The Cold War on the Periphery, by Robert J. McMahon

2. Establishing Bilateral Relations, 1947-1950

 

During the immediate postindependence period, American policy toward India and Pakistan manifested two alternating tendencies. The regional approach, which led Washington to lend its prestige and personnel to various UN efforts aimed at defusing the Kashmir crisis, remained the dominant tendency. It was predicated on the view that any overt favoritism toward either nation would be counterproductive to U.S. interests in the subcontinent. Another perspective also shaped U.S. thinking about the subcontinent during these early years, a perspective that tugged American policy in a different direction. Despite Washington's public posture of careful evenhandedness, American analysts invariably asked which of these two young nations were most important to U.S. national security objectives, and for most the answer was obvious.

India, the successor state to the British raj, held substantially greater appeal for the Truman administration than Pakistan, the seceding state. India's superior manpower, resources, international prestige, and leadership combined to make it potentially the most significant of all the newly emerging states. U.S. officials saw Pakistan, in contrast, as the hastily created byproduct of Britain's retreat from empire, a nation plagued by such immense internal and security problems that it offered little promise for future international prominence. Truman administration policymakers believed that India's open embrace of American Cold War policies might bring a diplomatic windfall to the United States, enhancing America's stature throughout the developing world. This enthusiasm for India's potential occasionally overwhelmed the delicate policy balance demanded by the Truman administration's regional strategy. Two factors, however, held that enthusiasm in check. First, Nehru was determined to pursue a foreign policy of nonalignment; he repeatedly made it clear that India would resist all efforts to draw it into the Western camp. Second, some U.S. defense and intelligence specialists insisted that, even with its enormous internal difficulties, Pakistan's geographical location made it a potentially valuable strategic asset that the United States could not afford to alienate.

From the earliest days of Indian statehood, the Truman administration reasoned that U.S. interests would best be served by the emergence of a peaceful, stable India that would be oriented toward the West and resistant to communist pressures, both internal and external. As noted earlier, those policy goals were shaped by broader Cold War concerns. But just as the Kashmir dispute threatened to derail prospects for peace and stability in the subcontinent, so too did Nehru's stewardship of Indian foreign affairs threaten to block the latter objective. Long before independence, the proud and fiercely nationalistic Nehru had insisted on numerous occasions that his nation would steer its own diplomatic path, one separate from each of the power blocs. Nonalignment, Nehru had promised his countrymen and proclaimed to the world, would be the guiding principle of India's foreign policy.

In a national radio address on September 7, 1946, Nehru, then serving as both vice-president and minister for external affairs in the interim Indian government, offered a preview of his approach to foreign policy. "We propose, so far as possible," he exclaimed, "to keep away from the power politics of groups, aligned against one another, which have led in the past to world wars and which may again lead to disasters on an even vaster scale." At a press conference several weeks later he was even more explicit: "In the sphere of foreign affairs, India will follow an independent policy, keeping away from the power politics of groups aligned one against another." ₁

Nehru was determined that India never again become the "pawn" or "plaything" of other powers. "The countries of Asia can no longer be used as pawns by others," he declared at the first Asian Relations Conference, held at New Delhi in March 1947; "they are bound to have their own policies in world affairs. . . . In this atomic age Asia will have to function effectively in the maintenance of peace. Indeed, there can be no peace unless Asia plays her part." ₂

In these early public statements, Nehru made clear that for him peace, independence, and nonalignment were woven into a seamless web. Alliance systems aggravated international tensions, leading ultimately to war; they were to be scrupulously avoided. Freedom, a precious commodity for one who had struggled, suffered, and been jailed in its pursuit, had to be guarded constantly. Just emerging from two centuries under foreign yoke, India was not about to relinquish any of its hard-fought independence to another state. And foreign relations constituted "the test of independence" for Nehru. "Once foreign relations go out of your hand into the charge of somebody else," he warned, "to that extent and in that measure you are not independent." ₃

Nehru's concept of nonalignment commanded broad domestic support, in large measure because his articulation of its central tenets blended so masterfully Indian moral and cultural imperatives with a set of practical ones. The lofty moralistic-universalistic language that Nehru typically employed when explaining Indian foreign policy decisions had roots that reached deep into India's cultural traditions, especially the ancient Hindu ethical precepts that Gandhi had done so much to revive during the independence struggle. The notion that India would consistently take an "ethical stand on world issues," as one of its leading diplomats phrased it, also appealed to the national pride and sense of moral superiority that many educated Indians assumed as part of their cultural identity. By the same token, the notion that India could avoid lining up with either East or West and instead play the role of a third force in international affairs appealed to those who sought a pragmatic strategy for maximizing India's international stature and its influence in world councils.

Pressing domestic priorities also conditioned India's adoption of a nonaligned foreign policy. Nehru and other national leaders were keenly aware that India faced enormous economic, social, and political challenges. In view of the abject poverty of most of its people and its rapidly expanding population base, India required first and foremost an economic development strategy that promised quick results. That almost certainly meant that massive external infusions of capital would be needed. By remaining unattached to either the American or the Soviet spheres of influence, Indian planners calculated that they might be able to attract financial assistance from both camps. "Even in accepting economic help," Nehru confided realistically to an aide, "it is not a wise policy to put all our eggs in one basket." ₄

The equally critical tasks of state-building and national integration could also be advanced by a foreign policy that maintained a healthy distance from the major powers. Nehru and his associates in the Indian National Congress Party had gained overwhelming prestige and popularity during the freedom struggle, assets which they utilized to great effect in moving quickly to establish a strong, central government. But the task of melding the amazing diversity of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and caste groupings that constituted the Indian polity into a cohesive, unified nation remained a challenge of daunting proportions. Although Congress represented the mainstream of Indian political discourse, it hardly reflected all viewpoints, nor was the party without sharp internal differences among its left- and right-wing factions. Nehru well understood that a decision to align India with the WestÑor with the EastÑ almost certainly would have alienated powerful forces within Indian society. By opting instead for a dynamic, independent approach to the larger world, the prime minister offered Indians a foreign policy that stimulated their sense of national pride, provided an impetus for societal cohesion, and helped hold ever-present fissiparous tendencies in check. Nonalignment, in sum, served multiple purposes for the young nation. Nehru's middle way ingeniously married principle with pragmatism in a manner fully consistent with Indian values, traditions, and perceived national interests. ₅

U.S. officials viewed Indian nonalignment from a very different perspective. They were deeply troubled from the outset by Nehru's public and private ruminations about international relations, seeing the independent path he was charting as a potential danger to American global interests. American analysts recognized correctly that Nehru, who with independence retained for himself the foreign ministry portfolio as well as the prime ministership, would dominate and place his powerful personal stamp on the direction of Indian foreign policy. And they found that prospect discomfiting. Locked in what they believed was a life-and-death struggle with an expansive Soviet state, American policymakers disparaged the Indian statesman's philosophy of nonalignment as a morally bankrupt position. Ambassador Henry F. Grady regularly reminded Nehru, much to the latter's annoyance, that Washington did not consider neutralism an acceptable policy option; the Indian leader simply had to choose sides. "I have told him," Grady said at a State Department meeting in December 1947, "that this is a question that cannot be straddled and that India should get on the democratic side immediately." ₆

Especially aggravating to American diplomatic and military officials was Nehru's tendency to adopt "a curse on both your heads" approach to Washington and Moscow, implying a moral equivalence between the two superpowers. In his desire "to keep India isolated from the struggle between Russian imperialism and Western democracy," Grady complained, Nehru "often talks as though he regarded the great struggle going on in the world today as one merely for power between two groups, particularly between Russia and the United States." From the American perspective, what was missing from Nehru's pronouncements was an understanding that the Cold War was about values and morality, not just about power and influence. ₇

American observers cringed at what they saw as Nehru's naivete about the Soviets. In an unpublished memoir, written in 1954, Grady articulated a position shared by most American India-watchers throughout the Cold War era. "I do not quarrel with Nehru's desire not to become provocative toward Russia," the former businessman and academician asserted, "but I do think he is naive if he thinks India could keep out of the present world struggle, particularly if Russia should attack the Western Democracies. Neutrality will not be left for the decision of Nehru or his people. The Soviets do not, any more than did the Nazis, think in terms of neutral countries. The Soviets will move on their time schedule and when the clock gets around to India, India will have as little to say about what happens as did Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Roumania, Korea, or any other of the satellite countries." ₈

Equally distressing to American diplomats were Nehru's negative attitudes toward the United States. As early as 1944, he questioned whether the United States might emerge as a new imperial state: "Whatever the future may hold, it is clear that the economy of the USA after the war will be powerfully expansionist and almost explosive in its consequences. Will this lead to some new kind of imperialism?" ₉ Following independence, the intensely nationalistic Nehru continued to suspect that economic motivations underlay many American foreign policy initiatives, a criticism he voiced often in private. "Despite great admiration for many US accomplishments and appreciation of the value of the US as a friend," the CIA lamented in September 1948, "a strong suspicion exists in India that the US possesses the rapacious tendencies attributed to the British, and that in its foreign policy the US merely substitutes economic imperialism for the political imperialism so long practiced by the British." Nehru and other Indian leaders believed that Washington's fixation with its own economic interests coupled with its exaggeration of the Soviet threat to world peace blinded American leaders to more fundamental factors shaping world affairs, especially the rising nationalist sentiment among Asian and African peoples. ₁₀

In January 1949 Nehru and Loy W. Henderson, Grady's replacement, discussed those sensitive subjects during an unusually frank encounter. After a private dinner, the new American ambassador probed at length Nehru's thoughts about the United States and its foreign policy only to uncover views "not fully satisfactory from our point of view." The heart of the matter, Henderson reported to the State Department, was that the prime minister harbored a series of deeply ingrained cultural prejudices against the United States. "[The] general conversation tended to confirm my impression that Nehru has had an anti-American bias since his school days in England; that there he obtained the idea that the US was an overgrown, blundering, uncultured and somewhat crass nation, and that Americans in general were an ill-mannered and immature people, more interested in such toys as could be produced by modern technique and in satisfaction of their creature comforts than in endeavoring to gain an understanding of the great moral and social trends of this age." Nehru told the veteran foreign service officer that although he liked Americans personally, "he resented at times their lack of imagination and their difficulty in understanding why other countries could not imitate [the] American way of life." The prime minister added that American capital, and at times even the American government, sought indirect influence over the Indian economy by favoring unduly the private sector. ₁₁

Reflecting decades later on his numerous encounters with Nehru, Henderson reaffirmed his conviction about the Indian's instinctual anti-Americanism. "During his childhood in India and his schooling in Harrow and Cambridge," Henderson asserted, "Nehru had developed a dislike bordering on contempt for American institutions, the American way of life, and Americans in general." Together with "a cynical distrust of the United States and its motives," that bias served as a powerful impediment to the development of warm relations between the United States and India. "In my opinion," the retired diplomat complained in 1978, "he feared the spread of Americanism much more than he did that of Communism." ₁₂

Plainly, a gaping chasm separated the cultural values, ideological predilections, and historical experiences of Jawaharlal Nehru and Loy HendersonÑas well as the larger societies that the two men represented. For Henderson, as for an entire generation of American policymakers whose convictions he so accurately reflected, the global struggle that the United States was waging against communism represented nothing less than a holy war pitting good against evil. The Cold War, consequently, provided an all-embracing framework that shaped every aspect of world politics, imparting a moral urgency of the highest order to virtually any move on the international chessboard. The virulently anti-Soviet Henderson, who had played a leading role in the evolution of the Truman administration's strategy for containing the Soviet Union in the eastern Mediterranean, found Nehru's reluctance to choose sides in this "holy war" almost incomprehensible. The American envoy's inability, and unwillingness, to gain a deeper understanding of the very different universe inhabited by the newly independent Indians suggested to Nehru exactly the sort of arrogant self-righteousness that he most detested about the West.

ehru and Henderson shared a Western education and a common commitment to Anglo-Saxon precepts of law, order, and democracyÑbut little else. Although his aristocratic family circumstances initially sheltered Nehru from the harshest aspects of British colonialism, facilitating his attainment of the most privileged of educations at Harrow and Cambridge, he chose at an early age to reject a comfortable life of privilege for one of struggle. He embraced the Indian independence movement with a vengeance, emerging quickly as a leader of the Congress Party and accepting with equanimity all of the risks attendant to an unyielding struggle for freedom against the mightiest colonial empire in the world. For Nehru the clash between colonizer and colonized, a struggle that stood as the fundamental, shaping event of his own life, formed the central reality of modern world history. The Soviet-American rivalry that so exercised Grady, Henderson, and other U.S. diplomats, paled in comparison; it represented for Nehru but the latest manifestation of the age-old competition for influence among the developed, industrial states. As the leader of a poor, underdeveloped society, who had imbibed the rich brew of Fabian socialist ideas during his schooling in Britain, Nehru was also repelled by the materialist culture that he assumed lay at the root of America's wealthy, capitalist society.

