors, Clinton warned Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to
deal with the terrorists on his soil and to re-think Pakistan’s nuclear posture.
He spoke of the dire threat posed by the Taliban in Afghanistan and shared his
hope that Pakistan should return to civilian rule quickly.
Clinton then emerged to address the Pakistani public in a live, uncensored
television broadcast. He cautioned of the “danger that Pakistan may grow even
more isolated, draining even more resources away from the needs of the people,
32 Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 154. See also “Letter from the Officer in Charge of Pakistan-Afghanistan Affairs (Poullada) to the Special Assistant at the Embassy in Pakistan for Mutual Security Affairs (Linebaugh),”
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, 15, p. 804.
33 See Strobe Talbott’s narrative of the Clinton visit to India in Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), p. 200.
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180
No Exit from Pakistan
moving even closer to a conflict no one can win.”34 Then the president rushed
off, skipping the standard photo session with Musharraf to speed back the
fifteen miles from Islamabad to the Rawalpindi airport along a cleared, heavily
guarded highway.
With the Cold War retreating into history’s rearview mirror, the Clinton
administration recognized that whatever nagging differences it might have with
India over nuclear nonproliferation, trade, and a number of other global issues,
the relationship with New Delhi was enormously appealing. In Pakistan, how-
ever, the United States could perceive “few compelling positive interests.”35
Clinton’s successor amplified the new “India tilt.” Senior members of the
George W. Bush administration saw great potential in India. They believed
India could play a constructiv
e role in the global balance with China. During
the 2000 election campaign, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s top foreign policy
adviser, wrote revealingly that the United States “should pay closer attention
to India’s role in the regional balance. . . . India is an element in China’s calcu-
lation, and it should be in America’s too. India is not a great power yet, but it
has the potential to emerge as one.”36
For their part, India’s leaders jumped at the chance to maintain and even to
enhance the positive momentum in relations with the United States. It did not
hurt that New Delhi’s ruling political coalition no longer included the once-
dominant Indian National Congress party and therefore had little compulsion
to hew to its policies of Nehruvian non-alignment. Both Washington and New
Delhi signaled strong interest in turning a new page in their relationship. By
avoiding the sticking points of the past, such as nuclear nonproliferation and
Kashmir, they could focus on new areas of cooperation.
One of these areas was ballistic missile defense. Unlike much of the rest of the
ing the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. Ashley Tel-
lis, a driving force behind improved U.S.-India relations over the past decade,
explains that India’s surprisingly positive response “came to reflect both an
example of, and a means toward, the steady improvement in U.S.-Indian ties.”37
When Bush’s hand-selected ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, arrived
in Mumbai in early September 2001, he remarked in his first speech to an
34 For a full account of President Clinton’s trip to Pakistan, see Dennis Kux, Disenchanted Allies, the United States and Pakistan 1947–2000 (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001), pp. 356–8.
35 Kux, Disenchanted Allies, p. 366.
36 Condoleezza Rice, “Campaign 2000: Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2000).
37 Ashley Tellis, “The Evolution of U.S.-Indian Ties: Missile Defense in an Emerging Strategic Relationship,” International Security, 304 (Spring 2006), pp. 113–51. On similar themes, see also Ashley J. Tellis, “The Merits of Dehyphenation: Explaining U.S. Success in Engaging India and Pakistan,” Washington Quarterly, 41, no. 4 (Autumn 2008), pp. 21–42; Ashley J. Tellis,
“India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (July 2005).
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From the Outside-In
181
assembly of Indian business executives that “President Bush has a big idea about
India-U.S. relations. My president’s big idea is that by working together more
intensely than ever before, the United States and India, two vibrant democra-
cies, can transform fundamentally the very essence of our bilateral relationship
and thereby make the world freer, more peaceful and more prosperous.”38
From New Delhi, the bullish Blackwill set to work knocking down barriers to
more extensive cooperation between India and the United States. He conspired
with well-placed partners back in Washington, DC, like Condoleezza Rice,
then the national security advisor, and Richard Haass, the director of policy
planning at the State Department. Together, they helped push policies through
a bureaucracy that was unused to the idea of a transformed relationship with
India, and as usual, resistant to change. The bureaucratic trench warfare left
some bruised egos but demolished the obstacles that had stymied cooperation
in missile defense, space, and high technology for decades. Fiercely committed
to their cause, and backed by the president, these advocates paved the way for
even bigger breakthroughs with India during Bush’s second term.
