The well-known columnist Jack Anderson, who was the first person to tell us of the Nixon-Kissinger decision to “tilt” towards Pakistan at the time of the Bangladesh crisis in 1971, has now disclosed that the Reagan administration may be beginning to “tilt” towards India.
If this in fact happens, it will be a development of the greatest importance for Asia. Naturally we have to wait for developments to unfold themselves before we can assess the magnitude of the supposed tilt and its importance, for good or ill, for us. Meanwhile let us examine its possibility. The prospect does not appear all that hopeful.
Judging by the available PTI summary, Jack Anderson and his collaborator Joseph Spear have given mainly a negative reason for the possible shift in America’s South Asia policy in India’s favour – disillusionment with General Zia-ul-Haq – and they have cited three reasons for this disenchantment.
First, the “US conservatives’ ardour for General Zia was based on the belief that he was a reliable anti-Soviet ally. It cooled when they realized that he was an Islamic fundamentalist determined to take the country down this road and stirred serious opposition among his countrymen”. Secondly, the American policy-makers were unhappy over his cavalier disregard of their concern over his determination to build an “Islamic nuclear bomb.” Finally, “Zia’s decision to clap Bhutto’s daughter under house arrest, demonstrating his fear of popular opposition after more than a decade of dictatorship, may prove to have been the last straw.”
It is difficult to believe that the first factor – General Zia’s Islamic fundamentalism – can be, or is, a matter of serious concern for the Reagan administration which itself has been keen on bringing religion into the public realm. Witness its desire to make prayer compulsory in schools and its opposition to abortion. Moreover, Gen. Zia’s fundamentalism is not of such a virulent type as would provoke strong reaction in the United States. The opposition to it in Pakistan also has been rather muted. Moreover, while Pakistan is predominantly Sunni, America’s current obsession is with Shia radicalism emanating from Khomeini’s Iran.
Benazir’s House Arrest
The third factor – Benazir Bhutto’s house arrest – too cannot be a matter of such fundamental interest to the Reagan administration as to provoke it to revise drastically its South Asia policy. It is possible that it had taken a more hopeful view of General Zia’s phoney elections and formation of a so-called government headed by Mr. Mohammed Khan Junejo in Islamabad last March. In that case Benazir’s house arrest could have come as somewhat of a shock to it. But in the context of the deep and extensive US involvement with the Afghan mujahideen in their anti-Kabul crusade, its principal interest in Pakistan must be in stability and not in a transition to democracy which could be quite unsettling and difficult to manage.
This leaves General Zia’s “Islamic bomb” as the only possible provocation for a shift in America’s South Asia policy. But two points deserve attention in this regard. First, the “Islamic bomb” is not a new development; it antedates the Reagan administration’s decision in 1980 to extend military-cum-economic assistance to Pakistan; it had then even waived the Symington amendment which rules out US aid to any country which is trying to develop nuclear weapons; the considerations that persuaded it to do so have not changed. Secondly, the Americans have been blaming New Delhi as much for Pakistan’s nuclear effort as Islamabad and urging India to sign the non-proliferation treaty so that Pakistan could also be persuaded to follow suit, or alternatively to agree to a mutual inspection arrangement with the latter.
Thus we do not find the Anderson-Spear case particularly strong and convincing. In our view, the specific evidence they have cited is also rather weak. While the US refusal to provide E2 Hawkeye radar system to Pakistan is doubtless a gesture of goodwill towards India, it is not an anti-Pakistan move as such. Indeed, to put the matter more appropriately, a decision to provide Hawkeyes to Pakistan would have been tantamount to a declaration that the Reagan administration was anti-India to the point of being willing to tilt the power balance in the air decisively against it and in Pakistan’s favour. So by refraining from such a decision, Washington has only shown that it cares for India’s interests and susceptibilities at least to that extent. This fits in with the administration’s new interest in improved relations with this country.