Henderson's snap analyses of a statesman so complex, so intelligent, and so cosmopolitan as Nehru certainly suffered from a kind of crude reductionism. Nonetheless, he correctly detected an undeniable strand of anti-Americanism in Nehru's thinking. It could have been tempered only through patience, persistence, and a genuine effort to understand and appreciate a worldview that for most Americans of the 1940s remained alien. No U.S. official made such an effort during this formative periodÑ certainly not Henderson, the consummate Cold Warrior. Nehru hit upon the most basic cause of Indo-American rancor when he reflected with resignation early in 1949 that the Americans, like the Soviets, "have little appreciation of any attitude of neutrality and are inclined to think that those who are not with them are against them." ₁₃ Nehru thus posed a unique challenge to the architects of postwar American foreign policy. Not only was he the unquestioned leader of a nation of growing importance to the United States, but he commanded the attentionÑand allegianceÑof many nationalists throughout the Third World. American analysts calculated that Nehru's open embrace of American foreign policy goals might prove as helpful to American interests in Asia and throughout the developing world as his continued neutralism could prove harmful. But how could the United States convince Nehru that India's true interests lay with the West? Indeed, could he be nudged gradually away from nonalignment?

Throughout 1948 the State Department received a number of signals from Indian diplomats that made a positive response to the second question appear at least plausible. Stating that they were speaking with Nehru's knowledge and approval, several Indian officials informed their American counterparts that India shared Western ideals of democracy and individual liberty and would never drift into the Soviet camp. Because of its geographic position and military weakness India could not afford to align itself openly with the United States; yet in the event of a third world war it would be unthinkable for New Delhi to side with Moscow. ₁₄ Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, the senior career diplomat in India's Ministry for External Affairs, and a vigorous advocate of a pro-Western foreign policy, visited the United States in April 1948 for the express purpose of clarifying his government's commitment to Western values and interests. Summarizing the thrust of Bajpai's message, Henderson noted approvingly that Nehru now "has a new appreciation of the identity of US and Indian democratic principles" and while India "wants to maintain nonalignment it is unthinkable that it would line up with [the] Soviets in event of conflict." ₁₅

Still, contradictory signals continued to emanate from New Delhi, confounding American observers. On March 17, 1948, Nehru vigorously defended nonalignment before India's parliament. "I do not think," he declared, "that anything could be more injurious to us from any point of viewÑcertainly from an idealistic and high moral point of view, but equally so from the point of view of opportunism and national interest in the narrowest sense of the wordÑthan for us to give up these policies that we have pursued . . . [by] trying to align ourselves with this Great Power or that and becoming its camp follower in the hope that some crumbs might fall from their table." ₁₆ Throughout 1948 and early 1949 Nehru and other Indian representatives regularly criticized American and UN policies, often in harsh tones, charging insensitivity to colonial and racial questions and partiality in the Kashmir negotiations. When the Dutch launched a military offensive in December 1948 against the fledgling Republic of Indonesia, an infuriated Nehru blasted Washington for its tacit approval of this latest imperialist atrocity. In response, he convened a conference of the Afro-Asian nations in New Delhi to condemn the Dutch "police action" and consider appropriate reprisals. ₁₇

The meeting, which in retrospect can be seen as the inaugural convocation of what soon would be labeled the nonaligned movement, caused considerable anguish in Washington. Henderson saw confirmation of Nehru's "animosity" toward the United States as well as his "lack of stability." More ominously, others feared that the gathering might presage the emergence of a "pan-Asianism" that would prove "extremely dangerous" to the United States. ₁₈ Although India's role during that gathering proved considerably more moderate than some of its preconvention rhetoric, the United States had been forced, probably for the first time, to confront the prospect of a Third World bloc openly hostile to the West. "Such a bloc," cautioned SANACC, "would provide a medium for the expression of opinions of a type subject to exploitation by Moscow and apt to exacerbate existing differences between the Orient and the Occident." ₁₉ In the late 1940s only one nationalist leader appeared to have the stature, vision, and charisma to lead such a movement: Jawaharlal Nehru.

Despite the obvious obstacles presented by Nehru, most administration planners were convinced that India's eventual alignment with the West remained a logical expectation. Several factors lent weight to that conviction. Many Indian leaders, like Nehru himself, had been educated in British universities and shaped by Western intellectual and cultural traditions. Indeed, as Nehru himself ruefully admitted, he was a man of two worlds, belonging as much to the West as to Asia. Indian representatives, moreover, insisted that their nation's governmental system, structure of laws, and basic values pushed them toward the West, making an alignment with the Soviet Union unthinkable.

Soviet pressures served to reinforce that inclination. Beginning in March 1948, the Communist Party of India (CPI) opened a vigorous campaign of opposition to the national government, punctuated by militant protest marches and a rash of violent labor strikes. Certain that Moscow was orchestrating the CPI's actions, as it almost certainly was, Nehru expressed "disgust" with the "complete lack of integrity and decency" revealed by the agitation. Those domestic challenges, combined with vicious Soviet propaganda attacks on Indian neutralism and persistent pressures on Indian diplomats to choose sides in the East-West struggle, angered Nehru and fueled his mounting distrust of Moscow. As he confided in June 1948 to V. K. Krishna Menon, India's High Commissioner in London and one of his most trusted advisers: "We want friendship and cooperation with Russia in many fields but we are a sensitive people and we react strongly to being cursed at and run down." ₂₀

Convinced that Indian neutralism would tilt toward the West, the Soviet Union adopted a highly critical stance toward the Nehru regime. Stalinist foreign policy took as a given that India and other moderate states emerging from colonialism were hopelessly bourgeois and reactionary. Moscow consequently disparaged Nehru's vaunted nonaligned stance as meaningless and tended to dismiss Nehru himself as little more than an Anglo-American stooge. Certain that the world was divided in Manichean fashion between revolutionary and imperialist forces, leading Soviet strategists derided the very notion of a third force. Nonalignment, in the words of one Kremlin ideologue, was just another "imperialist device, the purpose of which was to slander the U.S.S.R. by placing it on the same level with American imperialism." ₂₁

Soviet skepticism about Nehru's ability to navigate a middle course between West and East was of course widely shared in the United States and Great Britain. Given the overall thrust of Nehru's foreign policy in the late 1940s, such a view made eminent sense. Nonalignment remained in large measure a hypothetical concept for Nehru; despite his rhetoric, most of the Indian leader's policies already leaned heavily toward the West. "It is natural for the Soviet[s] to think that we are lining up with the U.S.A. and the U.K.," Nehru conceded in a letter to Bajpai. ₂₂

Nations of course ordinarily choose friends on the basis of shared interests. It was on this score especially that American analysts based their optimism about the future. For the United States, they agreed, held a powerful trump card: it was the only nation with resources sufficient to provide India with desperately needed economic assistance. That conviction had permeated policy circles ever since Indian independence. As early as December 1947, Grady speculated that American influence with New Delhi would increase substantially once Washington stepped up its economic assistance programs. "It is the most effective channel," he posited, "for keeping India on our side and under our influence." ₂₃

Although Grady's smug comments oversimplified a delicate and complex matter, in one important sense he was right. India's development needs were so overwhelming and America's economic strength so impressive that sheer pragmatism seemed to necessitate the careful cultivation of close ties with Washington. Bajpai admitted as much when he told Lovett in April 1948 that the United States was the only nation in a position to aid India. Later in the year, Indian Ambassador Rama Rau made a direct appeal for financial aid to several senior American officials. Meeting Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer on December 17, he requested loans that would enable his nation to import one million tons of steel along with substantial quantities of foodstuffs and other commodities. Interestingly, the ambassador couched the loan request in a blatant Cold War context, emphasizing that in light of developments in China his country was "seriously concerned with the problem of communism spreading in India." Only successful economic development could prevent the spread of communism; unfortunately, India lacked the foreign exchange essential for the implementation of its development program. Bajpai echoed the same themes in a discussion with Ambassador Henderson in New Delhi. With the collapse of the Chinese Nationalists, India had emerged as the "chief stabilizing influence in Asia." If it was to maintain that influence, however, India would have to conquer economic problems through intensive industrial and agricultural development. Those programs were dependent, the Indian diplomat averred, upon American aid and cooperation. ₂₄

For a combination of practical and ideological considerations, the Truman administration decided against a program of economic assistance to India at this time. Preoccupied with the immediate needs of the European Recovery Program, American planners were conscious that U.S. resources were already severely strained. In comparison to Western Europe, an area in which direct and vital American national security objectives were at stake, Indian priorities rated only peripheral attention. Top American officials, in sum, did not believe that India's problems were of sufficient importance or urgency to justify direct U.S. governmental assistance, and doubted whether Congressional support for such a program could be generated in any case. Those practical considerations were joined by an ideological one. "We regard private investment as the principal means of U.S. financial assistance to India in the development of its economy," noted a State Department policy summary, "and we are endeavoring to persuade India to establish equitable opportunities for U.S. private investors on a mutually satisfactory basis." Although it acknowledged the inability of private U.S. capital to meet India's economic needs for the near future, the State Department opposed direct governmental aid, noting that India should seek support from the Export-Import Bank and the World Bank. Foreign aid, except in the extraordinary case of the Marshall Plan, represented too sharp a departure from American traditions. ₂₅

Some American officials, to be sure, did support India's appeals for economic assistance. Henderson took the lead. On May 2, 1949, he informed the State Department that the embassy in New Delhi considered the immediate economic outlook for India critical; there was a desperate need for U.S. financial assistance in order to help bolster the regime's political stability. He emphasized that a number of important Indians, inside and outside the government, believed that Nehru "should adopt a foreign policy which is more to the liking of the United States, if for no other reason than because of the practical economic benefits which they hope would accrue." Not only did he concur heartily with such reasoning, but he thought it underscored the importance of the economic aid question. ₂₆ Similarly, a report prepared that same month by State Department economic experts called attention to the interrelationship between economic difficulties and political stability. It argued that India's projected inability to feed its people would harm U.S. policy objectives in the area and consequently urged American aid. ₂₇

The Truman administration accepted the logic of that appraisal even while it rejected the recommendation. It had long been a staple of American foreign policy that political independence and stability flowed from economic prosperity; disorder and radical ideologies flourished during times of economic distress. Unless "India can soon embark upon a significant expansion of its agricultural and industrial production," noted a State Department report of May 1948, "the bases for a stable popular government and the growth of democratic institutions will be lacking, and the danger of a totalitarian extreme left- or right-wing regime will be great." ₂₈ In a cable of July 1, 1949, Secretary of State Dean Acheson acknowledged the problem. India's ability to maintain its present minimal living standard rested on a worrisome dollar deficit. At the same time, the State Department considered the maintenance and eventual improvement of that standard essential to future political stability. Yet U.S. resources were limited and the prospects for additional congressional appropriations for foreign aid were highly doubtful. ₂₉

Acting on instructions from Washington, on August 13 Henderson met with several of India's cabinet ministers to explain the American position. He told them with perfect candor that while the United States was "intensely interested" in India's economic development, Congress would be unwilling for the near future to approve any large-scale loans to India. Henderson advised that they look instead to the World Bank, convertible sterling releases, and private American investments as the only possible channels through which India might receive dollars. Not surprisingly, the ministers responded to the ambassador's talk with disappointment and dismay. ₃₀ Approving of Henderson's candor, the State Department expressed hope that the "pessimistic impression" he left would serve the useful purpose of forcing India to reduce its dollar imports to the "minimum consistent with present living standards." ₃₁

The administration's surprisingly casualÑeven callousÑrejection of India's pleas for economic help illuminates several important themes underlying this early phase of Indo-American relations. First, despite his public pose of nonalignment, Nehru's disillusionment with the Soviet Union and need for American aid were moving him inexorably toward the West. Given India's desire for U.S. food, machinery, and capital goods, he posed the unavoidable question to Krishna Menon before his American visit: "Why not align with the United States somewhat and build up our economic and military strength?" ₃₂ Second, for all the talk about India's importance to the West, senior American officials devoted little time to India and its problems and evidenced even less willingness to invest scarce resources there. In mid-1949 India simply did not pose any immediate threats to the accomplishment of overall U.S. policy objectives. Thus, in a world brimming with crises, immediate and imminent, India commanded little sustained attention. Moreover, financial assistance was difficult to justify since the overall trends in U.S. -Indian relations, if at times contradictory and confusing, already seemed favorable to the United States. Notwithstanding the Kashmir impasse, the specter of a neutralist bloc raised by the New Delhi conference, and the frequent criticisms hurled at Washington policymakers by Nehru, U.S. specialists saw India inching closer to the West. ₃₃

Occurring at a time of great upheaval in Asia and throughout the world, Nehru's approaching state visit to the United States focused more high-level attention on India than ever before and compelled the reassessment of at least some of those assumptions. Numerous scholars have noted that the summer of 1949 marked a critical juncture in the history of American foreign relations. The successful detonation of the first Soviet atomic device in August coupled with the simultaneous triumph of the Chinese Communists over their American-supported Nationalist rivals deeply unsettled the American people and the Truman administration. Since those developments carried the most profound ramifications for U.S. foreign and defense policies, they set in motion a radical reevaluation of Washington's global strategy and tactics. That activity ultimately resulted in National Security Council Paper 68 (NSC 68), one of the most important, if grossly exaggerated, appraisals of the threats posed to its security ever produced by the American government. Long before that alarming document reached Truman's desk on April 7, 1950, however, the concerns that prompted it were beginning to reshape official thinking about India and its potential value to the United States. ₃₄

