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The Cold War on the Periphery, by Robert J. McMahon
During the first several years following partition, the Truman administration adopted two distinct--and sometimes competing--strategies in its approach to the Indian subcontinent. On the one hand, the United States sought to establish the most constructive possible bilateral relationships with both India and Pakistan. That goal was shaped by a basic Cold War calculus: each of these new states, American planners hoped, would embrace the broad goals of U.S. foreign policy, formally or informally lining up with the West and opposing the Soviet Union and all that it represented. That calculus, which dominated the Truman administration's thinking about South Asia from the first, led some administration specialists to differentiate carefully between the relative importance of the two nations. Despite keen attention to Pakistan's potential strategic significance, most U.S. planners rated India as far the more valuable diplomatic prize. American policy toward the subcontinent consequently leaned toward India throughout the late 1940s. The opening of bilateral relations with New Delhi and Karachi and the reasons for the initial Truman administration tilt toward the former will be explored in the next chapter.
At this same time, the United States also formulated a regional policy toward South Asia. That process forms the central focus of this chapter. The regional approach, influenced by the advice and perspective offered by Great Britain, was predicated on a different set of assumptions. It held that India and Pakistan, for all the bitterness, hatred, and disruption caused by partition, remained essentially interdependent entities. The grave political, economic, and security problems faced by both nations could only be resolved if each agreed to work together in the spirit of mutual cooperation and enlightened self-interest. No disputes were more divisive or more explosive than those produced by the partition agreement itself, especially the controversy over the future disposition of Kashmir. Hence many experts in Washington concurred with their counterparts in London that the overriding emphasis of Anglo-American diplomatic activity in the subcontinent should be to facilitate the settlement of those disputes and to promote an Indo-Pakistani rapprochement. This perspective, in short, pointed to the need for an integrated, regional approach to South Asian affairs.
The regional strategy, which required a strictly evenhanded approach to the two countries, at times complemented, but more often conflicted with, the bilateral one. Both strategies, however, grew from the same national security imperatives that undergirded Truman's overall foreign policy. The Cold War and the security fears that it induced demanded that American officials first identify and classify with some precision the major elements of interest for the United States in every region of the globe. They needed to define the complex mix of strategic, economic, and political interests that South Asia held for the United States before they could agree upon what tactics were best designed to secure those interests. The most fundamental issue, then, involved discerning the overall value, manifest or latent, of an area situated far from the major theaters of Cold War conflict.
The first part of this chapter examines the initial efforts by American planners to identify the relative importance of India and Pakistan to the United States. The second part explores the Truman administration's response to the Kashmir dispute. That bitter controversy brought the two new dominions to the brink of open warfare in 1948, thus posing a profound threat to the regional stability that American policymakers sought to promote.
Nearly all intelligence estimates, strategic appraisals, and policy papers of the late 1940s judged the Indian subcontinent to be a region of major, although not vital, significance to the United States. The importance of India and Pakistan, according to those reports, stemmed in large measure from a combination of fixed factors: size, resources, and location. Invariably, American experts first noted the vast expanse and population of the two dominions; together they contained about one-fifth of the total world population on a land mass equal to that of Europe. Their analyses usually moved next to a more concrete appreciation of the subcontinent's economic value to the United States. Explained the Central Intelligence Agency: "It ranks first or second in world production of such critical materials of war as cotton, mica, manganese, monazite (a source of thorium), and beryl, and is a major source of raw materials, investment income, and carrying charges for the UK, thus strengthening the UK's and Western Europe's efforts toward the economic recovery essential to US security." 1
Strategic location constituted another important element of American interest. U.S. analysts extolled the key position of the two new dominions as a global crossroads; not only did they sit astride the major sea routes connecting Europe and East Asia, but they abutted the critically important oil fields of the Middle East. In the first formal policy paper on the region, adopted on May 31, 1949, the State-Army-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Committee (SANACC) briefly elucidated this strategic calculus. "The geographical position of South Asia," it noted, "is such that, if the economic and military potentials of the area were more fully developed, it could dominate the region of the Indian Ocean and exert a strong influence also on the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East." 2
Viewed in relationship to overall national security interests, however, it must be emphasized that during the initial postindependence period South Asia ranked as an area of but secondary import to the United States. As recent scholarship has persuasively demonstrated, the Truman administration viewed American global interests in straightforward power terms. The areas it valued most--Western Europe and Japan--possessed a combination of raw materials, industrial infrastructure, and technological prowess that could be converted into warmaking potential. Areas that ranked next in importance, such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia, derived their value from the possession of critical resources or base sites or from trading relationships with core states. Neither India nor Pakistan contained more than the most rudimentary industrial base. Neither nation offered a highly skilled or well-educated workforce. Although each state, as the above reports suggest, boasted some important raw materials and geographical locations that might in the future yield useful base sites, in relative terms India and Pakistan were at this time peripheral to core U.S. national security interests. 3
A wide-ranging analysis of world developments, produced for President Truman by the CIA in September 1947, revealingly placed India and Pakistan, along with the colonial areas of North Africa, in the fourth--and last--place among areas important to U.S. security. The agency report, which accurately reflected the thinking of nearly all senior policymakers in the Truman administration, ranked Western Europe, the Near and Middle East, and the Far East, in that order, as the regions that rated the greatest American concern and attention. "The economic dislocation, social unrest, political instability, and military weakness" so evident in those areas, the report cautioned, were "dangerous to the security of the United States in the opportunities they afford for the further extension of Soviet power and influence." In comparison, former colonial dependencies such as India and Pakistan were "remote from the U.S.S.R. and not subject to direct Soviet aggression." Given the greater intrinsic value attached to Western Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, then, and given the distressing level of disorder and instability prevailing in those key areas, it should not be surprising that President Truman, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, and other senior officials paid little attention to the Indian subcontinent in the years following partition. 4
Still, the United States could ill afford to ignore developments there. Even the CIA report that situated South Asia so plainly on the periphery of American foreign policy priorities acknowledged that fact. The Soviet Union, it stressed, could effectively exploit the unsettled conditions in former colonial areas in order "to undermine the strength of European states, and to discredit them and the United States." 5 The Indian subcontinent may have possessed few of the intrinsic economic, strategic, and political assets that inhered in more vital areas. Nevertheless, the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for power and influence was worldwide in scope; American decision makers recognized that it extended even into such relatively marginal parts of the Third World as South Asia.
The withdrawal of British political authority from the subcontinent in August 1947, a process that coincided with deepening Soviet-American antagonism in Europe, East Asia, and the Near East, thus raised a host of troubling, yet unanswerable, questions for the architects of American foreign policy. Would the Soviet Union's influence in South Asia increase as Britain's diminished? How serious a blow would be dealt to American prestige and power if the Russians came to dominate the subcontinent? What specific measures could the United States take to insure the region's loyalty to the West? And how, precisely, could India and Pakistan contribute in a positive fashion to the achievement of Washington's political, economic, and strategic objectives?
