It was only to be expected that the visiting US defence secretary, Mr. Frank Carlucci, would not commit himself on the level of American military assistance to Pakistan in the wake of the proposed Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. For one thing, the situation in respect of Afghanistan itself is too uncertain to permit a firm assessment of the likely course of events there; so far even a formal agreement has proved elusive in Geneva. For another, US military assistance to Pakistan has had wider implications, though it was resumed in the context of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan; Pakistan is America’s strategic ally in the region which covers the Gulf. But it is about time that we in India begin to appreciate the complexities of the Pakistan-US relations and try and take advantage of the complications if and when they arise.
To begin with, it is obvious that for reasons which may have less to do with the sub-continent than with West Asia, the United States is agitated over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. This programme must worry the Americans in a way a similar programme in India need not, for the simple reason that India can never have any good reason to cooperate in the nuclear weapons field with any Arab country. The twists and turns in US pronouncements and actions in this regard cannot obscure this reality. Indeed, it is unavoidable that the relevant compulsions of America’s West Asia policy would assert themselves more strongly if and when the Soviet troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan. The suggestion is not that the US can halt Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme but that anxiety on this score must become more evident in the wake of Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
There are other imponderables in American-Pakistan ties. Pakistan’s importance as a “front-line” state must go down if, for instance, the movement towards a Soviet-US detente gathers momentum; or if the Iran-Iraq war ends and the Islamic revolution in Iran begins to lose its fervour; or if China’s intervention in the Gulf grows via the sale of deadly missiles to countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. In any event, it is vital that we recognise that while US interests in the regions surrounding our country may continue to clash with ours as they have for four decades, Washington is not hostile to us per se. It was not hostile to us even at the height of the cold war; witness the aid it has given us directly or indirectly since the early sixties. And today it is far less inclined to be doctrinaire and rigid in its approach to world problems. In plain terms, we can do business with it even in respect of military sales and transfer of military technology.
It does not follow that there can be a significant convergence in the interests of the two countries. There cannot be. India has to be far more wary of both China and Pakistan, forexample, than the United States, however critical the latter may be of specific Chinese and Pakistani actions and policies. While Beijing and Islamabad cannot impinge on the security of the United States, they cannot but impinge on ours, whatever we may do to improve our relations with them. This is the logic of our geography, our size and our potentialities. India’s friendship with the Soviet Union has been a function of our security needs, especially since the early sixties when the Chinese broke rank with the Soviets in the communist movement find adopted a menacing posture towards us. These needs may be more urgent at one time and less urgent at another. But broadly speaking, they are not likely to disappear as far into the future as we can see. On the contrary, these may well acquire a new urgency if we move into a period of political instability at home as a result of the social and economic turbulence which is bound to grow in coming years and decades. By any reckoning, friendship with the Soviet Union must remain the bedrock of our foreign-defence policy. Mr. Gorbachev’s desire for friendship with China and possibly even Pakistan cannot change either India’s or the Soviet Union’s need for each other. The lines are no longer clearly drawn as in the past. But they are there to stay for a long time.