Many American policymakers were certain that the imminent consolidation of communist rule in China greatly enhanced India's geopolitical importance and hence Nehru's prestige, even if they were not sure precisely how. "Mr. Nehru is today and probably will be for some-time the dominant political force in Asia," Acheson informed the president in mid-August. ₃₅ During a White House meeting with Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Truman remarked that he now considered India to be the key to the whole Asian situation. ₃₆ Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, who had served as Roosevelt's personal negotiator in India during the war and counted Nehru as a personal friend, agreed. He told Acheson that "I believe he is one of the best and potentially one of the strongest friends of the United States in the whole of Asia." ₃₇ Similarly, during a meeting with the Indian ambassador on August 30 Acheson said that he and Truman realized that Nehru "had emerged as a world figure of great influence and that we looked to him to assume the leadership in the rehabilitation of Asia." ₃₈

The exact shape that this leadership role would take remained vague in American formulations. An intelligence appraisal produced by the CIA in mid-September followed conventional wisdom by emphasizing that India's industrial potential along with its political importance "as the prime example of transition from colonial status to full sovereignty" combined to make it a major regional power. It alone, the report suggested, could "compete with Communist China for establishing itself as the dominant influence in Southeastern Asia." ₃₉ The State Department weighed in with a similar intelligence analysis that heralded India's possible emergence as an Asian bulwark against communism. India's importance in that regard derived from its political stability, its economic and military potential, and the relative security from overland aggression it enjoyed due to natural mountain barriers. ₄₀

The idea that India could serve as the "cornerstone" of Western policy in Asia gained force as Nehru's arrival date approached. The disarray in America's Asian policy, most dramatically reflected in the bitter debates in Congress seeking to affix responsibility for Nationalist China's fate, tended to reinforce that simplistic notion. Democratic Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, who effusively hailed Nehru as "one of the great statesman of our time," predicted that the Indian's visit would mark "a turning point in American foreign policy in reference to the Far East." ₄₁ Although some policymakers sought to temper such unrealistic expectations with the caveat that Nehru's trip was primarily intended as an educational one, the deceptively attractive notion that India might emerge as the fulcrum of U.S. policy in Asia proved difficult to suppress.

The press did much to help popularize that view. Just before his arrival, Nehru graced the cover of Business Week and was the subject of favorable feature articles in numerous mass-circulation periodicals and newspapers. The New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, and other respected media organs all touted the importance of India and its esteemed leader to America's global containment strategy. ₄₂ Nehru, enthused the Nation's Freda Kirchwey in a typical comment, is "a figure of immense significance to the whole world." ₄₃ "There is no personality more important for the United States today than Pandit Nehru," wrote columnist Dorothy Thompson. "Every American word and gesture during Mr. Nehru's visit," she predicted, "will have repercussions from the Middle East to East and South Asia and Southern Africa. It is a diplomatic event of the most far reaching consequences." ₄₄ Political commentator Joseph Alsop added that it "will be an event of great importance simply because the relationship between the U.S. and India will in large part determine the outcome of the Soviet Union's ruthless power drive in Asia." ₄₅

British diplomats, too, saw Nehru's trip to the United States as an event of great moment. Like their American counterparts, they believed that India could be built up as a bulwark against communism in the Far East. Their appreciation of India's importance derived from interrelated economic and political factors. Citing its advanced industrial base in terms of raw materials, railroad networks, and infant industries, Foreign Office analysts envisioned India emerging as the hub of a regional economic association. Joined with its political prestige as the largest and most significant Third World state to make the transition from colonialism to independence, they speculated that India's economic base could catapult it to a preeminent position among Asia's noncommunist states. India could then use its power and prestige to promote active economic and military cooperation between those states and the West. London's historic ties to its former colony doubtless reinforced such wishful thinking. Unlike Washington's foreign policy analysts, British planners were accustomed to thinking about, and hence tended to exaggerate, the subcontinent's strategic and economic salience. On one point, however, British officials found themselves in total agreement with their American colleagues: Nehru's constant harping on India's role as an independent force in world affairs was as unhelpful as it was disquieting. High Commissioner Sir Archibald Nye, the chief British diplomatic representative in New Delhi, called such pronouncements "unrealistic and dangerous." Still, Britain was convinced that the orientation of Nehru and his ruling Congress Party was essentially pro-Western, a conclusion strengthened by the prime minister's decision to accept membership in the British Commonwealth. ₄₆

British policymakers hoped that Nehru's visit to the United States would result in concrete dollar commitments from Washington. "We have every reason to be thankful that the U.S. now appreciates the vital importance of building up India as the most likely potential bulwark against Communism in the Far East," noted one Foreign Office official, "but it is not at all clear yet what practical steps the Americans are prepared to take." ₄₇ British analysts were agreed that, given their own government's desperate financial straits, London's principal task was to convince Washington of the need for a major program of economic assistance to Asia that would earmark India as its principal beneficiary. Back in April 1949, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin first raised the subject during a meeting with Acheson in Washington, only to be brushed off by the Eurocentric Acheson's palpable indifference. ₄₈ J. O. Lloyd of the Foreign Office lamented that there was little prospect of Americans putting millions of dollars into India since the United States was "still smarting from having its fingers burned in China." ₄₉

Nonetheless, the British persisted in their efforts. American aid was crucial, observed Nye, for without it "the development of this impoverished sub-continent into an effective bastion against Communism in Asia is impossible." Unless the United States provided substantial financial assistance to Asia soon, it would be too late; India and all of Southeast Asia, he warned, might then be swamped by communism. ₅₀ Nye repeated those points at a Foreign Office meeting of July 20, called specifically to discuss India's need for economic help. M. E. Dening, head of the Foreign Office's Far Eastern Division, remarked at that gathering that, while the Americans appeared reluctant to enter into additional commitments in East Asia or Southeast Asia, they might be induced to concern themselves with India. ₅₁

Later that day, Bevin informed U.S. Ambassador Lewis Douglas of the Foreign Office's thinking. Touting India as the region's pivotal nation, he emphasized the need for immediate economic assistance to help India assume the role of Asia's moderate, stabilizing force. The foreign secretary pointed specifically to the possibility of Nehru leading a Western-backed regional economic conference. A series of additional démarches occurred over the next two months, with British diplomats pressing those views on their American colleagues in both Washington and New Delhi. On September 12 Dening presented the State Department with a formal proposal for an Asian economic conference, to be headed by India. ₅₂

Henderson found the British perspective consistent with his own evolving attitudes about India's importance to the United States. From New Delhi, the ambassador urged careful State Department consideration of a generous commitment to India's economic development. When he returned to Washington to prepare for Nehru's visit in the early autumn of 1949, Henderson used the opportunity to push his views in a series of meetings with senior officials. On October 3 he delivered a memorandum to Under Secretary of State James Webb that recommended a five-year, $500 million economic aid program for India. The money, he argued, "should not be considered as spent to purchase friendship but rather to bring about greater stability in an area which would serve as one of the bulwarks against the expansion of Communism in Asia and to establish a record of United States sympathy which may have long term effects of great importance." Henderson put his case starkly. With proper support, India could become a Western stalwart in a critical area; without that support, it "might degenerate in a vast political and economic swamp, the unclear exaltations of which would pollute the international atmosphere for an indefinite period of time." ₅₃

Henderson's recommendation, which was still being considered when Nehru landed in the United States, raised a most fundamental question for American policymakers. Put bluntly, precisely what did the United States want from India and what was it prepared to invest in order to achieve it? Most policy analyses and intelligence appraisals echoed the same clichés: India was moderate, responsible, a potential economic power, a potential "bulwark" against communist expansion and a "bastion" of Western influence in Asia; India's cooperation or alignment with the West would bring significant benefits to the United States. Presuming those ideas were accepted at the highest levels of the American government, and there is no direct evidence to suggest that Truman, Acheson, or other top officials rejected them, the question remains just how important did senior officials judge India to be in light of the nation's overall security interests? And exactly how did the Truman administration intend to translate those oft-repeated observations into substantive policies and commitments? In that regard, the lack of clarity among American planners is stunning. For all of the talk in Washington of India's centrality in the muddled Asian picture, the administration had made no hard decisions before Nehru's arrival. Even Henderson's rather modest proposal that the United States honor India's recent request for one million tons of wheat had not been approved.

A close examination of the conversations between Nehru, Truman, and other leading American officials during the former's sojourn in Washington make it clear that the administration had not yet decided what to do about IndiaÑor in some respects even what to think about India. What is most striking about those talks is that they were confined primarily to broad generalities, dwelling far more on the overall international environment than on any specific issues in Indo-American relations. According to the available records, at no time did a senior American official broach the subject that had so dominated official thinking in the months before Nehru's arrival: namely, India's potential contribution to the West's anticommunist posture in Asia. Perhaps for fear of offending the fiercely independent Nehru, American officials made sure that underlying concern never bubbled to the surface. Or perhaps U.S. spokesmen recognized that they had no specific initiatives to offer. Instead, they may have just hoped to find a convergence of views between themselves and India's paramount leader about the communist menace, a convergence that would have made some form of alignment with the West appear natural and logical to Nehru. ₅₄

Certainly the administration evinced no willingness to play its economic card. On the eve of the prime minister's arrival, a State Department intelligence report called India's economic dependence on the West a major factor conditioning its political orientation. "Only in the West," the assessment said, "can India find the capital, capital goods, and technical advice it clearly needs." ₅₅ But at no point did U.S. policymakers present India with a concrete offer of economic assistance, as Henderson and the British Foreign Office had strongly urged. India evidently had not yet achieved sufficient prominence in official thinking to warrant a significant financial commitment.

For all of those reasons, Nehru's much ballyhooed tour of the United States must be judged one of the most curious and least successful state visits in recent history. The Indian leader and his American interlocutors often talked past each other. Even worse, when their thoughts did connect, the resulting exchanges usually revealed differences more fundamental than either side had previously recognized. Much to the discomfiture of his hosts, Nehru refused to budge from his policy of nonalignment, quarreled with the U.S. appraisal of the Soviet threat, stated his intention to recognize the new communist government in China at the earliest possible opportunity, and insisted that colonialism, not communism, posed the gravest danger to world peace. During a private talk with Acheson at the secretary of state's home, Nehru launched into a detailed and passionate defense of the Indian position on Kashmir. Acheson noted later that he received "a curious combination of a public speech and flashes of anger and deep dislike of his opponents." The prime minister's lengthy discourse on procedural matters "seemed to preclude negotiation, and his notions on the dispute itself made any possibility of settlement dim indeed." Calling the Indian leader "one of the most difficult men with whom I have ever had to deal," Acheson observed with characteristic sarcasm that "Nehru and I were not destined to have a pleasant personal relationship." ₅₆

Nor did Nehru establish a warm rapport with other American leaders. As Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs George C. McGhee recollected: "Nehru came to America with an apparent chip on his shoulder toward American high officials, who he appeared to believe could not possibly understand someone with his background. . . . Nehru and Truman didn't hit it off at all. Rumor has it that, in his first informal meeting with the President, he was offended by Truman's extended discussion of the merits of bourbon whisky with Vice-President Alben Barkley." ₅₇

Minor irritations also plagued the Nehru visit. He found American policymakers condescending in their attitudes toward him and cringed at the blatant flaunting of wealth he witnessed on more than one occasion. At a lunch with businessmen and bankers in New York, for example, he was informed that the men sitting around the table represented $20 billion. The occasion caused Nehru acute embarrassment and annoyance. Certainly the contrast between the brash American capitalists and the Gandhian disciple who prided himself on personal habits of self-denying frugality, and who insisted that India's diplomatic corps follow suit, could not have been more sharply drawn. Nehru's itinerary, moreover, proceeded at a breakneck pace, taking him to New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Madison, Wisconsin, in addition to his official meetings in Washington, with additional stopovers to see Niagara Falls, West Point, and the Tennessee Valley Authority and to meet with Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park. Not only was the pace exhausting, but it left little time for the reflection that Nehru so treasured. One should never visit America for the first time, he often quipped in later years when asked about the trip. ₅₈

Determined not to appear as a supplicant, Nehru rarely even touched on the subject of economic aid. He did mention to both Truman and Acheson India's desire to obtain one million tons of wheat, but by his own admission he did so "rather casually" and never pressed the matter. ₅₉ The prime minister kept silent about India's broader economic needs for fear that Americans might insist on a quid pro quo. "I want to make no commitments which come in the way of our basic policy," Nehru wrote before his departure from New Delhi. ₆₀ Indians were not "going as beggars to the U.S. or to any other country," he reassured his chief ministers. "It is better to starve than to beg and become dependent on others." ₆₁ However desperate India's need for financial help, he adamantly refused to compromise important principles in order to secure aid. Nehru complained upon his return home that the United States had expected total acquiescence from him in return for economic assistance. "They had gone all-out to welcome me and I am very grateful for them for it and expressed myself so," he said. "But they expected something more than gratitude and goodwill and that more I could not supply them." ₆₂

Nonetheless, Nehru and his top aides, along with most leading centers of public opinion within India, considered the prime minister's visit a rousing success. In its coverage of the visit, the Indian press focused especially on Nehru's firm refusal to depart from India's nonaligned policy, a position that it applauded. Indeed, Indian press opinion was so positive toward the Nehru trip that, according to an American analyst, "there seemed to be universal accord with whatever Nehru said and did." ₆₃ During a stopover trip in London before returning home, the Indian leader told Prime Minister Attlee that he had been very impressed with the warm and sympathetic reception he received in the United States. By deepening Americans' "emotional awareness" of India while making clear the bedrock principles that governed Indian foreign relations, he believed his visit had accomplished its essential educational purpose. ₆₄