The uncertainties created by the precipitous termination of the British raj and the simultaneous emergence of two untested new states, coupled with the exigencies of superpower competition, thus enormously complicated the task of American officials responsible for discerning essential policy objectives and means appropriate to their realization. On at least one point, however, nearly all were agreed: South Asia's importance to the United States was inextricably linked to the Cold War struggle between East and West. The SANACC position paper of May 1949 deplored what it called "an over-all situation of near-chaos" that obtained in many parts of southern Asia following the abrupt removal of British authority. Resulting conditions of "political and economic deterioration," it pointed out, had created alarming vacuums of power. Just as in Western Europe, the nation that stood to gain most from those conditions, even though it had not created them, was the Soviet Union. "The political foment and economic distress obtaining in most of the South Asian countries, combined with their weak military defenses, make this area particularly susceptible to Communist penetration." The paper noted that evidence of increased Kremlin activities in the region mounted steadily. "We believe," it warned somewhat ominously, "that the loss to the U.S. of access to the raw materials and present and possible productive capacity, manpower and military bases of this area, or Communist control of the area and its vast population, would gravely affect the security of the U.S." 6
An earlier intelligence appraisal produced by the CIA placed the problems of the subcontinent in a broader historical perspective. "As the result of the gradual disintegration of the colonial systems and the emergence of young, nationalistic states, a new power situation is in the making in the former colonial world." It was a development fraught with dangers for the West, the report said, since the new states would remain militarily weak and economically dependent for the foreseeable future. "There is danger that unless the Western European nations, and with them the U.S., can secure the goodwill of these newly liberated and as yet dependent areas, they may become aligned with the U.S.S.R." The drift of former colonial dependencies outside the Western orbit would also jeopardize American access to bases and raw materials, the CIA cautioned, "an increasingly serious loss in view of global U.S. strategic needs and growing dependence on foreign mineral resources." 7
All of those conditions prevailed in South Asia. Although American experts did not rate the natural resources and strategic potential of the subcontinent as absolutely essential to U.S. security, they did judge them to be of major, and growing, value. Nearly all preliminary analyses of American interests in South Asia underscored the region's geostrategic and geopolitical value to U.S. Cold War objectives. The CIA noted in late 1948 that the subcontinent would be "a potentially important base for either side in the event of global war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R." 8 A State Department report of that same year called attention to possible U.S. military interests in the defense of the area against a Soviet attack. 9 NSC 48/1, a position paper on U.S. policy toward Asia that was prepared for the National Security Council in December 1949, declared that India and Pakistan ranked (along with Japan) as "the only major Asian power centers remaining outside the Soviet orbit." "Should India and Pakistan fall to communism," it warned, "the United States and its friends might find themselves denied any foothold on the Asian mainland." 10
According to a number of early policy assessments and recommendations, the most important South Asian nation from the perspective of U.S. national security objectives was Pakistan. Colonel Nathaniel R. Hoskot, the U.S. military attaché in Karachi, urged Washington as early as 1948 to consider military assistance to the new government due to Pakistan's "strategic worldwide importance." 11 This view, which found resonance especially within the military and intelligence communities, was based on two principal considerations: Pakistan's contiguous border with the Soviet Union, and hence the desirability of establishing air bases and intelligence-gathering facilities there, and Pakistan's proximity to the Persian Gulf, and hence its potential role in the defense of Middle East oil fields. A Joint Chiefs of Staff study of U.S. military interests in South Asia, dated March 24, 1949, succinctly summarized this perspective: the Karachi-Lahore area of Pakistan, it noted, "might be required as a base for air operations against [the] central U.S.S.R. and as a staging area for forces engaged in the defense or recapture of Middle East oil areas." The report also speculated that Pakistan might provide a valuable base for covert operations launched against the Soviet Union. Pakistan thus emerged early in the thinking of some U.S. strategists as a potential asset to the nation's global security objectives, differentiating it from India in that critical regard. 12
American policy objectives in India and Pakistan flowed logically from the above analyses. The primary U.S. goal was to orient those nations toward the United States and the other Western democracies and away from the Soviet Union. Washington, in addition, sought to foster economic development in the region that "would not only help to provide foundations for more stable and democratic governments, friendly to the U.S., but also assist these countries to contribute to economic recovery in the Far East and throughout the world." 13 American officials also thought it essential for the nations of South Asia to maintain internal security and resist firmly all communist threats. In short, the United States sought to promote stable, peaceful, and economically productive states that would be oriented toward the West and capable of resisting communist blandishments, both internal and external.
The Truman administration hoped to foster those general goals through a variety of diplomatic, economic, and military means, all of which were to be developed in coordination with Great Britain. In May 1949 the SANACC proposed that the United States quickly ascertain appropriate levels of economic, financial, and technical assistance for the governments of the area. It raised the possibility of providing military materiel as well. Such aid was essential, that top interagency committee averred, to help ensure the loyalty of India and Pakistan to the West. "We must recognize," it cautioned, "that, should we not provide at least the minimum assistance deemed essential by the countries of the area, South Asia might give effect to its predilection for strict neutrality vis-à-vis the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. or, at worst, it might fall into the Soviet orbit." 14
Since U.S. and British interests in the region ran along parallel lines, American analysts agreed that such assistance programs should be formulated in close consultation with London. Citing Britain's historic ties to South Asia and the continuing connection through the British Commonwealth, every major American policy formulation of the late 1940s advised that the United States follow Great Britain's lead on all substantive matters relating to the Indian subcontinent.
Many of the dilemmas and contradictions that have plagued U.S. relations with India and Pakistan since partition actually appear, in embryonic form, in these various postindependence policy prescriptions. Nearly all American assessments of the late 1940s called for an evenhanded, regional approach to the problems of South Asia. Such a policy direction explicitly ruled out the option of leaning toward either Pakistan or India. Open support for one nation, in the view of American and British officials, would inevitably alienate the other and hopelessly complicate prospects for an amicable resolution of various intraregional disputes. State Department and Foreign Office specialists were agreed that a Kashmir settlement was the sine qua non for regional stability. But what if all efforts to promote a resolution of outstanding Indo-Pakistani differences were ineffectual? What if a purely evenhanded approach proved illusory and a tilt toward one nation became unavoidable? Would American interests, in that eventuality, best be served by a closer relationship with India or Pakistan?
Those were daunting questions that American experts simply did not address at the time. Pakistan, according to most military estimates, provided the more tempting strategic prize. According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff's frank appraisal, India held negligible military significance for the United States. 15 Yet, in the view of other American specialists, there were countervailing factors to weigh. "India," stated the SANACC policy assessment of May 1949, "is the natural political and economic center of South Asia and aid given to the peripheral countries would have to be adapted to conditions in India." 16 A State Department analysis of late 1949 concurred. In the aftermath of the Chinese Communist triumph, it observed, preservation of Western influence in India had assumed singular importance to the United States: "In all of Asia it is now the only nation that is large enough and has the power potential to resist a determined Communist military effort with any possibility of success. If India should fall into Communist power, a consolidation of that power throughout Asia would be inevitable. If we are to have an effective policy in Asia, therefore, India must be the keystone of that policy." 17
The prescription for deferring to Britain's leadership also masked some potentially contradictory policy currents. If the Indian subcontinent truly mattered to overall Cold War objectives, how long could the United States afford to remain Great Britain's junior partner? As the flow of military and economic resources from Washington to the subcontinent began to overwhelm those from the financially strapped government in London, as they inevitably would, why would the United States choose to remain in a position subordinate to its European ally? And what about local resentments still directed toward Great Britain for its overbearing presence during the raj? Some American officials feared that too close an identification with the former colonial overlord might tarnish the American image among Indian and Pakistani nationalists and thus impair Washington's ability to accomplish its policy goals. Finally, might not the global strategic, economic, and political interests of a superpower on occasion run counter to those of a declining power whose lingering worldwide commitments vastly outstripped its resources? In sum, underlying the broad consensus about American policy goals expressed in these preliminary assessments lay some portentous inconsistencies. American decision makers would have to deal with their implications much sooner than they could possibly have imagined.