By contrast, Pakistan was an afterthought. Well before Bush entered the
White House, congressional frustration over Pakistan’s military coup and
nuclear program had ended U.S. assistance. The limited official exchanges that
did take place were often chilly. Top Bush administration officials, enthusiastic
advocates for India, cared little for Pakistan. Sharp-tongued Pakistani journal-
ist Ahmed Rashid concludes that Pakistan and Afghanistan were “clearly not a
priority on Powell’s or Rice’s to-do list.”39 Pakistan was neither a strong state
nor a traditional ally. It had no place in the strategic vision that the new team
brought to the job.
Then, on that clear blue September 11 morning, Washington’s gaze was
redirected by the horror of al-Qaeda’s attacks. Pakistan shot to the top of the
American agenda. Almost overnight, Pakistan opened its ports and airspace
to U.S. forces flowing into Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence
directorate (ISI) expanded its counterterror cooperation with the CIA and FBI.
Washington’s regional – and some would say even its global – priorities turned
upside down. Pakistan went from peripheral, near-rogue state to indispensable
“front line ally” in President Bush’s new “Global War on Terror.” Talk of
great powers and traditional allies turned to terrorism, the Muslim world, and
homeland security.
Remarkably, even in the post-9/11 haze, advocates of the U.S. partnership
with India kept their focus. Eager to escape the historical dilemma of picking
sides between Pakistan and India, but fully aware that in the fight against
preserve the gains with New Delhi by “de-hyphenating” the Indo-Pakistani
relationship. They argued that Washington should avoid being sucked into
38 Celia W. Dugger, “U.S. Envoy Extols India, Accepting Its Atom Status,” New York Times, September 7, 2001, p. A1.
39 Rashid, Descent into Chaos, pp. 56–9.
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182
No Exit from Pakistan
the intractable Indo-Pakistani conflict. Instead, the goal should be to improve
relations with India and Pakistan simultaneously and separately.40
Taken to extremes, de-hyphenation was a thoroughly unrealistic, artificial
construct. Neither India nor Pakistan could ever lose sight of how U.S. relations
with the other might tilt their own balance of power. That said, de-hyphenation
was enormously successful in the one way that mattered most. It allowed the
Bush administration to continue building a partnership with India even as it
became increasingly entangled with Pakistan. On October 1, 2008, Bush’s India
team won its biggest victory of all: the U.S. Senate voted 86–13 in favor of a
historic accord to open trade with India in civilian nuclear technologies.41 The
deal tossed aside decades of U.S. nonproliferation rules, all with the goal of
convincing India that the United States could be a trusted friend and strategic
partner. U.S.-India relations had scaled a new peak.
T
he early days of the Obama presidency raised some concerns in India.
Indian cynics feared the new administration would lean toward China. Others
worried that with no new diplomatic breakthrough on the horizon, relations
with India would naturally lose steam. On Thanksgiving week, 2009, President
Obama did his best to show that he would try to keep up the momentum. In
enormous tents on the White House lawn, he and the first lady hosted a star-
studded state dinner for the visiting Indian prime minister, the first such dinner
of his presidency. India graciously returned the favor by welcoming Obama
to New Delhi, where his visit got rave reviews, not least because the president
arrived with a surprise gift: America’s support for India’s bid to become a
permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
For Obama, as for Bush, India had an infectious appeal. The main distinction
between the two is that Obama was less prone to draw direct and public
connections between his India policy and potential concerns about China’s
rising power. But there can be no doubting that a strong, bipartisan pro-India
consensus reigns in Washington today.
A Future that Complicates U.S.-Pakistan Ties
The same cannot be said about Pakistan. The prevailing trends of the recent
past – improved U.S. ties with India and China’s assertive posture – raise serious
doubts about the trajectory of U.S.-Pakistan relations.
Pakistan already feels jilted by U.S. support to India. De-hyphenation has
its limits. Islamabad perceived the U.S.-India civil nuclear deal as a costly
defeat. In vain, Pakistan attempted to win its own nuclear concessions from
the United States to lessen the blow. When that failed, Islamabad prevailed
upon Beijing to provide some of its old, second-rate nuclear power plants.
40 Tellis, “The Merits of Dehyphenation,” p. 23.
41 Glenn Kessler, “Senate Backs Far-Reaching Nuclear Trade Deal with India,” Washington Post, October 2, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/01/
AR2008100100533.html.
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