The American verdict on the Nehru visit was much harsher. For a time, wishful thinking shaped official assessments. Following an unusually fruitful exchange with American diplomats in New York, McGhee gushed that "never before has Nehru gone so far in associating Indian and United States interests." ₆₅ Those hopes proved illusory, however. The embassy in New Delhi noted that the visit left no immediate impact on Indian attitudes toward the Cold War struggle. In fact, "if anything it has fortified [the] general conviction of the rightness of non-involvement and made any change in that policy difficult." ₆₆ In December 1949 Henderson offered the following candid assessment to British High Commissioner Nye: "The general impression was left in America that India was making no contribution to [the solution of] world problems, was unlikely to do so as long as the present policy persisted and that Nehru displayed little sense of the practical realms." ₆₇ In short, Nehru's visit jolted Americans into the realization that India would resist playing the Cold War role that the United States hoped to assign it. As British ambassador Sir Oliver Franks summed it up in a cable to the Foreign Office: "At all events, it was made abundantly clear to the American public that they could not look to India as a ready-made replacement for China [in] the cold war against Communism." ₆₈

U.S.-Indian relations foundered in the aftermath of Nehru's American tour. As Bajpai noted perceptively in a conversation with Frank K. Roberts of the British Foreign Office, the visit had achieved the useful purpose of removing misconceptions and establishing a basis on which productive relations between Washington and New Delhi could develop, but the course of that relationship would hinge on the relative compatibility between Indian foreign policy and U.S. world interests. If Indian policy proved congruent with those interests, New Delhi could expect support from Washington; if not, nothing would come of Nehru's trip. ₆₉ The Indian diplomat read American attitudes correctly. Only active Indian support for U.S. Cold War policies might have laid the foundation at this stage for substantial economic assistance. Yet Nehru's private conversations and public pronouncements while in the United States carried one unmistakable message: expect no help from India. Convinced of the righteousness of their foreign policy in the face of what seemed a dangerously implacable Soviet adversary, American officials denigrated Nehru's insistence on a policy of strict nonalignment as shortsighted at best, at worst somewhat immoral.

Official debate about India's potential value to the United States abruptly ceased. Shortly after Nehru's departure, the State Department informed Henderson that it had rejected his proposal for a five-year, $500 million aid program; India would have to rely on World Bank loans and domestic resources for its developmental needs. Nor would the United States provide the one million tons of wheat India had requested. ₇₀ A report by the National Security Council on U.S. policy in Asia (NSC 48/1), first circulated on December 23, 1949, reflected the Truman administration's diminishing estimation of India's importance. Given South Asia's continuing regional disputes and "the current reluctance of the area to align itself overtly with any Ôbloc power,' " the paper declared, "it would be unwise for us to regard south Asia, more particularly India, as the sole bulwark against the extension of communist control in Asia." ₇₁

Several issues served to heighten tensions between the United States and India in the months following Nehru's departure. The most serious was the Kashmir dispute. The Truman administration believed that an early resolution of that problem remained imperative if the uneasy truce prevailing between Indian and Pakistani forces was to be preserved. Yet the prospects for a breakthrough looked bleaker than ever. The implementation of the UNCIP resolutions of August 13, 1948 and January 5, 1949 had bogged down over procedural matters. Consequently, the troop withdrawals that were to precede the stipulated plebiscite had not begun. In order to break the deadlock the United States quietly engineered a new initiative in concert with Great Britain and Canada. It called for a single negotiator to be granted broad authority by the Security Council to mediate between India and Pakistan, advancing practical procedures to loosen the logjam. On December 17 the Security Council adopted that approach, naming its current president, Canadian diplomat General A. G. L. McNaughton, as the mediator. Following an American recommendation, McNaughton quickly informed India and Pakistan that he believed a prompt demilitarization of the disputed territory to be an essential first step. ₇₂

This renewed effort to break the deadlock again aroused Nehru's ire. He complained that the McNaughton approach placed India and Pakistan on the same footing in Kashmir by calling for the simultaneous withdrawal of all military units when, in fact, Pakistani forces were in Kashmir illegally and Indian forces were there legally. Acheson disagreed. On January 13, 1950, he informed the Indian Government that, in his personal view, the "serious deterioration" of Indo-Pakistani relations required the adoption of McNaughton's "realistic approach" to the demilitarization issue. He urged India to reconsider its position and noted rather pointedly that if McNaughton's effort failed owing to India's rejection, it "will be [the] third consecutive time Ind[ia] has refused [to] accept findings [of an] impartial UN agent." Under those circumstances, the United States would then have no choice but to support whatever Security Council action would be necessary to overcome the stalemate. ₇₃

Nehru exploded. In a message to the State Department, delivered the next day, he characterized Acheson's communication as "unfriendly in tone and substance." The United States "appears to us to be seeking to bring pressure on our government under threat of consequences. It will be appreciated that the government of India cannot accept this form of intervention nor do they think that it can lead to any beneficial results." In concluding his tart rebuttal of the American initiative, Nehru said: "I would like to add that it is a matter of great personal regret to me that Mr. Secretary Acheson should have sent us a message of this kind." ₇₄

American diplomats did their best to soothe Nehru's ruffled feathers, but Kashmir remained a running sore infecting all aspects of bilateral relations. The United States considered a compromise solution essential to South Asian stability and held India responsible for the impasse. According to a State Department analysis: "Although both India and Pakistan have proved difficult and recalcitrant and both are far from blameless in the matter, it is the intransigent attitude of India which has been primarily responsible during the past year for holding up progress toward demilitarization of Kashmir and final settlement within the framework of UNCIP resolutions." ₇₅ Washington's quite understandable displeasure with Nehru's intransigence intensified when India and Pakistan suddenly appeared perched on the brink of war in March 1950. The war scare soon receded; America's disillusionment with Nehru did not. For his part, Nehru deeply resented American intervention and believed that the United States was now siding openly with Pakistan in the dispute. In fact, he blamed the war scare on American policies, claiming that U.S. support for Pakistan encouraged its leaders' bellicosity. ₇₆

Nehru and his top aides suspected that strategic interests were driving the United States toward a close relationship with Pakistan to the detriment of India. Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan's state visit to Washington in May 1950, discussed below, stoked those fears. Not only was he given the same red carpet treatment that Nehru had experienced earlier, but the American press was extravagant in its praise for the Pakistani leader's anticommunist pronouncements. "It does appear that there is a concerted attempt to build up Pakistan and build down, if I may say so, India," Nehru confided to his sister. ₇₇ Henderson reported to the State Department that Indian diplomats and legislators were inclined to believe that the United States had assumed a pro-Pakistani position on Kashmir because of its desire to attain air bases in Pakistan. ₇₈ "Indians in ever larger numbers," he commented, "are becoming convinced that U.S. preference for Pakistan is based on U.S. belief that friendship of Pakistan is more valuable to U.S. than that of India." ₇₉

Aid questions also strained Indo-American relations. Indian representatives pursued what to their American counterparts seemed a curiously circuitous route in their pursuit of financial assistance. Although Nehru expressed an interest in obtaining one million tons of wheat during his Washington meetings and his financial adviser, Ambassador C. D. Deshmukh, subsequently opened exploratory talks with U.S. officials regarding terms, India never made a formal request for the wheat. Those negotiations quickly broke down, moreover, when American diplomats suggested a barter agreement under which India would export manganese to the United States in exchange for the grain. The deal struck Indian officials as unfair since the United States would be exchanging a surplus commodity for one that India relied upon for necessary export earnings. Moreover, it raised the specter of aid that would come "with strings attached." Henderson tried to explain that India's insistence on "no strings" presented a formidable barrier to an aid relationship since Congress did not ordinarily appropriate aid without maintaining some control over its use. ₈₀ Indian diplomats bristled, nonetheless, at any arrangement that might compromise their hard-fought independence. They especially feared, as one British diplomat observed, that the United States would drag India "by the strings of [its] aid, willy nilly into a militant anti-communist camp." ₈₁

American officials grew disheartened with the widening gulf between the United States and India. Henderson blamed India's leaders, and especially Nehru, for the rift. They had been treated as "spoiled children" by the British for so long that "they become outraged when their schemes are opposed," he said. They must learn to be "adult." "Nevertheless," he cautioned, "we should not forget in dealing with Nehru that, vain and immature as he is in many respects, he has tremendous influence in Asia and that if he should become really vindictive he would be in a position to make still more difficult a situation on this continent which is already certainly not favorable to us." ₈₂ Former Ambassador Grady agreed wholeheartedly with his successor's amateur psychoanalysis, attributing Indian "ingratitude" to "a sense of Divine right" that he identified as "a sort of natural attribute of Indians generally." ₈₃ A paper prepared in the State Department's Office of South Asian Affairs offered a slightly different spin on this psychological explanation of Indian behavior, observing that "Indians are notably prone to blame others for their problems, as the British know all too well." It speculated that the "current accusations against the United States may well arise in part out of their need to find a new scapegoat." ₈₄

On April 12, 1950, Henderson offered a deeply pessimistic appraisal of the state of U.S.-Indian relations. Acknowledging that Washington policymakers "may be somewhat shocked to learn [of the] depth of resentment towards America and [the] width of [the] gap that divides our respective points of view," he noted that feelings of unfriendliness toward the United States had been increasing steadily in India over the past eight months and could not be dismissed as a "temporary phenomenon." In addition to the specific irritants noted above, Henderson added the following remarkable litany of American shortcomings cited by Indian critics: "Including our treatment of American negroes, our tendency to support colonialism and to strive for continued world supremacy of white peoples, our economic imperialism, [the] superficiality of our culture, our lack of emotional balance as evidenced by our present hysteria in combatting Communism and our cynical use of [the] Ôwitch hunting' method in promoting domestic political ends, our practice of giving economic and other assistance to foreign peoples only when we believe such assistance will aid in our struggle against Communism, our assumption of superiority merely because we have higher standards of living, our hypocrisy, etc." He predicted that this "rising tide of Indian unfriendliness" toward the United States was "likely to rise higher as Indian economic and political difficulties increase." ₈₅

The State Department basically accepted Henderson's analysis of the problem, but saw no easy solutions in sight. It doubted that the United States could win India's friendship and confidence by loans or gifts alone. Instead, the department said that, despite the "discouraging state" of Indian attitudes toward the United States, "we must continue on [our] present course." ₈₆

British diplomats offered a more balanced perspective on the "very difficult phase" that Indo-American relations were passing through. In an insightful letter to Sir Cecil Syers, head of the Commonwealth Relations Office, Sir Archibald Nye blamed both nations for the current state of affairs. He attributed the anti-American streak so prevalent among Indian elites to deep-seated cultural prejudices: "There is a general feeling that America represents all the coarse, base, materialistic outlook of the West without any of the compensating advantages that go with Western culture and the Western traditions. They are generally looked upon as selfish, ham-handed, flatfooted, gross, and material. Their frankness, their kindliness, and their hospitality is appreciated but, as Bajpai once remarked to me, savages often have these qualities." Those prejudices were reinforced by the belief that the United States only granted economic assistance in order to extract political, economic, or strategic advantages. Indian leaders, moreover, resented and disliked ambassadors Grady and Henderson. Nehru found Grady's regular pronouncements about the virtues of capitalism annoying; he considered Henderson's attitudes "quite absurdly anti-Communist."

Nye recognized that Indian arrogance and immaturity also contributed to Indo-American tensions. "The Indians fail to appreciate that they need America much more than America needs India," he noted. No American envoy could accept with equanimity India's persistent misrepresentations of American policy. "Furthermore, any experienced diplomatist must find Indians, from the Prime Minister downwards, irritating because of their unrealistic approach to world problems combined with a capacity for lecturing other people on the highest moral plane." Any U.S. representative would find it hard to win the confidence of Pandit Nehru, "who instinctively dislikes America and the Americans." ₈₇

With those words, Nye identified accurately the elements of Indian behavior that Americans found most grating. Not only did India follow uncooperative policies in world affairs, but its leaders did so with a smugness and self-righteousness that U.S. officials detested. Ironically, the Americans themselves were equally guilty of a smug, self-righteous approach to international politics, as Nehru and other prominent Indians frequently pointed out. American leaders can certainly be faulted for their abject failure to appreciate the intense nationalistic feelings that drove Indian foreign policy. Convinced that their nation's strategic and material interests happily coincided with the universal aspirations of the human race for peace, prosperity, and freedom, U.S. officials simply could not fathomÑno less acceptÑalternative visions of world order. New Delhi's ideological deviation from the Cold War crusade that Washington believed itself to be fighting on behalf of all humanity thus posed an unbridgeable obstacle to any genuine Indo-American understanding. Revealingly, it was an obstacle that more than outweighed the parallel commitment to democratic institutions in the two countries. By the middle of 1950, then, the American relationship with India was riven with political conflicts, ideological cleavages, and cultural misperceptions. The same U.S. officials who had lodged so much hope in India on the eve of the Nehru visit now more commonly expressed disillusionment and dismay. And as India's strategic stock declined, Pakistan's rose.