Regional instability, stemming in large measure from a series of bitter Indo-Pakistani disputes, posed the most immediate threat to the accomplishment of American policy objectives in the post-partition period. Kashmir proved by far the most emotional--and intractable--of those. The Truman administration feared that the continuation of that dispute might lead to war between the two dominions, thus jeopardizing all U.S. interests in the subcontinent. "Close economic and strategic cooperation between India and Pakistan and the Indian States," observed the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee in October 1947, "is essential if stability and progress are to be attained." 18
The converse, of course, was that in the absence of Indo-Pakistani amity it would be virtually impossible to secure the stability and order upon which U.S. policy goals were predicated. "India and Pakistan," noted a CIA report of September 1948, "will remain economically and politically unstable so long as their current hostility, with its threat of war, continues." 19 An intelligence estimate produced by the agency the following year struck a more alarmist tone. Failure to find a satisfactory solution to the Kashmir dispute might occasion full-scale hostilities, it predicted; war then "would result in the disappearance of Pakistan as a political entity, the emergence of a strife-torn and communally inflamed India and the appearance of an expanded Afghanistan, so beset by tribal restiveness and internal turmoil as to invite Soviet occupation." 20 In the face of such grim scenarios, American diplomats considered a prompt resolution of the conflict imperative.
The princely state of Kashmir, encompassing some 85,000 square miles, contained a population of approximately 4 million at partition, about three-fourths of whom were Muslim. Nonetheless, its ruling maharajah, a Hindu, ran the state along orthodox Hindu lines and allowed Hindu castes to dominate its political life. Opposition to Maharajah Hari Singh coalesced principally in the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, a nationalist organization headed by Sheikh Abdullah, a popular Muslim leader. Despite his religion, Abdullah's National Conference adopted a secular orientation; indeed, it was closer ideologically to the secular nationalism of the Indian Congress Party than to the religious nationalism of Pakistan's Muslim League.
Unlike most other princely rulers, the maharajah chose to accede neither to India nor Pakistan under the terms of Mountbatten's partition plan. As a Hindu, he considered accession to Pakistan unpalatable; at the same time, union with democratic India held little more appeal to the autocratic ruler. In fact, his major hope was for the permanent establishment of Kashmir as an independent state. To that end, he resisted all entreaties from Mountbatten to make a firm decision, arrested Sheikh Abdullah and other top opposition leaders in mid-1947, and tried to arrange stand-still agreements with India and Pakistan that would preserve Kashmir's autonomous status.
His schemes were soon engulfed in the tidal wave of communal violence that racked the subcontinent following the transfer of power. In late August 1947 the Punjab's communal rioting spilled over into Kashmir, with Hindu and Sikh refugees savagely attacking Muslims there. In September Muslims in the western part of the state revolted against the maharajah's government; their rebellion led to the temporary establishment of an independent (Azad) Kashmir regime. With conditions throughout Kashmir in near-chaos, and the maharajah's position rapidly crumbling, in mid-October Muslim tribesmen from Pakistan, with the apparent support of their government, invaded Kashmir.
A combustible situation now exploded. The tribesmen, predominantly Pathans from the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, were at least nominally responding to reports of atrocities committed against their coreligionists. Fierce fighters, they easily overwhelmed the ill-equipped militia of the maharajah's government. As they threatened to capture the state capital of Srinigar, the maharajah fled. In desperation, he called for India's military assistance. Mountbatten, who the Indians had retained as governor-general, demurred, insisting that the maharajah must first accede legally to the Indian dominion. With no other options, the reluctant ruler signed an instrument of accession on October 26, 1947. Almost immediately, India dispatched troops to halt the tribesmen's advance. They arrived just in time to prevent the sacking of Srinigar.
The intervention of Indian troops infuriated Pakistani Governor-General Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He suspected India of using the tribal invasion to justify accession. Finding evidence for a well-planned conspiracy, Jinnah sanctioned the transfer of military supplies to the invaders while also sending Pakistani troops to join their effort as "volunteers."
In early November Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru publicly called for a free plebiscite to determine the ultimate disposition of Kashmir. As a precondition for the plebiscite, however, he demanded the removal of all invading forces and the restoration of peaceful conditions. Pakistan, for its part, agreed to the plebiscite but spelled out several conditions of its own, such as the withdrawal of all Indian troops, that New Delhi found unacceptable. As bilateral negotiations reached an impasse and military operations stalled, Nehru turned to the United Nations. On November 2, 1947, he requested international mediation. Kashmir suddenly threatened to metamorphose from a local incident into an international crisis. 21
For different reasons, both Indian and Pakistani leaders saw the ultimate disposition of the Kashmir question as crucial to the future of their respective states and societies. For Pakistan, a nation carved uneasily out of the Muslim majority areas of British India, Kashmir belonged to the new nation as organically as did East Bengal or Sind. To allow the self-interested scheming of that state's Hindu ruler to subvert the democratic process was to strike at the principle of Muslim solidarity that formed Pakistan's raison d'être. For India, a nation that hoped to forge unity out of a diverse congeries of ethnic, religious, linguistic, and caste groupings, the principle of secularism was sacrosanct. To allow Kashmir's accession to India to be invalidated simply because that state contained a Muslim majority was to challenge the secularism that its rulers considered essential to the maintenance of communal harmony. Nehru considered the maharajah's decision to join India a legal one, no matter how curious the maneuverings surrounding it. Bowing to Pakistani pressure at this juncture, he feared, would just send a highly disturbing and potentially inflammatory signal about the fragility of minority rights in a society that counted millions of Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and other religious minorities among its predominantly Hindu population. It might also encourage fissiparous tendencies throughout India. Moreover, Nehru, whose family hailed from Kashmir, brought a strong measure of personal and emotional baggage to all discussions about the future disposition of that area of legendary beauty, a factor that promised to further complicate any search for a diplomatic solution. 22
Senior American officials did not at first grasp the grave regional--and international--implications of the Kashmir fighting. Preoccupied with more pressing matters, especially U.S.-Soviet relations and the incipient European recovery program, they devoted relatively little attention to what seemed initially a mere legal controversy in one of the world's most remote areas. Nehru's decision to call for Security Council intervention, however, placed the matter in an entirely different light. "It is increasingly apparent," noted the State Department in its first position paper on the subject, "that this major difficulty between India and Pakistan probably cannot be removed without external assistance, or without resort to further armed conflict which may eventually involve some or all of the Afghan border tribes." Since British intervention would be exceedingly awkward so soon after their withdrawal from the subcontinent, the State Department reluctantly accepted the need for United Nations mediation. UN involvement, it believed, would certainly be preferable to direct American involvement. 23