Interesting Coincidence
It is, of course, a sheer coincidence that the Anderson-Spear column should have been followed by a report in The New York Times that Mr. Armacost, under secretary of state, and Mr. Fortier, deputy assistant to President Reagan for national security affairs, were being sent to New Delhi (they have since held discussions in the Indian capital) and Islamabad to express anxiety about the development of a nuclear weapon by Pakistan and possible retaliation by India in a manner similar to the Israeli strike against an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. But it is an interesting coincidence which illuminates the American approach to the issue of non-proliferation in South Asia. For the report quotes US officials making two points.
First, though India has always resisted being equated with Pakistan, one option to be considered is agreement between the two countries permitting mutual inspection as urged by Pakistan. Secondly, the mood in the administration is to “get involved” and “weigh in” to avert a confrontation between India and Pakistan. In 1963, too, the US and Britain “got involved” and “weighed in” to “resolve” the Indo-Pakistani dispute over Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of Chinese aggression against India. Pakistan was then threatening to make common cause with China; now it is threatening to make the bomb. The threat was indirect then; it is indirect now.
It is hardly necessary to recall that the government of India has said more than once that it has no plans to engage in an Israeli-type preemptive strike on Pakistan’s key nuclear installations at Kahuta near Peshawar. It is equally unnecessary to recall that unlike Iraq’s Pakistan’s nuclear facilities are located in hardened underground sites which India cannot bomb out of existence even if it was so inclined. Moreover, unlike Iraq vis-à-vis Israel, Pakistan vis-à-vis India is not a sitting duck. It can retaliate and attempt to bomb either oil or nuclear installations. These are within the range of F-16s.
Clearly there is a purpose in American attempts to conjure the unlikely scenario of India attempting an Israeli-style pre-emptive strike on Pakistani nuclear installations. Indeed, this purpose is self-evident. It is to compel India to sign the NPT or a mutual inspection agreement with Pakistan. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s numerous statements could have aroused the hope in Washington that it is possible to push India in that direction.
The Two Refrains
On the eve of his visit to the United States last June, Mr. Gandhi was quoted as having said in Paris that India might be willing to sign the NPT. A day later he denied having made such a statement. For us in India, that was the end of the matter. But perhaps that was not so for the Americans. They could have concluded that opposition to the NPT was not an issue of principle with Mr. Rajiv Gandhi as it was with his predecessor, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, and that he could be brought round with the help of a proper mix of threat (the Pakistani bomb) and inducement (offer of sophisticated weapons to India and denial of Hawkeyes to Pakistan). Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has made a number of other statements on the issue of the Pakistani bomb. Two refrains run through these statements. First, that Islamabad’s determined bid to acquire nuclear weapons has become the biggest obstacle in the path of improvement in Indo-Pakistan relations. Secondly, that the United States has not done all it could to stop General Zia in his tracks. This stance is quite different from Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s. She was more concerned with Pakistan’s alleged aid to Sikh extremists and America’s military supplies to Pakistan.
The implications of the Prime Minister’s statements are obvious. If Islamabad’s nuclear efforts are the biggest obstacle in the way of improved Indo-Pakistani ties and if it is desirable that these relations improve, it must be in India’s own interest to do all it can to persuade Pakistan to give these up. And we know Pakistan’s price. Either we sign the NPT or conclude a mutual inspection agreement with it.
Similarly, if it is our case that US has not done all it could in the matter, we must, again in our own interest, persuade it to use fully its influence in Islamabad. Again we know the price. It is the same as in the first case.
From the American point of view, it is not an unreasonable proposition; we must be willing to give up our nuclear option if we want them to persuade Pakistan to give up its. In view of all this, can it be a matter of great surprise if the Americans have come to feel that a supposed “tilt” towards India can win them a lot, including the Indian signature on the NPT?
We need to be careful. Good Indo-US relations, to be durable, must rest on mutuality of interests. Such a mutuality of interests, to the best of our knowledge, has yet to be spelt out. But it can be asserted that a sensible definition cannot involve a tilt on the part of either country. Mature leaders do not think and speak in terms of tilts. They think and speak in terms of mutuality of interests and mutual adjustments.
The Times of India, 18 September 1985