The Truman administration displayed far less interest in Pakistan during the immediate postindependence years than it did in India. U.S. officials routinely speculated that India, given its vigorous leadership, rich natural resources, and vast size and population, was destined to be the dominant power in the region as well as a major actor on the larger world stage. They viewed Pakistan, on the other hand, at least initially, as an anomalous creation whose very survival was still much in question. American experts expressed grave doubts when they first learned of Mountbatten's partition plan, fearing that the establishment of an independent Muslim state might balkanize the subcontinent. Officials in Washington, moreover, were as unfamiliar with the new Pakistani leadership as they were uncertain about the infant nation's prospects. While American representatives had actively courted Nehru and other Congress Party luminaries for years, they had relatively little contact during the pre-statehood period with Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League cohorts. ₈₈

Notwithstanding its reservations, Washington reconciled itself to the inevitability of an independent Pakistan and conferred formal recognition on the new government with speed and graciousness. National interests necessitated such action, according to Secretary of State Marshall, since "Pakistan, with a population of seventy million persons, will be the largest Muslim country in the world and will occupy one of the most strategic areas in southern Asia." ₈₉ U.S. recognition inspired a glowing editorial in one of Pakistan's leading newspapers. The United States "acted so promptly and with such grace" in recognizing the regime and exchanging diplomatic representatives with it, observed the semi-official newspaper Dawn, that "Pakistan cannot but reciprocate with more than the usual degree of goodwill and friendliness." ₉₀ Yet when illness forced Ambassador Paul H. Alling to leave the country after a mere four-month tour, Truman delayed sending a replacement for almost two years. Truman's dalliance in naming a new envoy provides rather stark testimony to the administration's initial indifference toward Pakistan. The two experienced diplomats who represented the United States in New Delhi during these years, Henry Grady and Loy W. Henderson, served as visible reminders to Pakistan that its regional rival counted for much more in U.S. thinking.

The immense challenges that Pakistan faced with independence reinforced the inclination of most senior U.S. officials to discount its significance. Indeed, in the months following partition some American experts speculated that Pakistan might eventually be absorbed into the Indian state. A nation divided into two ethnically, culturally, and linguistically distinct sections, separated by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory, hardly seemed viable. "Looking at the map and seeing the separation of East and West Pakistan," admitted a U.S. military officer stationed in Pakistan, "our first reaction is Ôthis can't work.' " ₉₁ Attempting to explain Pakistan's unique geographical shape to an American readership, one British observer searched for an appropriate analogy. "It is as though, in the United States," he ventured, "a sovereign nation were created out of Massachusetts and Texas, separated by the territory of the rest of the Union and able to communicate only by sea and air." ₉₂ He might have extended the analogy even further, asking his readers to imagine the territory between Massachusetts and Texas being controlled by a hostile state. Charles W. Lewis, the senior U.S. diplomatic representative in Karachi, spoke for many American analysts when he reported in October 1947 that Pakistan's political and economic difficulties were increasing so rapidly that they had already "assumed such proportions as to threaten the very existence of the new State." ₉₃ Another U.S. official, reviewing developments during 1948, reported that Pakistan's leaders "may at least heave a sigh of relief and thankfulness that they have survived"; it was, he commented acidly, "a bad year." ₉₄

There was much truth to those bleak observations. Mountbatten's partition agreement treated Pakistan as a stepchild. India, as the successor state to the British colonial regime, received the lion's share of the trained administrative personnel, armed forces, and financial reserves of British India; Pakistan, as the seceding state, inherited little more than table scraps. Experts guess that Pakistan began its governmental experiment with fewer than 200 experienced civil servants. Moreover, at birth Pakistan lacked such basic equipment as typewriters, telephones, pens, and paper. Karachi, the only significant commercial center in the new nation, became the capital by default, but it lacked sufficient office space and residential accommodations for the new governmental workforce. Pakistan's leaders also faced grim economic limitations. The partition settlement, which left Pakistan with only 17.5 percent of the financial assets of British India, failed to provide the regime with an adequate fiscal base. Pakistan's economic plight compounded its security dilemma, making it nearly impossible for the government to arm and supply a military force adequate for internal security purposes, no less one capable of protecting Pakistan from external threats. Those threats, moreover, emanated not just from India but also from its northern neighbor, Afghanistan, which refused to relinquish irredentist claims to Pakistan's Northwest Frontier ProvinceÑ"Pushtunistan," as the Afghans dubbed it. ₉₅

Pakistan faced an equally daunting set of structural and political challenges, most of which stemmed from the unusual circumstances surrounding its creation. Essentially, the Muslim League's insistence on an independent state for India's Muslims led to a country carved out of the northwestern and northeastern sections of British India, areas with no appreciable industrial infrastructure. Since Pakistan's two most populous provincesÑEast Bengal and the PunjabÑwere torn apart from larger provincial entities in British India, new provincial governments needed t partition agreement treated Pakistan as a stepchild. India, as the o be established at the same time that a central government was being constructed. The distribution of political and administrative power between provinces and center had yet to be established, an especially touchy issue since the bulk of the central government's administrative and military personnel hailed from West Pakistan, whereas East Pakistan contained slightly over fifty percent of the country's population. India, with its vast size and enormous ethnic, linguistic, religious, and caste diversity certainly faced a raft of its own nation-building problems. But, unlike Pakistan, India's Congress Party managed to forge order, cohesion, and a sense of common national purpose out of that diversity; in Nehru, moreover, Indians possessed a leader who commanded broad and deep popular support. During the Nehru era, government and party became virtually indistinguishable in India. In contrast, Jinnah and his ruling Muslim League, for all their success in negotiating with the British, never managed to develop a mass popular appeal. Consequently, a gulf soon developed in Pakistan between government and party, and between rulers and ruled, a gulf that bore dangerous implications for a state held together by little more than a common religious affiliation and a fear of India. Jinnah and his associates gamely tried to forge a modern state out of these most unpromising conditions. Without substantial external help, however, theirs seemed a near-impossible task. ₉₆

Aware of some of these problems, the State Department worried that Pakistan might succumb to "three potential threats to its continued existence as an independent state." The first, it speculated, was that the aged and sickly Jinnah might die suddenly, plunging Pakistan into "political chaos." The second threat, according to the State Department, came from separatist tendencies already evident in the young nation: "Should East Bengal secede from Pakistan or should the Pathans of the Northwest Frontier rise against the Karachi Government, it would be difficult for Pakistan to survive the ensuing crisis." Finally, the State Department expressed concern that a further deterioration of Indo-Pakistani relations might lead to a war that "would very probably result in the defeat of Pakistan and a resurgence of communal hatreds leading to political and economic disintegration." ₉₇

Despite their deep concern about the young nation's fragility, some U.S. officials touted Pakistan even at this stage as potentially a major strategic asset. As noted in the previous chapter, Colonel Nathaniel R. Hoskot called attention to Pakistan's "strategic worldwide importance" as early as 1948. He urged his superiors in Washington to consider carefully the country's critical geographic position astride the southern border of the Soviet Union. Hoskot's arguments found support among defense and intelligence analysts. Some hoped that a cooperative Pakistan might permit the establishment of American air bases. Because of its "magnificent airfields," one U.S. military official observed, "Pakistan becomes of immense strategic importance for any long-range bombing of the USSR." ₉₈ Others focused on the possible use of Pakistani territory for covert intelligence operations aimed at the Soviet Union. Still others reasoned that Pakistan might be utilized as a staging area for forces engaged in the defense or recapture of Persian Gulf oil fields. Taking all of those factors into account, the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared that Pakistan possessed substantially greater strategic and military value than India. ₉₉

In mid-1949 White House staff assistant Stephen J. Spingarn pulled those ideas together in a series of papers and memoranda that argued for the strategic importance of Pakistan. The case for closer relations with Pakistan, he emphasized, rested almost exclusively on strategic grounds: Pakistan's proximity to the Soviet Union; its proximity to the oil fields of the Middle East; its potential role in the defense of both the Indian Ocean area and the Indian subcontinent; its position as the largest Muslim nation in the world; and its army, which he called the best in the Middle East. Accordingly, Spingarn warned that "it would be prejudicial to American interests in the Middle East and Far East to develop an Indian policy without taking into account Pakistan's legitimate interests." ₁₀₀

Echoing many of those same themes, Hooker A. Doolittle urged the State Department to think of Pakistan as a "potential ally." ₁₀₁ The consul-general at Lahore argued persistently and forcefully for Pakistan's salience to America's larger interests. He praised Pakistan for its relative political stability and amazing capacity for survival under the most trying of circumstances. "It is potentially friendly to the West, particularly the United States, and its strategic position and facilities make it the eastern bastion of the weak but immensely important belt of Islamic countries, as Turkey is the western anchor." His conclusion: "We cannot afford to lose it." ₁₀₂

For its part, Pakistan sought to use the strategic angle as a bargaining chip in its initial contacts with the United States. Its leaders repeatedly called attention to Pakistan's geopolitical significance in their various efforts to coax large-scale financial and military support from Washington. Only two months after independence, Governor-General Jinnah boldly invited the United States to become the principal source of external support for his new nation. Jinnah's request was extraordinary; he asked for a loan of close to $2 billion over a five-year period for Pakistan's armed forces as well as for certain industrial and agricultural development projects. Aware that his nation faced staggering problems, Jinnah was in effect offering a quid pro quo: alignment with the United States in return for an American commitment to underwrite Pakistan's economy and guarantee its security. ₁₀₃ As nearly all informed observers understood, Pakistan's overwhelming security concern lay not with the Soviet Union, but with India. Nonetheless, its representatives carefully couched all appeals to the United States in a virulently anti-Soviet rhetoric that they hoped would strike a responsive chord with the Truman administration's Cold War planners. Their most vexing external problem, declared a secret planning document passed by Pakistani strategists to their American counterparts, was "the proximity and vulnerability of Western Pakistan to Russia." ₁₀₄

On December 22, 1947, Malik Feroz Khan Noon, one of Pakistan's most prominent political leaders, offered a remarkably frank public appeal to the Truman administration. "The U.S. should realize three things," he said: "(1) that Pakistan is here to stayÑthere is not the slightest chance of any reunion with India; (2) that Pakistan will never be communistic; (3) that Pakistan is the Eastern bastion against communism as Turkey is the Western bastion. It is in the interest therefore of the U.S. to give military and economic support to Pakistan as well as to Turkey." ₁₀₅

Despite burgeoning official appreciation for Pakistan's valuable geopolitical location, the State Department politely rebuffed all early requests for substantial American support. After rejecting Jinnah's initial appeal for military and economic assistance, in March 1948 the United States imposed an informal arms embargo on both India and Pakistan in response to the Kashmir fighting. That embargo blocked not only direct military aid but withheld export licenses needed for the purchase of military supplies from private American firms as well. With the lifting of the embargo early in 1949, a Pakistani military mission visited the United States in an effort to open an arms pipeline. It achieved little more, however, than token pledges for training assistance and the sale of modest amounts of military equipment. ₁₀₆

The principal reason for American hesitance about arms supplies at this juncture is obvious: South Asia simply did not rank very high on the scales of U.S. priorities during a time of heightened global tensions and escalating demands for limited American resources. As nearly all recent studies of American diplomacy during the late 1940s have shown, Truman administration planners concentrated their attention first on Europe and, secondarily, on the Middle East and East Asia; virtually everywhere else appeared peripheral to core U.S. national security interests. Furthermore, the United States deliberately chose to follow the British lead in the Indian subcontinent through the adoption of an evenhanded, regional approach. Such a strategy explicitly ruled out the option of supporting either Pakistan or India. Open support for one nation, in the view of British and American officials, would inevitably alienate the other and hopelessly complicate prospects for an amicable resolution of the Kashmir dispute. State Department and Foreign Office specialists were agreed that a Kashmir settlement was the sine qua non for regional stability. ₁₀₇

Significantly, when American officials did seriously consider a departure from the regional formula for South Asia they tilted toward India, not Pakistan. As noted above, the reassessment of Asian policy occasioned by the Communist Chinese triumph led some U.S. officials to emphasize the importance of India to Asian stability. Nehru's state visit in October 1949 of course dashed such wishful thinking. The visit nonetheless raised a frightening specter to the Pakistanis: that of rival India accepting the mantle of Asia's anticommunist redoubt in return for generous U.S. economic and military aid. Pakistani leaders were agreed that no development could threaten their security more fundamentally than India's alignment with the West. ₁₀₈

Much to the horror of American planners, Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan sought to counter Nehru's trip to the United States by accepting an invitation from Josef Stalin to visit the Soviet Union. Recognizing that Nehru's high-profile American tour would irk the sensitive Pakistanis, the State Department had sought to reassure them that the visit signified no change in the basic U.S. policy of "objectivity, impartiality, and friendly interests in both India and Pakistan." ₁₀₉ Those words did little to soothe Pakistan's anxieties, however. The shrewd, Oxford-educated Liaquat thought a brief excursion to Moscow might serve as a forceful reminder that Pakistan could not be taken for granted by the West. American analysts understood the game he was playingÑand it angered them. Doolittle sarcastically characterized the ploy as petulant, "a sort of small boy Ôlook what I can do' view." ₁₁₀ A British official more charitablyÑ and more accuratelyÑsaw Liaquat's acceptance of the Russian invitation as an effort to keep Pakistan's "bargaining price" with the West high. ₁₁₁