Great Britain urged the United States to play an active role in helping to resolve the Kashmir dispute throughout late 1947 and early 1948, but to no avail. On January 10, 1948, a delegation of top British diplomats, led by Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Philip Noel-Baker, spelled out their government's thinking during a meeting at the State Department. Any British initiative, coming a mere six months after the transfer of power, might look like an attempt to reimpose the raj. The United States, on the other hand, maintained very high prestige with both India and Pakistan and could play a decisive role in effecting a settlement. Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett, while expressing Washington's willingness to help, and not excluding the possibility of concrete American assistance at some later date, listed a series of factors that militated against direct U.S. involvement. The United States was "spread out very thinly in its present commitments" and needed to concentrate on the European Recovery program, currently before Congress; it feared that a U.S. initiative in the Kashmir dispute "might attract undesirable Russian attention and make a solution more difficult"; and it doubted, from previous experience, whether the Security Council could provide quick and effective action. 24
The United States thus consciously rejected any activist or leadership role in the scheduled Security Council debates. It opted, instead, to exert its influence with the two parties in a quiet, low-key fashion. Such an approach was consistent with the competing policy considerations listed by Lovett. In addition, American diplomats genuinely felt out of their depth in the intricacies of South Asia's political and religious conflicts. Consequently, they welcomed British analyses and guidance. "We must take care," the State Department instructed Warren Austin, the American representative at the UN, "not to be responsible for the adoption of recommendations which the British from the wealth of their experience might consider unworkable and to which they would not give their full support." 25
Anxious to avoid open differences with Great Britain for fear that they might be exploited by either India or Pakistan, and eager to defer to British expertise, Washington developed its policy position in close consultation with London. The two allies found themselves in essential agreement. Both feared that an independent Kashmir might set an unfortunate precedent; a Balkanized subcontinent, they concurred, would create unstable political and economic conditions that could be exploited by the Soviet Union. They also agreed that there was but one realistic solution to the conflict: a cease-fire must be obtained and provisions made at the earliest possible date for a fair and free plebiscite, supervised impartially by the United Nations, to determine Kashmir's ultimate accession. The United States and Great Britain held fast to that position throughout the tempestuous Security Council debates of early 1948. But their determined evenhandedness did little to win friends with either side. Nehru charged the two Western powers with partiality in the Security Council debates, privately complaining that Washington and London were seeking to bolster Pakistan's position for strategic reasons. Pakistan's leaders also saw conspiratorial overtones in Anglo-American behavior. Those suspicions reflected the emotionally charged nature of a dispute in which each side was convinced of its own righteousness. As one experienced British diplomat observed, both India and Pakistan took a "black and white" approach to the issue, refusing to admit that the other side "might even be 5% right." 26 With obvious frustration, another lamented that the Indians "could not understand that other people might not see things through their own spectacles." 27
On April 21, 1948, the Security Council achieved its first breakthrough with a resolution that provided an overall framework for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute. Over Indian and Pakistani objections, it established a five-member commission, later named the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), that was instructed to proceed to the subcontinent at once. The resolution called upon Pakistan to secure the withdrawal of all tribesmen and Pakistani nationals from the disputed territory. Once that process had begun and the fighting had ceased, India was to begin reducing its troops in Kashmir, in consultation with the commission. Finally, the commission was directed to arrange for an impartial plebiscite to be held in the disputed territory. 28
Despite its deliberate effort to shun an overt role, the United States was chosen as a member of the UNCIP, along with Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Colombia, and Argentina. It was a designation that American representatives had hoped--and tried--to avoid. Once tendered, however, it could not easily be rejected. 29 The Truman administration, after all, had long touted enhancement of the UN's peacekeeping and mediatory functions as a cardinal objective of its foreign policy. How could it, then, turn around and reject a personal request from the president of the Security Council to serve in exactly such a capacity? Its neutral stance in the divisive Security Council debates, coupled with its status as a major world power and its firm support for the resolution in question, plainly made the United States a logical choice. In July 1947 similar considerations had placed the United States on the three-nation Good Offices Committee, established by the Security Council to mediate the equally acrimonious dispute between the Netherlands and the Republic of Indonesia. 30
The UNCIP's mission was no less daunting. Its prospects for success depended almost entirely on its ability to advance proposals acceptable to India and Pakistan. Yet both disputants had vehemently opposed the Security Council resolution of April 21. Given the bitter hostility between the two nations and the fever-pitch intensity with which they approached the Kashmir problem, amply demonstrated during the Security Council debates, any expectations for substantial compromise by either side could only have been based on an extraordinarily optimistic outlook. Furthermore, the critical time factor also worked against the UNCIP. As Josef Korbel, the Czech delegate to the commission, later recalled: "With every day that passed, the tensions and the political cleavages in Kashmir grew, and as they grew the plebiscite which was finally to decide the fate of the country became increasingly difficult." 31 The commission members did not arrive in the subcontinent until July 9, 1948, more than two months after passage of the Security Council resolution that established their mandate. By then conditions in Kashmir had deteriorated dramatically as renewed fighting brought the two dominions to a state of undeclared war. 32
India had opened a devastating new offensive in May, once Kashmir's melting snows had again allowed military activity. Pakistan, which had surreptitiously begun to infiltrate "volunteers" into the region earlier, sent three brigades of its regular troops into Kashmir in May to meet the Indian military challenge. Pakistan's leaders later defended that decision as essential for national self-defense. While the fighting quickly stalemated, a new element had now been introduced into the Kashmir puzzle, one that bore profound implications for the UNCIP's mediation efforts. 33
According to the commission's subsequent report to the Security Council, "the situation that confronted the Commission upon its arrival was different from that which had been envisaged by the Security Council during the deliberations which preceded the formulation of the resolutions, inasmuch as regular Pakistani troops were within the frontiers of the State of Jammu and Kashmir participating in the fighting." 34 Pakistani Foreign Minister Zafrulla Khan informed the UN representatives of this development upon their arrival in Karachi in early July. They were stunned. Korbel called Pakistan's admission that its regular forces were fighting in Kashmir a "bombshell" that each UNCIP member realized "made of the situation something far graver and far more disturbing than what it had appeared to be to the members of the Security Council at faraway Lake Success." 35
The commission's intensive discussions with Pakistani and Indian officials soon revealed that little common ground existed. India's unyielding position proved particularly frustrating to the UN representatives. In a cable to the State Department, American delegate J. Klahr Huddle referred disparagingly to India's "self-righteous intransigent stand." He saw little hope for any modification of the Indian viewpoint. 36 Indeed, that viewpoint remained consistent with statements made by Indian spokesmen throughout the Security Council debates. India held that the maharajah of Kashmir's offer of accession to India, necessitated by the invasion of his state by hostile, Pakistani-supported tribesmen, was legal. Hence, Pakistan was guilty of aggression against Indian territory. Nehru and other top Indian officials would not budge from that position. The presence of regular Pakistani troops in Kashmir only hardened India's stance. On July 19 Howard Donovan, the U.S. chargé in New Delhi, predicted accurately that India "will probably refuse to accept any solution suggested by the UNCIP which does not voice open approval of the Indian legal and moral position and clearly recognize Pakistan's complicity in the present conflict." 37 Pakistan, for its part, refused to accept the legality of Kashmir's accession to India and refused to withdraw its troops from the disputed territory in advance of an Indian troop withdrawal.
