Critical Triangle continues....

With the benefit of hindsight, it was this policy of equidistance, where the State Department did not insist on Pakistan facing up to the contradictions of its position that would mark US-Pakistan relations. It was this equidistance combined with the secondary nature of the subcontinent in the Cold War that made the US refuse arms to both countries. The 1948-1949 fighting over Kashmir saw the US impose an arms embargo on both sides. This pattern was to be followed in 1965 and 1971, even though by this time Pakistan was more or less a treaty ally.

While Indians lucidly remember the Kennedy administration pressure—using arms supplies that followed the disastrous 1962 war with China—to begin negotiations with Pakistan over Kashmir, most forget that successive US administrations, Eisenhower and Kennedy, would try to nudge Afghanistan and Pakistan towards rapprochement.

The main US opposition to this equidistance came unsurprisingly not from supporters of Pakistan, but from supporters of the containment of the Soviet Union.

For example the US military attaché to Pakistan wanted the 1948-49 embargo lifted due to what he believed were the strategic importance of Pakistani airfields in the event of a war with the USSR. For him, weapons requests by Pakistan should have been met as else the US would not be able to use these airfields. This exact logic was picked up by the Pakistan embassy in Washington claiming “the strategic importance of Pakistan cannot be overlooked or treated lightly.

In a period of emergency, Pakistan can form a base both for military and air operations.” It was similar calculations of keeping the Soviet Union out of the oil rich but unstable Middle East that British strategists like Sir Olaf Caroe proposed. The idea was to use subcontinental troops to bolster the stability of the Middle-East, and owing to India’s non-alignment, Pakistan seemed the only source of these.

To be continued........