The essential accuracy of the latter observation is nicely revealed in a letter from M. A. H. Ispahani, Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, to Liaquat: Your acceptance of the invitation to visit Moscow was a masterpiece in strategy. . . . Until a few months ago, we were unable to obtain anything except a few sweet words from middling State Department officials. We were taken much for granted as good boys who would not play ball with communism or flirt with the left; boys who would starve and die rather than even talk to communists; . . . we were treated as a country that did not seriously matter. On the other hand, the US Government paid much attention to India. . . . [With the Liaquat acceptance] overnight Pakistan began to receive the serious notice and consideration of the US Government. ₁₁₂

In December 1949, less than a month after Nehru's return to India, Truman invited Liaquat to make a formal state visit to the United States. In recommending the invitation, Acheson acknowledged that the chief rationale was to counteract the impact of Liaquat's planned meetings in Moscow and to balance the Nehru trip. ₁₁₃ The visit might advance other important goals as well. It could help check the growing disillusionment within Pakistan over the thus far meager results of its leaders' pro-Western policy. Nehru's effusive reception in the United States embittered many Pakistanis as it seemed to symbolize an American tilt toward India. "Liaquat's trip is an attempt on our part to compensate for those feelings," admitted one State Department specialist in South Asian affairs. The warm welcome that America intended for Liaquat might also help compensate for the absence of American material support. ₁₁₄

Throughout 1949 Pakistani disappointment with the United States mounted. Pakistan's rulers had consciously chosen not to emulate Nehru's nonaligned approach to world affairs. With the notable exception of Palestine, they supported openly American foreign policy decisions, making a conscious bid for American favor and support. Unlike the Indian prime minister's "plague on both your houses" approach, Pakistan's policymakers made public and explicit their anticommunism and their basic pro-Western orientation. That approach was dictated by Pakistan's overwhelming economic problems, its military weakness, and its fear of India, conditions that made the search for an external patron a central feature of Pakistani diplomacy from the nation's inception. The regime's critics charged, however, with some justification, that the results of that open tilt toward the West had proven negligible. The United States continued to court India, refused to support Pakistan's case in the Kashmir dispute, and rebuffed all requests for significant financial and military assistance. ₁₁₅

Analysts at the State Department and the CIA closely monitored signs of rising discontent within Pakistan. They applauded the solidly pro-Western orientation of Pakistan's ruling elite and were pleased that communist and radical elements within the country had attracted few followers. A State Department memorandum of April 1950 asserted confidently that Pakistan "has at present no communist leanings and no communist problem of significance." ₁₁₆ Nonetheless, anti-Western sentiment within Pakistan was strong, fueled by political opponents of the ruling Muslim League who found broad public sympathy for the argument that a neutralist foreign policy would better serve the nation's needs. U.S. experts recognized that a gap separated elite and nonelite opinion on this emotional issue and feared that opportunistic politicians might exploit it to the detriment of U.S.-Pakistani relations. They found the prospect of a disillusioned and embittered Pakistan turning eventually to the Soviet Union for arms especially worrisome. ₁₁₇

American officials recognized that Pakistani authorities considered their nation's defense needs critical. Since Pakistan inherited only a paltry amount of military stores with partition, and possessed no ordnance plants, it relied totally on outside sources for its military equipment. The problem of spare parts was particularly acute. In view of Karachi's repeated and urgent requests for U.S. arms, Assistant Secretary McGhee warned in mid-1949 that "our response . . . may have a strong bearing on future United States-Pakistan relations, and on our ability to achieve our national objectives with respect to Pakistan." ₁₁₈ As a position paper prepared in McGhee's bureau subsequently stated the problem: "If we continue to exclude them from MDA [the Mutual Defense Assistance program] it is difficult to see how we can expect aid from them again in time of future need; or how we can expect that they will not associate themselves with the Soviet bloc to fill their present needs." ₁₁₉

McGhee consequently took the lead in pressing for a program of limited military aid for Pakistan. In November 1949 he recommended that the administration seek congressional authorization for the extension of reimbursable assistance to nations, like Pakistan, "whose increased security is in the national interest of the United States." The case for Pakistan derived almost entirely from geostrategic considerations: "We have recognized that . . . Pakistan is of particular strategic importance to the US because, like Afghanistan, it lies across the invasion routes from Russia to India, and flanks the oil fields of the Persian Gulf; and also because Pakistan bases in the Karachi-Lahore area are in closer proximity to the Soviet heartland than any others that might be made available to us." The fear that Pakistan's pro-Western policy might be undercut by an inflexible U.S. approach on the sensitive question of arms sales inspired McGhee's initiative. ₁₂₀ "We recognize," noted a State Department policy paper, "that the final political orientation of Pakistani leaders will be influenced by the responses they receive to these [arms] requests." ₁₂₁

McGhee traveled to Pakistan for the first time in December 1949, a visit that formed part of a broader tour of several nations that fell within his sprawling geographic bailiwick as the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs. A Texas native and former Rhodes scholar, McGhee enjoyed a successful career as an oil-industry geologist before government service beckoned during the Second World War. He rose quickly through State Department ranks after the war, attracting Acheson's attention with his energy and acumen. McGhee's intimate knowledge of the petroleum business undoubtedly also played a significant role in his appointment as the State Department's point man for the Middle East.

Although he had had little previous contact with Pakistan's leadership, McGhee developed an easy rapport with Liaquat, who almost immediately accepted Truman's invitation to visit the United States that spring. The urbane, self-assured Pakistani, a fellow Oxford graduate, struck McGhee as "a big, strong, confident man," one "you could do business with." Liaquat and his inner circle impressed McGhee with their directness. They made clear their desire for American assistance while promising that Pakistani troops would support any U.S.-backed efforts to prevent communist encroachments into South Asia. It was music to the American's ears, "an attractive alternative," in the assistant secretary's words, "to the somewhat truculent Indian neutralism." If he suspected an element of manipulativeness in Pakistan's vigorous anticommunist pronouncements, his reports to Washington reveal nothing of the sort. McGhee's memoirs, written decades later, confirm that he took the Pakistanis at their word. "They openly sought our aid on our terms," he recollected, "promising support in our efforts to build a defense against the Communist threat. Compared with the wishy-washy neutralist Indians they were a breath of fresh air." ₁₂₂

In contrast to all the hoopla surrounding Nehru's state visit, both advance publicity and official expectations for the Liaquat visit were modest. U.S. officials had labored mightily, if unsuccessfully, to disabuse the Indian leader of his misconceptions about American policy. They had sought essentially to convert a confirmed neutralist to the "free world" side. Such efforts were unnecessary with Liaquat. The Pakistani prime minister was, in the words of a State Department expert, "already well disposed toward us"; the principal purpose of his visit was simply "to present Pakistan to the people of the United States." If the reason for the former's visit was to impress and educate Nehru, then the purpose of the latter's visit was to impress and educate the American public about a country that had not yet penetrated its consciousness. State Department planners hoped that the Liaquat visit would alert the American people to the potential value of Pakistan and its pro-Western ruler. "Liaquat," one official stressed, "is probably the one man who can keep his country in the orientation which we favor." ₁₂₃

The prime minister seized every opportunity provided by his three-day state visit to make clear the commonality of interests between Pakistan and the United States. His nation's Islamic principles, Liaquat explained to various American audiences, were as compatible with the political, economic, and ideological goals of the West as they were incompatible with communism. At one point, he publicly proclaimed Pakistan's resolve "to throw all her weight to help the maintenance of stability in Asia." On another occasion, he expressed the hope "that the future will unfold itself in ways which will also make them [Pakistan and the United States] comrades, in the noble task of maintaining peace and in translating the great constructive dreams of democracy into reality." In a speech before Congress, he proclaimed that "no threat or persuasion, no material peril or ideological allurement" could deflect Pakistan from its chosen path of free democracy. Throughout a hectic tour that took him from Washington to New York, Schenectady, Cambridge, Chicago, Kansas City, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Houston, and New Orleans, the prime minister repeatedly implied Pakistan's willingness to align itself with the United States while also hinting on several occasionsÑboth publicly and privatelyÑat Pakistan's desire to purchase large quantities of American arms. ₁₂₄

In addition, Liaquat sought to educate his American audiences about Pakistan's important strategic location. "Pakistan comprises two parts, East and West," he said in one speech.

Whereas one borders on Burma, not far from where the Japanese advance was halted in the last war, the other borders on Iran and Afghanistan and has an important situation in relation to the communications to and from the oil-bearing areas of the Middle East. This part controls the mountain passes through which the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent had been invaded ninety times in the past. Most people are inclined mentally to divide the great part of Asia into South East Asia and the Middle East and to allot each country to one or the other zone. Because of its peculiar situation Pakistan is vitally interested in the development of events in both these zones and has thus, a doubly delicate position. ₁₂₅

If one judges the Liaquat visit against the limited expectations set by American officials, then it appears an unadulterated success. Administration and congressional representatives who had not previously met the Pakistani leader came away impressed with his honesty, his intelligence, and, not least, his willingness to cooperate with the United States. Liaquat maintained his composure throughout the arduous schedule, even when one guest at a private social gathering in San Francisco confused him with Nehru and another referred to the Pakistani visitors as Palestinians. ₁₂₆ The American press gave his performance glowing reviews, praising the man and the message. Capturing the prevailing consensus, the New York Times lauded Liaquat's pledge that "the Pakistanis will stand and be counted among those who are devoted to freedom, regardless of the cost." ₁₂₇

Certainly the contrast with Nehru's diffidenceÑas Liaquat well understoodÑcould not have been more dramatic. British Ambassador Sir Oliver Franks observed that most Americans found Liaquat's public speeches a major improvement over Nehru's "sitting on the fence" posture. Cutting to the heart of the matter, Franks said that American officials could have no doubts about where Pakistan stood in the Cold War. ₁₂₈ Using nearly identical language, U.S. foreign service officer David D. Newsom noted approvingly that, although Liaquat carefully avoided choosing sides in his public statements, he "made it clear where Pakistan stood." According to Newsom, a junior diplomat who accompanied the prime minister on his various American stops, Liaquat's "praise of the United States . . . went far beyond what I ever expected he would do, considering the vocal body of public opinion in Pakistan which wants a policy of strict neutrality in the Ôcold war.' " ₁₂₉ The prime minister himself, delighted with the reception he received in the United States, called the trip "an impressive success." ₁₃₀

But underneath the surface harmony lay a critical, unresolved issue. As Liaquat made clear during his Washington talks, Pakistan desperately sought arms from the United States. Fearful of his nation's vulnerability, especially to neighboring India, he in effect offered to trade alignment with the West for American military equipment. That had been a consistent theme of Pakistani diplomacy since partition, and Liaquat pressed the point during several meetings with senior State and Defense Department officials. For all of his pleas, howeverÑdirect as well as subtle, private as well as publicÑLiaquat returned home empty-handed. ₁₃₁

The issue of arms for Pakistan, of course, was not a new one for the Truman administration. Indeed, some top officials had urged the president to invite Liaquat to Washington precisely because a warm and lavish state visit, on the scale of Nehru's, might help compensate for the lack of material support. They recognized that Pakistan considered its defense needs critical. Some State Department planners, including Assistant Secretary McGhee, feared that, if unmet, those needs might impel the Pakistanis to seek aid from the Soviet Union.

Truman and his top diplomatic and military advisers recognized the concern, but they did not consider Pakistan's defection to the Soviet bloc an imminent possibility. Nor were they willing to add another major military commitment to a budget already stretched to the breaking point. South Asia, after all, remained peripheral to core national security interests. Late in 1949 McGhee had made an eloquent case for Pakistan, urging the administration to begin providing that strategic nation with military assistance. But there were already too many strong contenders for too few U.S. dollars; Pakistan would have to wait in line.

It is appropriate, and revealing, that in a lengthy memoir that deals extensively with this period Acheson makes only a passing mention of Liaquat's state visit, implying that it represented little more than a temporary diversion from more critical matters. ₁₃₂ Certainly, if viewed from the heights of the Truman administration, conversations with yet another foreign leader remonstrating about his nation's urgent military requirements must have seemed routine. The months from late 1949 through early 1950 were crucial ones rent with crises for the architects of American foreign policy. The structure of a global policy built with such care during the early postwar years seemed ready to crumble. Not only had the Chinese Communists vanquished a U.S. ally and the Soviets ended America's brief atomic monopoly, but the economic recoveries of Western Europe and Japan had stalled badly. Those developments combined to produce a severe crisis for the United States, one of a magnitude equal to that of the immediate postwar period. American policymakers believed that continued European and Japanese economic stagnation would lead to political and social instability that would in turn open dangerous new opportunities for Moscow and Beijing. The potential defection of Pakistan from the American orbit, a remote possibility at any rate, paled in significance to the more worrisome and immediate prospect of such vital areas as Western Europe and Japan drifting away from the West. ₁₃₃

Another factor militated against a positive response to Liaquat. American officials realized that a significant military commitment to Pakistan would almost certainly alienate India. Even before Liaquat's arrival in the United States, Indian diplomats expressed concern that he would seek to obtain U.S. arms in order to upset the balance of military forces on the subcontinent. On June 15 Ambassador Pandit told Acheson that the Indian public, and by implication her government, believed that Liaquat came to the United States with the definite mission of securing military assistance, and that he had succeeded. The secretary of state tried to calm those anxieties, but they bespoke a wider problem for the United States. ₁₃₄ Would the positive benefits of a military-assistance relationship with Pakistan be sufficient to balance the negative impact it would surely have on Indo-American relations?