Despite those daunting obstacles, the UNCIP elected to draft a resolution that, however mild, would help establish at least the general framework for a future settlement. Consequently, on August 13 it unanimously adopted a resolution that called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, established broad principles for the maintenance of a truce, and reasserted the necessity for a plebiscite to determine the ultimate disposition of Kashmir.
The delegates were under no illusion that their resolution would be quickly accepted by the two disputants. Facing a rapidly deteriorating situation, however, they believed they had to advance some proposals in order to fulfill their mission and avert a wider conflict. Although the UNCIP representatives saw little hope for breaking the deadlock, they hoped that the resolution might at least serve as the basis for continuing discussions. 38 The prognosis, however, was far from sanguine. In a communiqué the UNCIP acknowledged dryly that the "immediate effectuation of its proposal of August 13 is not to be envisaged." 39 Huddle conveyed his increasingly pessimistic appraisal of the situation to the State Department in a series of grim messages. The commission, he said frankly, had yet to receive any indication that a mutually acceptable settlement could be arranged. The American delegation believed that the position of the two governments remained precisely the same as when they presented their views to the Security Council; the entry of Pakistani troops into the disputed territory only rendered prospects for an agreement more dim. "During the Commission's 5-week stay in Delhi and Karachi," Huddle observed, "the position between the two governments had not noticeably improved." 40
India provided a glimmer of hope when on August 20 it accepted the resolution with only minor modifications. Pakistan's reservations proved far more substantial. On September 6, after ten days of intensive discussions with the UNCIP, Pakistan offered its tentative acceptance of the resolution. But, as Korbel has written, "it attached so many reservations, qualifications, and assumptions that the Commission had to consider its answer as 'tantamount to rejection.' " 41 The stalemate continued.
The UNCIP's failure to achieve a breakthrough not only was predictable but probably inevitable. Charles W. Lewis, the American chargé in Karachi, offered the following succinct analysis: "It was perhaps a foregone conclusion that however impartial, sincere, and understanding the members of the Commission might be, their mission was foredoomed to failure because any concessions which the Commission might make to meet the point of view of the Government of India would be unacceptable to the Government of Pakistan and vice versa." 42
The resolution of August 13 did, in fact, lean toward one side. It implicitly accepted a central tenet of the Indian position: the legality of Kashmir's instrument of accession. Recognizing that no resolution would be acceptable to New Delhi that failed to express disapproval of the presence of Pakistani troops in Kashmir, the commission noted that those forces constituted "a material change in the situation" since the Security Council debates and called for their total withdrawal from the disputed territory prior to the withdrawal of Indian forces. Pakistan's leaders found fault with that requirement on both moral and practical grounds. Morally, they viewed it as an implicit condemnation of the Pakistani military intervention, which they insisted was a necessary and justifiable act of self-defense; practically, they feared that the withdrawal of their troops would leave both Pakistani-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan itself vulnerable to another Indian offensive. Pakistani diplomats also decried the absence of any detailed guarantees for a free plebiscite in Kashmir. They feared that India, which already occupied the larger and more valuable part of that troubled state, might be satisfied with a de facto division once the fighting had ceased and might move to obstruct any free plebiscite. By making certain concessions to the Indian viewpoint in order to facilitate India's compliance with the resolution, then, the commission severely undercut Pakistan's position. In the face of Pakistan's virtual rejection of the commission's efforts, the discouraged delegates had little choice but to depart the subcontinent in late September and begin preparation of a somber interim report to the Security Council. 43
In order to help break the deadlock, the following month senior American and British diplomats personally urged Nehru and Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan to resolve their differences during a series of private talks. The simultaneous convocation of a Commonwealth meeting in London with the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly in Paris provided the opportunity. In London, Prime Minister Clement R. Attlee, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, and Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Philip Noel-Baker repeatedly implored the two leaders at least to accept a cease-fire, emphasizing the grave dangers of continued regional instability. In Paris, Secretary of State George C. Marshall made the same points during private discussions with Nehru and Liaquat. 44
Those efforts proved unavailing, however, as neither leader saw much room for compromise. Marshall's meeting with Nehru, held on October 15, was especially revealing. The prime minister insisted that India's position toward Kashmir was morally, legally, and practically just. Decrying the "gangsters from Pakistan" who had aided the tribal invasion of Kashmir, he then contrasted "the backward and theocratic nature of Pakistan" with the secular, democratic orientation of India. "India wished to develop a country wherein all elements of the population could share," he continued, "whereas in Pakistan the underlying idea was the advancement of the most bigoted group of Moslems." The intensity and bitterness of Nehru's remarks caught Marshall by surprise. In a classic bit of understatement, the former general wrote Bevin that Nehru was "most sensitive on the subject of Kashmir. He found it difficult when his turn came to talk about Kashmir in a moderate way." 45 Liaquat, while less sarcastic and emotional than Nehru, showed little more willingness to accept British or American advice. "It seems clear," observed the realistic Huddle, "that a stalemate exists between the two Governments on the Kashmir question and that neither is willing to make concessions which are obviously necessary if a peaceful settlement is to be achieved." 46
On November 10 London offered a new strategy for Washington's consideration. Fearful that renewed fighting might be imminent, the British government recommended two actions: first, the Security Council should issue an immediate and unconditional cease-fire order to India and Pakistan; second, it should send a "high-powered and prominent 'mediator' " to the subcontinent to help arrange a settlement and administer the much-discussed plebiscite. London was convinced that a well-known American citizen would be ideal for the task and inquired about the availability of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. 47 The State Department accepted the essential logic of the British position, but questioned the need for greater American involvement. In his initial response to the British suggestion, Marshall noted that any American mediator would find himself in an extremely delicate position; his own recent experience as a negotiator in China demonstrated acutely the difficulties and hazards inherent in such a role. Moreover, the secretary of state pointed to the U.S. position as "newcomers" to the subcontinent, drawing a sharp contrast with "the many generations of British experience in the area." 48
The State Department chose, nonetheless, to leave the door open for the possible appointment of an American mediator. Although concerned that such a visible role would force the United States to assume the principal responsibility for peace in the subcontinent in the eyes of the world, it reasoned that a successful cease-fire resolution by the Security Council might ease the mediator's task, thus lessening the prospects for failure. Influencing the State Department's view in this regard was Huddle's argument that the availability of an "outstanding figure" would help facilitate an Indo-Pakistani agreement. Huddle and Philip C. Jessup, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, warned that the preclusion of an American mediator might "seriously jeopardize current negotiations which are in [an] extremely critical stage." They indicated that in recent discussions Indian and Pakistani representatives evinced a strong preference for the appointment of an American as mediator and plebiscite administrator. 49
Those arguments were telling, especially in the face of British and American intelligence estimates that pointed to the likelihood of renewed fighting in the spring if the Paris negotiations collapsed. In a letter to Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, Acting Secretary of State Lovett, referring to those reports, emphasized that broader national interests would be served by an American commitment to help supervise a cease-fire and truce agreement. Peaceful disposition of the Kashmir dispute, he said, was "essential to the peace of the Indian subcontinent. . . . Particularly in view of recent events in China and Indonesia it is increasingly important to the United States to help preserve and assure the stability of the subcontinent." 50
The UNCIP, meanwhile, persevered in its attempts to break the stalemate. On November 22 the commission submitted its first interim report to the Security Council. Three days later the Security Council reopened debate on the Kashmir question, concluding with an appeal to both parties to cease hostilities forthwith. The commission then took advantage of the presence of Indian and Pakistani representatives in Paris to offer fresh proposals aimed at supplementing its resolution of August 13. On December 11 it circulated a draft resolution to India and Pakistan which spelled out in more detail the principles that would govern the proposed plebiscite. In order to help meet Pakistani objections to the previous resolution, the commission also proposed that a plebiscite administrator be appointed and empowered to organize and oversee the popular referendum, thus ensuring its impartiality. Following implementation of a truce agreement, he was further authorized to determine the final disposition of the contending military forces. 51
Finally, success crowned the commission's efforts. On December 22 India announced its acceptance of those conditions. On Christmas day Pakistan signaled its compliance with the commission's draft resolution. The two governments also consented to a cease-fire in Kashmir that would commence on January 1, 1949. On January 5 those proposals were formally embodied in a UNCIP resolution that was unanimously adopted by the Security Council. 52 Whether the path was now truly smoothed for an amicable resolution of the Kashmir tangle would of course depend upon the extraordinarily difficult implementation phase.
Why did Pakistan find these proposals acceptable when it had rejected out of hand the resolution of August 13? The substantive changes advanced by the commission were relatively minor, with the exception of provision for a plebiscite administrator who would be "a personality of high international standing and commanding general confidence." Several theories have been advanced by scholars of the Kashmir dispute to explain the Pakistani reversal. Some authorities suggest that Indian military successes in November 1948 rendered Pakistan more vulnerable and hence more willing to compromise. 53 Others point to internal Pakistani developments; the death of Jinnah in September and the continuing drain on Pakistan's limited financial reserves may have raised profound fears in official circles about the nation's political and economic stability. 54 Another factor, however, must be added to these. Prior to Pakistan's acceptance of the UNCIP draft resolution, American diplomats had assured their Pakistani counterparts of the Truman administration's willingness to appoint a senior military officer to the position of plebiscite administrator. Those assurances almost certainly influenced Pakistani thinking. Indeed, Foreign Minister Zafrulla Khan told a U.S. representative that the expected appointment of an American mediator was the decisive consideration in his decision to support the UNCIP proposals. This episode thus illuminates the emerging pro-American orientation in Pakistani diplomacy. Increasingly, Karachi looked to Washington for protection against its more powerful neighbor, believing that Great Britain would invariably side with India. 55 This theme, far-reaching in its implications for America's South Asia policy, will be explored in greater depth in subsequent chapters.
An analysis of the Truman administration's response to this initial phase of the Kashmir crisis suggests a policy beset by ambivalence and inconsistency. American diplomats from the outset viewed the Kashmir dispute as one that had potentially grave regional and international implications. Yet, mindful of the nation's rapidly multiplying international obligations and fearful of overcommitment, the administration consciously strove to avoid direct American involvement in still another vexing regional conflict. That inclination was reinforced by the deeply held conviction that Great Britain retained primary responsibility for South Asian matters. When Great Britain proved unacceptable to the two parties as a mediator, the United States gradually, if reluctantly, accepted increased responsibility for forging a settlement. Even after Washington accepted a position on the UNCIP, however, American policymakers remained wary of overinvolvement. Marshall, for example, balked initially at the prospect of an American being designated as plebiscite administrator. Likewise, Lovett expressed concern with "the way in which we were constantly being pressured from all directions to take leading parts in virtually all spheres of UN activity. . . . We don't want to spread ourselves too thinly and we would prefer to keep our commitments down." 56 American officials thus found themselves being tugged in separate directions: on the one hand, by a fear of overcommitment; on the other, by a desire to help settle a dispute that, if allowed to fester, could jeopardize important regional goals.
It must of course be stressed that throughout 1948 senior American policymakers devoted little direct attention to the Kashmir dispute. Between the formation of the UNCIP in April and the renewed Security Council debates of November the State Department treated the dispute primarily as an operational question. Not only were the details of a prospective settlement left mainly in the hands of J. Klahr Huddle, the American representative on the UNCIP who also served as ambassador to Burma, but that relatively undistinguished foreign service officer received minimal guidance from his superiors. When the negotiations threatened to collapse in late 1948 and renewed fighting appeared imminent, senior officials did become more directly engaged in the negotiating process, but their interest proved short-lived. Given the deeply unsettling events of that year--the Czechoslovakian coup, the Berlin crisis, the Chinese civil war, the Arab-Israeli conflict--the attention of President Truman and his leading foreign policy advisers was understandably riveted elsewhere.
As the new year opened, the Truman administration remained somewhat ambivalent about the Kashmir dispute. American officials considered a successful resolution of that conflict the sine qua non for South Asian stability, an important American policy goal. Other international trouble spots simply appeared more pressing. Western Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East all ranked substantially higher on the scale of policy priorities. In March the Truman administration named Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet during World War II, to the position of plebiscite administrator. 57 While the appointment of so respected a figure provided tangible proof of the administration's commitment to a Kashmir settlement, senior American officials manifested little interest in the negotiating details, believing apparently that the machinery was now in place for an equitable agreement.