At this juncture the answer for most leading officials was an unequivocal no. Despite mounting difficulties with New Delhi, Washington remained unwilling to compromise its commitment to an evenhanded posture in South Asia. Like their British counterparts, American diplomats continued to believe that a resolution of the Kashmir dispute held the key to regional stability and hence remained the overriding objective of American policy. Arming Pakistan would only undercut that goal. A temporary detente between India and Pakistan, symbolized most visibly by the Nehru-Liaquat meeting and truce agreement of April 8, seemed to validate the wisdom of such thinking.

Almost three years after Indian and Pakistani independence, American policy toward the subcontinent remained essentially unchanged. The Truman administration still refused to lean openly toward either nation for fear that a U.S. tilt toward one would damage relations with the other and undermine prospects for a Kashmir settlement. On the eve of the Korean War, then, the United States had yet to make a major military or economic commitment in South Asia. U.S. officials continued to view South Asia as a region that, despite its growing importance, remained on the periphery of the Cold War.

---

Note 1: Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, edited by Sarvepalli Gopal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), second series, 1:405, 492. Back.

Note 2: awaharlal Nehru: An Anthology, p. 362. Back.

Note 3: Ibid., p. 367. Back.

Note 4: Quoted in J. Bandyopadhyaya, "Nehru and Non-alignment," in B. R. Nanda, ed., Indian Foreign Policy: The Nehru Years (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), p. 173. Back.

Note 5: The literature on Indian nonalignment is voluminous. This analysis is drawn especially from the following: Heimsath and Mansingh, A Diplomatic History of Modern India, pp. 55-82; Raju G. C. Thomas, "Nonalignment and Indian Security: Nehru's Rationale and Legacy," Journal of Strategic Studies 2 (September 1979):153-71; J. Bandyopadhyaya, The Making of India's Foreign Policy (Calcutta: Allied, 1970); Bandyopadjhaya, "Nehru and Non-alignment," pp. 170-84; A. P. Rana, The Imperative of Non-Alignment: A Conceptual Study of India's Foreign Policy Strategy in the Nehru Period (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1976); Deva Narayan Mallik, The Development of Nonalignment in India's Foreign Policy (Allahabad: Chaitanya, 1967); Shashi Tharoor, Reasons of State: Political Development and India's Foreign Policy under Indira Gandhi, 1966-1977 (New Delhi: Vikas, 1982), pp. 21-47. Back.

Note 6: Memo of DOS meeting, December 26, 1947, 845.00/12-2647, DSR. Back.

Note 7: Henry Grady, "Adventures in Diplomacy," 1954, p. 183, unpublished manuscript, Henry Grady Papers, HSTL; Donovan to DOS, August 20, 1948, 845.00/8-2048, DSR. Back.

Note 8: Grady, "Adventures in Diplomacy," pp. 183-85. Back.

Note 9: Jawaharlal Nehru, Discovery of India (New York: John Day, 1946), p. 558; OIR, "Nehru's Attitudes Toward Communism, the Soviet Union, and Communist China," report no. 6269, July 24, 1953, DSR. For an excellent analysis of Nehru's ambivalent attitudes toward the United States before independence, see Kenton J. Clymer, "Jawaharlal Nehru and the United States: The Preindependence Years," Diplomatic History 13 (Spring 1990):143-61. Back.

Note 10: CIA, "India-Pakistan," report SR-21, September 16, 1948, CIA Reports Folder, PSF, HSTP, HSTL; Gopal, Nehru, 2:43-44. Back.

Note 11: Henderson to DOS, January 8, 1949, 711.45/1-849, DSR; Nehru to Henderson, January 8, 1949, Selected Works, second series, 9:441-42. Back.

Note 12: Henderson draft speech, March 25, 1975, India-Misc. folder, box 8, Loy W. Henderson Papers, LC, Washington, D.C.; letter from Henderson to A. R. Field, June 5, 1978, ibid. See also Loy Henderson, OH Interview, June 14 and July 5, 1973, HSTL. Back.

Note 13: On Henderson, see especially H. W. Brands, Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918-1961 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). On Nehru, see especially, Gopal, Nehru; Nanda, ed., Indian Foreign Policy: The Nehru Years; Clymer, "Nehru and the United States." Back.

Note 14: Donovan to DOS, January 27, 1948, 845.00/1-2748, DSR; FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 2:1498-99; memcon between Joseph Sparks, SOA, and B. R. Sen, Indian Chargé, April 29, 1948, 845.00/4-2948, DSR; Satterthwaite to Marshall, October 5, 1948, 845.002/10-548, DSR. Back.

Note 15: Memcon between Bajpai and Henderson, April 2, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:501-4; memcon between Lovett and Bajpai, ibid., pp. 506-8; Henderson to Lovett, April 2, 1948, 711.45/4-248, DSR. Back.

Note 16: Nehru remarks, March 8, 1948, Selected Works, second series, 5:498. Back.

Note 17: See, for example, Nehru remarks of August 21 and September 12, 1948, ibid., 7:630, 609-14. Back.

Note 18: Henderson to DOS, January 3, 1949, 890.00/1-349, DSR; McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, pp. 268-69; Dennis Merrill, "Indo-American Relations, 1947-50: A Missed Opportunity in Asia," Diplomatic History 11 (Summer 1987):211-12. Back.

Note 19: SANACC 360/14, April 19, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:12-13; CIA, "Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States," report CIA 1-49, January 19, 1949, CIA Reports File, PSF, HSTP, HSTL. Back.

Note 20: Gopal, Nehru, 2:44-45, 70-71; Merrill, "Indo-American Relations," p. 208. Back.

Note 21: Quoted in G. W. Choudhury, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Major Powers: Politics of a Divided Subcontinent (New York: Free Press, 1975), p. 11. See also Arthur Stein, India and the Soviet Union: The Nehru Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 10-13; Surendra K. Gupta, Stalin's Policy Toward India, 1946-1953 (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1988); Robert C. Horn, Soviet-Indian Relations: Issues and Influence (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp. 2-3, 9-10. Back.

Note 22: Nehru to Bajpai, February 14, 1949, Selected Works, second series, 9:467; Gopal, Nehru, 2:45. Back.

Note 23: Memo of DOS meeting, December 26, 1947, 845.00/12-2647, DSR. Back.

Note 24: Memo from C. D. Glendinning to Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snyder, December 17, 1948, IndiaÑ General, 1948 folder, John W. Snyder Papers, HSTL; memcon between Rama Rau and Sawyer, December 17, 1948, 845.50/12-1848, DSR; Satterthwaite to Lovett, December 18, 1948, 845.50/12-1848, DSR; Henderson to DOS, December 31, 1948, 711.45/12-1348, DSR. Back.

Note 25: DOS Policy Statement on India, May 20, 1948, 711.45/4-248, DSR. Back.

Note 26: Henderson to DOS, May 2, 1949, 845.50/5-249, DSR. Back.

Note 27: DOS report, "Economic Aspects of U.S. Policy with Respect to South and East Asia," May 16, 1949, Papers for Under-Secretary's Meetings, General Records of the Office of the Executive Secretariat, RG 59, NA. 28. DOS Policy Statement on India, May 20, 1948. Back.

Note 28: DOS Policy Statement on India, May 20, 1948. Back.

Note 29: Acheson to the Embassy in India, July 1, 1949, 845.50/5-249, DSR. Back.

Note 30: Henderson to DOS, August 16, 1949, 845.51/8-1649, DSR. Back.

Note 31: Acheson to Henderson, September 1, 1949, 845.51/9-149, DSR. Back.

Note 32: SNehru, quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 2:59; Merrill, "Indo-American Relations," p. 215. Back.

Note 33: See, for example, OIR, "India: Problems and Prospects," report no. 5052, October 4, 1949, 845.002/10-549, DSR. Back.

Note 34: On NSC 68, see especially John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 89-109; Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, pp. 355-60. Back.

Note 35: Acheson to Truman, August 18, 1949, 845.002/8-1849, DSR. Back.

Note 36: Walter White to Matthew Connelly, Truman's appointment secretary, August 25, 1949, Aid to India folder, 426 India, Post-Presidential File, HSTP, HSTL. Back.

Note 37: Johnson to Acheson, September 9, 1949, 845.002/9-949; Johnson to Truman April 23, 1949, India folder, PSF, HSTP, HSTL. On Johnson's close personal relationship with Nehru, see the extensive correspondence between the two in boxes 97-98, Louis A. Johnson Papers, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va. Back.

Note 38: Memcon between Acheson and Pandit, August 30, 1949, 845.021/8-3049, DSR. Back.

Note 39: CIA, "Relative US Security Interests in the European- Mediterranean Area and the Far East," report ORE 69-49, September 12, 1949, CIA Reports File, PSF, HSTP, HSTL. Back.

Note 40: OIR report, "India: Problems and Prospects"; DOS memo, October 3, 1949, 845.002/10-549, DSR. Back.

Note 41: Congressional Record, October 11, 1949, 81st Cong., 1st sess., 14230. Back.

Note 42: "Rimland vs. the Heartland," Business Week, October 22, 1949, 109-10; NYT, October 13, 1949, p. 26; New York Herald Tribune, October 13, 1949; Washington Star, October 12, 1949; Washington Post, October 11, 1949, p. 10; Christian Science Monitor, October 12, 1949; US News & World Report 27 (October 14, 1949):38-41. Back.

Note 43: Freda Kirchwey, "The Welcome to Nehru," Nation 169 (October 22, 1949):387-88. Back.

Note 44: Washington Star, August 30, 1949. Back.

Note 45: Syndicated column, undated, in Clipping File, Stephen J. Spingarn Papers, HSTL. See also Stewart Alsop column, New York Herald Tribune, August 5, 1949; Phillips Talbot, "U.S. Looks to Nehru for Asian Leadership," Foreign Policy Bulletin 29 (October 14, 1949):1-2. For more skeptical editorial comment about Nehru's importance, see Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1949, II, p. 5; Miami Herald, October 13, 1949, p. 6. Back.

Note 46: Nye to Sir Percivale Liesching, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, June 21, 1949, FO 371/76090, PRO; record of FO meeting, July 20, 1949, ibid.; Merrill, "Indo-American Relations," pp. 216-17. Back.

Note 47: Minute by R. C. Blackham, May 17, 1949, FO 371/76099, PRO. Back.

Note 48: Memcon between Acheson and Bevin, April 4, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:50-54. Back.

Note 49: Minute by Lloyd, July 7, 1949, FO 371/76090, PRO. Back.

Note 50: Nye to Liesching, June 21, 1949, ibid. Back.

Note 51: Record of FO meeting, July 20, 1949, ibid. Back.

Note 52: Merrill, "Indo-American Relations," p. 218; memcon between Dening and W. Walton Butterworth, Director, FE, September 12, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 7, pt. 2:1197-1204; Sir Oliver Franks, British Ambassador to the United States, to Attlee, October 5, 1949, FO 371/76096, PRO. Back.

Note 53: Henderson to Webb, October 3, 1949, 845.50/10-349, DSR; J. H. Burns to Louis Johnson, October 10, 1949, CD 6-4-30, Records of AdminSec, OSD. Back.

Note 54: For records of the major meetings, see memcon between Acheson and Nehru, October 12, 1949, 845.021/10-1249, DSR; memcon between Truman, Acheson, and Nehru, October 13, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:1750-52; memcon between Acheson and Nehru, October 13, 1949, Memcons, Dean Acheson Papers, HSTL. For Nehru's public speeches, see Jawaharlal Nehru, Visit to America (New York: John Day, 1950). Back.

Note 55: OIR report, "India: Problems and Prospects." Back.

Note 56: Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: Norton, 1969), pp. 439-40; memcon between Acheson and Nehru, October 12, 1949, 845.021/10-1249, DSR. Back.

Note 57: George McGhee, Envoy to the Middle World: Adventures in Diplomacy (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 47. Back.

Note 58: Gopal, Nehru, 2:60-62; Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir (New York: Crown, 1979), pp. 252-53; Nehru to Pandit, May 31, 1949, Selected Works, second series, 11:354; T. N. Kaul, Diplomacy in Peace and War: Recollections and Reflections (New Delhi: Vikas, 1979), pp. 22-23; Merrill, "Indo-American Relations," p. 47. Back.

Note 59: Nehru to Chief Ministers, December 1, 1949, Jawaharlal Nehru: Letters to Chief Ministers, 1947-1964, edited by G. Parthasarathi, 5 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1985-1989), 1:483-84 (hereafter cited as JN: LCM). See also Nehru to Pandit, June 8, 1949, Selected Works, second series, 11:356-57. Back.

Note 60: Nehru, quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 2:59. Back.

Note 61: Nehru to Chief Ministers, October 2, 1949, JN: LCM, 1:471. Back.

Note 62: Nehru, quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 2:60-61. On Nehru's disappointment with the visit, see also Pandit, Scope of Happiness, pp. 251-54; T. N. Kaul, Reminiscences: Discreet and Indiscreet (New Delhi: Lancers, 1982), p. 157. Back.