Several developments during the first half of 1949 shook that complacency and pushed the Truman administration toward deeper involvement: the UNCIP's conspicuous lack of success in implementing the Security Council resolution of January 4; intelligence estimates that warned of the prospects for renewed fighting in the absence of an agreement; and the gradual deterioration of the West's position in Asia, symbolized by the continuing military triumphs of the Chinese Communists and the divisive colonial conflicts in Indochina and Indonesia. 58
Despite extensive negotiations with India and Pakistan, all attempts by the UNCIP to arrange a mutually acceptable truce agreement foundered. By May 1949 the State Department was convinced that the commission's chances for success were virtually nil and was "much disturbed about the prospective deterioration of the entire situation." 59 Increasingly, American officials blamed India for the impasse. They believed that India, in rejecting the UNCIP's various truce proposals on dubious legal technicalities, was simply trying to avoid a plebiscite. They were right. Since India was already in possession of the most desirable portion of Kashmir, and since the overwhelming Muslim majority in the state made a vote to join Pakistan the most likely outcome of a fair referendum, a postponement of the plebiscite clearly served India's interests. Some Indian officials admitted candidly to their American counterparts that they would find a partition of Kashmir preferable to a plebiscite. "If a plebiscite is postponed to the indefinite future," Nimitz observed astutely, "India will have the opportunity of so consolidating her position on the contested area that the conditions of a 'fair' plebiscite may never exist." 60
Throughout the summer of 1949 American officials urged India to soften its stance. Loy W. Henderson, the U.S. ambassador in New Delhi, repeatedly tried to impress upon Indian officials the seriousness with which Washington judged the continuing stalemate over Kashmir. On July 28 he told Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, the pro-American secretary-general of India's Foreign Office, that it would be "almost hopeless" for the United States to provide India with effective economic assistance "so long as [the] running sore of the Kashmir problem was eating into India's financial position and undermining the political and economic stability of Southern Asia." 61
On August 9 Henderson presented the Indian Foreign Office with an informal memorandum setting forth his government's views on the Kashmir stalemate. It expressed concern that the dispute could be prolonged indefinitely and urged India to display "greater flexibility on strictly legal points." 62 Although the note undoubtedly struck Henderson and the State Department as eminently reasonable, it infuriated Nehru. In a subsequent meeting with Henderson the Indian leader lambasted the veteran diplomat about Washington's presumptuousness. According to Henderson's record of that stormy session, Nehru "said he was tired of receiving moralistic advice from the U.S. India did not need advice from the U.S. or any other country as to its foreign or internal policies. . . . He did not care to receive lectures from other countries. So far as Kashmir was concerned he would not give an inch. He would hold his ground even if Kashmir, India, and the whole world would go to pieces." 63
Despite that outburst, the United States made one more effort to break the deadlock. In late August President Truman joined with British Prime Minister Attlee in a personal appeal to the rulers of India and Pakistan. The two Western leaders urged that all differences arising from the implementation of the truce agreement be submitted to impartial arbitration, a recommendation that had been put forward several days earlier by the UNCIP. 64 Once again, a familiar pattern repeated itself as Pakistan accepted the proposal while India, citing legal objections to compulsory arbitration, rejected it. With the failure of the Truman-Attlee appeal, American officials wisely judged the prospects for an imminent settlement of the Kashmir impasse to be exceedingly dim. 65 The Indians, recalled a perceptive U.S. diplomat years later, "were simply not about to hold a plebiscite which they might lose." 66
At the same time, developments elsewhere in Asia led a growing number of administration strategists to accept India's intransigence with some equanimity. As they watched the irreversible collapse of Chiang Kai-shek's government, and pondered the complex ramifications of a Chinese Communist regime for America's position in Asia, many policymakers turned their thoughts to India. They speculated that India could provide a bulwark against further communist expansion on the Asian mainland if only Nehru could be induced to abandon the folly of nonalignment. By the summer of 1949, official eyes focused far less on Kashmir than on Nehru's upcoming state visit to the United States, his first. Reflecting a view common within the upper reaches of the Truman administration, special adviser Philip C. Jessup judged India "the most solid associate in the Asian area" and called the Indian prime minister "outstandingly the most vital and influential person for the accomplishment of U.S. objectives in Asia." 67
Note 1: CIA, "India-Pakistan," September 16, 1948, report no. SR-21, CIA Reports File, PSF, HSTP, HSTL, Independence, Missouri. Major reports and analyses of this period devoted in whole or in part to India and Pakistan include the following: State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) 360/3, "Policies, Procedures and Costs of Assistance by the United States to Foreign Countries," October 13, 1947, SWNCC-SANACC Files, October 13, 1947, RG 353, NA, Washington, D.C.; SANACC 360/10, "Appraisal of U.S. Politico-Military Interests in South Asia," June 25, 1948, ibid.; SANACC 360/14, "Appraisal of U.S. National Interests in South Asia," April 19, 1949, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, 6, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), pp. 8-31 (hereafter cited as FRUS with year and volume); Raymond A. Hare, SOA, to Loy W. Henderson, Chairman, SANACC Subcommittee on Near East and Director, NEA, May 19, 1948, SANACC folder, Records of Military Adviser, NEA, Lot 484, DSR, RG 59, NA; CIA, "The Break-Up of the Colonial Empires and its Implications for US Security," September 3, 1948, ORE 25-48, CIA Reports File, PSF, HSTP, HSTL; DOS, Policy Statement on India, May 20, 1948, 711.45/4-248, DSR; NSC 48/1, December 23, 1949, DOD, United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), Book 8:225-64; NSC 48/2, December 30, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7, pt. 2:1215-20. Back.
Note 2: SANACC 360/14, April 19, 1949; DOS paper, "Appraisal of U.S. National Interests in South Asia," May 23, 1949, Position Papers and Reports folder, Under Secretary's Meetings, Records of the Executive Secretariat, DSR. Back.
Note 3: For the most comprehensive elaboration of this perspective, see Leffler, A Preponderance of Power. Back.
Note 4: CIA report, "Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States," September 12, 1947, CIA Reports File, HSTP, HSTL. For a similar perspective on American priorities, see memo by George F. Kennan, Director, PPS, "Review of Current Trends, U.S. Foreign Policy," PPS/23, February 24, 1948, in The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, 3 vols., edited by Anna Kasten Nelson (New York: Garland, 1983), 2:103-26. Back.
Note 5: CIA, "Review of the World Situation," September 12, 1947. Back.
Note 6: SANACC 360/14, April 19, 1949. Back.
Note 7: CIA, "The Break-Up of the Colonial Empires," September 3, 1948. See also Office of Naval Intelligence, "Basic Factors in World Relations," June 1948, Post World War II Command File, Records of the Naval Historical Division, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. Back.
Note 8: CIA, "India-Pakistan," September 16, 1948. Back.
Note 9: Hare to Henderson, May 19, 1948, SANACC folder, NEA Lot 484, DSR. Back.
Note 10: NSC 48/1, December 23, 1949. Back.
Note 11: Hoskot to the Department of the Army, April 24, 1948, 845F.00/4-2448, DSR; Hoskot to the Department of the Army, February 14, 1948, 845F.00/2-1448, DSR. Back.
Note 12: JCS memo, March 24, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:29-31. Back.
Note 13: SANACC, 360/14, April 19, 1949. Back.
Note 15: JCS memo, March 24, 1949. Back.
Note 16: SANACC 360/14, April 19, 1949. Back.
Note 17: George C. McGhee, Assistant Secretary of State, NEA, to James E. Bruce, Director, MDAP, November 14, 1949, "MAP Index" folder, NEA Lot 484, DSR. Back.
Note 18: SWNCC 360/3, October 13, 1947. Back.
Note 19: CIA, "India-Pakistan," September 16, 1948. Back.
Note 20: CIA, "Implications for U.S. Security of Developments in Asia July 25, 1949, intelligence memo no. 197, CIA reports folder, Modern Military Branch, NA. Back.
Note 21: FO cable to various diplomatic posts, January 2, 1948, DO 35/3162, Dominion Office Records, PRO, Kew, England; Sisir Gupta, Kashmir: A Study in India-Pakistan Relations (Bombay: Asia, 1966), pp. 50-135; Josef Korbel, Danger in Kashmir (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 46-96; Michael Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 1-40; Charles H. Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh, A Diplomatic History of Modern India (Bombay: Allied, 1971), pp. 147-150; Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 56-59. Back.
Note 22: Brecher, Struggle for Kashmir, pp. 41-54; S. M. Burke, Mainsprings of Indian and Pakistani Foreign Policies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974), pp. 96-98; Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975-1984), 2:18-23; Gowher Rizvi, "The Rivalry Between India and Pakistan," in Barry Buzan and Gowher Rizvi, eds., South Asian Insecurity and the Great Powers (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), pp. 96-99; Jalal, State of Martial Rule, pp. 44, 58-59. Back.
Note 23: Acting Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett to the Embassy in India, December 2, 1947, FRUS, 1947, 3:181-83. Back.
Note 24: Memcon between Lovett and Noel-Baker, January 10, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:276-78; Noel-Baker to FO, January 13, 1948, FO 371/69706, Records of the FO, PRO; Waldemar J. Gallman, Chargé in Great Britain, to DOS, December 30, 1947, FRUS, 1947, 3:188-92. Back.
Note 25: Marshall to Warren R. Austin, U.S. Representative at the UN, February 20, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:300-1; Marshall to Austin, ibid., pp. 280-82. Back.
Note 26: Note of a meeting between Noel-Baker and Lord Ismay, January 14, 1948, DO 35/3164, PRO; Mountbatten to Attlee, February 24, 1948, FO 371/69711, PRO; Marshall to the Embassy in India, March 4, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:310-12. Back.
Note 27: Record of meeting between U.S. and U.K. representatives, February 17, 1948, FO 371/69712, PRO. Back.
Note 28: UN resolution S/726, April 21, 1948. Back.
Note 29: Marshall to Austin, May 5, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:338-39. Back.
Note 30: Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945-49 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 185-92. Back.
Note 31: Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, p. 117. Back.
Note 32: Ibid., pp. 117-20; Huddle to DOS, June 23, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:346-48; Paul H. Alling, Ambassador in Pakistan, to DOS, June 2, 1948, 501.BC-Kashmir/6-248, DSR. Back.
Note 33: Lord Birdwood, India and Pakistan: A Continent Decides (New York: Praeger, 1954) pp. 229-38; Gupta, Kashmir, pp. 175-78. Back.
Note 34: Quoted in ibid., p. 175. Back.
Note 35: Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, p. 121; Acting U.K. High Commissioner in India to the CRO, September 13, 1948, DO 35/3167, PRO. Back.
Note 36: Huddle to DOS, July 27, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:358. Back.
Note 37: Donovan to DOS, July 19, 1948, ibid., pp. 350-51; Gopal, Nehru, 2:28-29. Back.
Note 38: UN resolution S/995, August 13, 1948; Huddle to DOS, August 10, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:362-64; Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, pp. 123-42. Back.
Note 39: Quoted in Lewis to DOS, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:379. Back.
Note 40: Huddle to DOS, August 16, 1948, ibid., pp. 364-65; Huddle to DOS, August 23, 1948, ibid., pp. 366-67. Back.
Note 41: Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, p. 144; Huddle to DOS, September 6, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:376-77; Huddle to DOS, September 10, 1948, ibid., pp. 377-79. Back.
Note 42: Lewis to DOS, September 10, 1948, ibid., pp. 379-84. Back.
Note 43: Korbel, Danger in Kashmir, pp. 136-40. Back.
Note 44: FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:424-36; Lovett to the Embassy in France, October 25, 1948, 501.BC-Kashmir/10-2148, DSR; Allan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 1945-1951 (London: Heinemann, 1983), pp. 610-11. Back.
Note 45: Marshall to Bevin, October 20, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:431-32. Back.
Note 46: Memo by Huddle, November 1, 1948, ibid., p. 442. Back.
Note 47: Memcon between Marshall and British delegate Sir Alexander Cadogan, November 10, 1948, ibid., pp. 445-48. Back.
Note 49: Lovett to the U.S. Delegation in Paris, November 11, 1948, ibid., pp. 448-49; Marshall to Lovett, November 13, 1948, ibid., pp. 449-50; Huddle to DOS, November 30, 1948, ibid., pp. 466-67; Jessup and Huddle to the U.S. Delegation in Paris, December 4, 1948, ibid., pp. 469-70; Lovett to the U.S. Delegation in Paris, December 8, 1948, ibid., p. 472. Back.
Note 50: Lovett to Forrestal, December 29, 1948, CD 6-4-19, Records of AdminSec, OSD, RG 330, NA; Forrestal to the Secretaries of the Army and the Navy, January 13, 1949, CCS 092 Kashmir (12-29-48), Records of the JCS, RG 218, NA. Back.
Note 51: UNCIP Interim Report, November 22, 1948, Security Council, 3d yr., Suppl. for Nov. 1948, pp. 17-144; Gupta, Kashmir, pp. 186-89. Back.
Note 52: For the text of the UNCIP resolution of January 5, 1949, see UN resolution S/1430, December 9, 1949. Back.
Note 53: Brecher, Struggle for Kashmir, pp. 97-99; Gupta, Kashmir, pp. 189-90. Back.
Note 54: Brecher, Struggle for Kashmir, p. 97; Jyoti Bhusan Das Gupta, Indo-Pakistan Relations, 1947-1955 (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1958), p. 126. Back.
Note 55: Lewis to DOS, December 27, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:481-84; Chaudhri Mohammed Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 378-79. Back.
Note 56: Memcon between Lovett and Huddle, January 4, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:1687-89. Back.
Note 57: Acheson to the Embassy in India, March 26, 1949, ibid., pp. 1691-1706. Back.
Note 58: Ibid., pp. 1691-1719. Back.
Note 59: Dean Rusk, Assistant Secretary of State for UN Affairs, to Nimitz, June 13, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/6-949, DSR; Acting Secretary of State James Webb to the Embassy in India, May 29, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:1713-14; N. E. Halaby to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, June 9, 1949, CD 6-4-19, Records of the AdminSec, OSD. Back.
Note 60: Nimitz to Rusk, June 15, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/6-1549, DSR; Webb to the Embassy in India, May 29, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:1713-14; memo of discussion between Acheson and Indian Ambassador Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, June 29, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/6-2949, DSR. Back.
Note 61: Henderson to DOS, July 29, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:1726-28. Back.
Note 62: Henderson to DOS, August 9, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/8-1049, DSR; Henderson to DOS, August 10, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/8-1049, DSR. Back.
Note 63: Henderson to DOS, August 15, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:1732-33. Back.
Note 64: Truman to Nehru, August 25, 1949, ibid., p. 1734; Acheson to Truman, July 7, 1949, 745.45F/8-2549, DSR; NYT, August 31, 1949, p. 1, and September 1, 1949, p. 6. Back.
Note 65: Memcon between Truman and Pandit, September 15, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/9-1549, DSR; FRUS, 1949, 6:1735-48. Back.
Note 66: J. Wesley Adams, SOA, OH Interview, December 18, 1972, HSTL. Back.
Note 67: Memo by Jessup, August 29, 1949, 845.002/9-1449, DSR. Back.
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