Note 63: Donovan to DOS, October 26, 1949, 845.002/10-2449, DSR; Donovan to DOS, October 15, 1949, 845.00(W)/10-1449, DSR; Donovan to DOS, October 18, 1949, 845.002/10-1749, DSR. Back.

Note 64: Record of meeting between Attlee and Nehru, November 8, 1949, PREM 8/996, Prime Minister's Records, PRO; Gopal, Nehru, 2:61. Back.

Note 65: McGhee to Acheson, October 28, 1949, 845.002/10-2849, DSR. Back.

Note 66: Donovan to DOS, October 26, 1949, 845.002/10-2649, DS. Back.

Note 67: Nye to CRO, December 9, 1949, FO 371/76097, PRO. Back.

Note 68: Franks to FO, November 3, 1949, ibid. Back.

Note 69: Record of conversation between Roberts and Bajpai, November 21, 1949, ibid. Back.

Note 70: Merrill, "Indo-American Relations," p. 223. Back.

Note 71: The full text of NSC 48/1 is printed in DOD, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967, Book 8:225-64. For the text of NSC 48/2, a revised version of the paper that was approved by the president on December 30, see FRUS, 1949, 7, pt. 2:1215-20. The bureaucratic struggles over the policy paper are delineated in Robert M. Blum, Drawing the Line: The Origin of the American Containment Policy in East Asia (New York: Norton, 1982), pp. 160-77; Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 195-211. Back.

Note 72: Bancroft to Rusk, October 14, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/10-1449, DSR; memcon between Jessup and Canadian Minister of Exterior Affairs Lester Pearson, October 19, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/10-1949, DSR; FRUS, 1949, 6:1757-66. Back.

Note 73: FRUS, 1949, 6:1766-71. Back.

Note 74: Acheson to the U.S. Mission at the UN, January 13, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 5:1367-68. Back.

Note 75: Austin to DOS, January 16, 1950, ibid., 1369-72. Back.

Note 76: McGhee and John D. Hickerson, Assistant Secretary of State for UN Affairs, to Acheson, February 6, 1950, ibid., 1378-82; Acheson to the Embassy in Great Britain, February 11, 1950, ibid., 1382-83; Nye to CRO, February 7, 1950, FO 371/84209, PRO; Nye to CRO, February 13, 1950, FO 371/84210. Back.

Note 77: Nehru, quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 2:63. Back.

Note 78: Memo of meeting between Jessup and Henderson, February 24, 1950, 611.91/2-1750, DSR; Henderson to DOS, April 18, 1950, 611.90D/4-1850, DSR. Back.

Note 79: Henderson to DOS, April 12, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 5:1461-63. Back.

Note 80: Ibid.; memcon between McGhee and Pandit, May 26, 1950, Economic Relations folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR; Henderson to DOS, February 6, 1950, 611.91/2-650, DSR; C. D. Deshmukh, The Course of My Life (New Delhi, 1974), pp. 161-62; Merrill, "Indo-American Relations," pp. 223-24. Back.

Note 81: J. J. Garner, Acting High Commissioner in India, to CRO, September 15, 1952, FO 371/10133, PRO. Back.

Note 82: Henderson to DOS, February 6, 1950, 611.91/2-650, DSR. Back.

Note 83: Memcon between Grady and Mathews, May 2, 1950, 611.91/5-250, DSR. Back.

Note 84: Donald Kennedy, SOA, to Raymond Hare, NEA, June 6, 1950, India-US Relations folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 85: Henderson to DOS, April 12, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 5:1461-63. See also memcon between Roberts and J. Graham Parsons, First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in India, April 19, 1950, Indian-U.S. Relations folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 86: Acheson to the Embassy in India, April 21, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 5:1464-66. Back.

Note 87: Nye to Syers, April 6, 1950, DO 35/2932, PRO; minute by Syers, April 6, 1950, ibid.; Nye to CRO, April 6, 1950, ibid.; Nye to CRO, May 10, 1950, DO 35/2976, PRO. Back.

Note 88: NEA to Marshall, February 24, 1947, 711.45/2-2447, DSR; Acheson to the Embassy in Great Britain, April 4, 1947, 845.00/3-2747, DSR; Betty Miller Unterberger, "American Views of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Pakistan Liberation Movement," Diplomatic History 5 (Fall 1981):313-36; Malik, US-South Asian Relations, 1940-47. Back.

Note 89: Marshall to Truman, July 17, 1947, OF 48-T, HSTP, HSTL; Grady to DOS, July 11, 1947, 845.00/7-1147, DSR. Back.

Note 90: Dawn editorial, August 23, 1947, 711.45F/8-2347, DSR. Back.

Note 91: Harry F. Meyers, U.S. Military Attaché, undated memo (probably early 1949), "Soviet Interests in Pakistan and their Military Implications," Arms PolicyÑU.S.-Pak folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 92: Richard Symonds, "Greatest, and Youngest, of Moslem Lands," NYT Magazine (April 30, 1950):13. Back.

Note 93: Lewis to DOS, October 27, 1947, 845F.00/10-2747, DSR. Back.

Note 94: Hooker Doolittle, Consul-General, Lahore, to DOS, January 4, 1949, 845F.00/1-449, DSR. Back.

Note 95: Jalal, State of Martial Rule, pp. 22-65; Ali, Emergence of Pakistan, pp. 198-99; Hamid Yusuf, Pakistan in Search of Democracy, 1947-77 (Lahore: Afrasia, 1980), pp. 1-33. Back.

Note 96: Ibid. Back.

Note 97: DOS Policy Statement on Pakistan, July 27, 1948, U.S. Policy toward Pakistan folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 98: Meyers, "Soviet Interests in Pakistan." Back.

Note 99: 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; JSPC, JSPC 684/52, "Military Requirements for Base Rights," March 23, 1949, CCS 360 (12-9-42), sec. 36, JCS Records. Back.

Note 100: Stephen J. Spingarn to Clark Clifford, August 23 and October 25, 1949, International AffairsÑIndia folder, Spingarn Papers, HSTL; "Notes on Pakistan," October 26, 1949, ibid. Back.

Note 101: Doolittle to DOS, September 4, 1948, 845.00/9-448, DSR. Back.

Note 102: Doolittle to DOS, September 26, 1949, 501.BC-Kashmir/9-2649, DSR; Doolittle to DOS, May 28, 1949, 845F.00/5-2849, DSR. Back.

Note 103: Memcon between Pakistani Ambassador M. A. H. Ispahani and Willard L. Thorp, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, October 17, 1947, Pakistan Request for Fin. Assist. folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR; memo from Mir Laik Ali, October 17, 1947, ibid.; SANACC 360/14, FRUS, 1949, 6:25-27; Lovett to the Embassy in France, October 25, 1948, 501.BC-Kashmir/10-2148, DSR; Lovett to Ispahani, December 27, 1947, FRUS, 1947, 3:172-74; M. S. Venkataramani, The American Role in Pakistan, 1947-1958 (New Delhi: Radiant, 1982), pp. 2-3. Back.

Note 104: OIR, "The Foreign Relations of Pakistan," report no. 5493, January 24, 1952, DSR. Back.

Note 105: Noon, quoted in ibid. Back.

Note 106: Ispahani to Jinnah, March 31, 1948, M. A. Jinnah-Ispahani Correspondence, edited by Z. H. Zaidi (Karachi: Pakistan Herald Press, 1976), pp. 581-82; memcon between Chaudhri Mohammed Ali, Pakistani Secretary-General, and Thorp, February 14, 1948, Pakistan Request for Fin. Assist. folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR; Marshall to Truman, March 11, 1948, FRUS, 1948, 5, pt. 1:496-97; Forrestal to Acheson, February 25, 1949, with enclosures, DC 26-1-3, Records of AdminSec, OSD; McGhee to James E. Bruce, Director, MDAP, November 14, 1949, MAP Index folder, NEA Lot 484, DSR. Back.

Note 107: These views were consistently emphasized in the U.S. policy papers and intelligence estimates for South Asia of the late 1940s and early 1950s cited in chapter 1. For British thinking, see especially Ernest Bevin to the Cabinet, August 30, 1950, CAB 129/41, Cabinet Records, PRO; record of conversation between Donald D. Kennedy and FO representatives, February 6, 1951, DO 35/3055, PRO. See also H. W. Brands, "India and Pakistan in American Strategic Planning, 1947-54: Commonwealth as Collaborator," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 15 (October 1986):41-54. Back.

Note 108: Doolittle, Chargé in Pakistan, to DOS, November 7, 1949, 845.002/11-749, DSR; Jefferson Caffrey, Ambassador in Egypt, to DOS, December 10, 1949, 711.45F/12-849, DSR; notes of Under Secretary's meeting, May 1, 1950, Records of the Executive Secretariat, DSR. Back.

Note 109: Acheson to the Embassy in Pakistan, May 10, 1949, 711.45F/5-949, DSR. Back.

Note 110: Doolittle to DOS, June 11, 1949, 845F.002/6-1149, DSR. Back.

Note 111: Julius C. Holmes, Chargé in Great Britain, to DOS, September 1, 1949, 845F.00/9-149, DSR. Back.

Note 112: Ispahani, quoted in Choudhury, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, p. 12. Back.

Note 113: Acheson to Truman, November 4, 1949, OF 48-T, HSTP, HSTL; McGhee to Acheson, October 17, 1949, 845.002/10-1749, DSR. Back.

Note 114: Notes of Under Secretary's meeting, May 1, 1950, DSR. Back.

Note 115: OIR report, "The Foreign Relations of Pakistan"; DOS Policy Statement on Pakistan, April 3, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 5:1490-99; Acting Secretary of State James Webb to Truman, October 31, 1949, DOS Correspondence Folder, CF, HSTP, HSTL. Back.

Note 116: DOS, "Background Memoranda on Visit to the United States of Liaquat Ali Khan," April 14, 1950, Liaquat Ali Khan Visit folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 117: OIR, "Recent Developments in Communist Policy and Tactics in India and Pakistan," report no. 4652, June 11, 1948, DSR; OIR, "Communist Activity in Pakistan," report no. 5536, September 29, 1950, DSR; Mathews to John D. Jernegan, NEA, June 27, 1949, MAP-Miscellaneous 1949 folder, NEA Lot 484, DSR; Hare to Livingston T. Merchant, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, FE, December 5, 1949, Arms PolicyÑU.S.-Pak folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 118: McGhee to Lloyd V. Berkner, Coordinator, MAP, July 13, 1949, MAP-Miscellaneous 1949 folder, NEA Lot 484, DSR. Back.

Note 119: McGhee to Bruce, November 14, 1949, ibid.; Mathews to McGhee, November 1, 1949, Arms PolicyÑU.S.-Pak folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR; McGhee to Berkner, August 16, 1949, FRUS, 1949, 6:45-47. Back.

Note 120: McGhee to Bruce, November 14, 1949. Back.

Note 121: DOS Policy Statement on Pakistan, April 3, 1950. Back.

Note 122: McGhee, Envoy, pp. 92-93, 96-97; Franklin Wolf, Economic Counselor in Pakistan, to DOS, December 12, 1949, 745.45F/12-1249, DSR; Venkataramani, The American Role in Pakistan, pp. 103-6. Back.

Note 123: Notes of Under Secretary's meeting, May 1, 1950, DSR; memo from McGhee to Webb, May 2, 1950, 611.90D/5-250, DSR; DOS, "Background Memoranda on Liaquat Visit"; J. H. Burns to Secretary of Defense Johnson, undated memo (probably May 1950), CD 18-4-48, Records of AdminSec, OSD. Back.

Note 124: Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan: The Heart of Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951); Venkataramani, The American Role in Pakistan, pp. 117-120; S. M. Burke, Pakistan's Foreign Policy: An Historical Analysis (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 123-25. Liaquat's speeches can also be found in Schedules and Speeches of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 125: Liaquat, Pakistan: The Heart of Asia, p. 83. Back.

Note 126: Newsom to Avra Warren, Ambassador to Pakistan, May 27, 1950, Liaquat Ali Khan Visit folder, SOA Lot 54 D 341, DSR. Back.

Note 127: NYT, May 5, 1950, p. 20. See also Christian Science Monitor, May 2, 1950. Back.

Note 128: Franks to the FO, June 28, 1950, DO 35/2981, PRO. Back.

Note 129: Newsom to Warren, May 27, 1950. Back.

Note 130: Liaquat, Pakistan: The Heart of Asia, p. xi; record of meeting between Liaquat and Bevin, July 4, 1950, PREM 8/1216, PRO; Liaquat radio speech, July 19, 1950, in Rajendra K. Jain, ed., US-South Asian Relations, 3 vols. (New Delhi: Radiant, 1983), 2:35-36. Back.

Note 131: No formal records of these meetings have been found in DOS or White House records. Archivists at the Truman Library informed the author that no records may have been kept of Truman's meetings with Liaquat. Back.

Note 132: Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 498. Back.

Note 133: Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, pp. 312-60; Thomas J. McCormick, America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 88-98; Walter LaFeber, "NATO and the Korean War: A Context," Diplomatic History 13 (Fall 1989):462-68. Back.

Note 134: Memcon between Acheson and Pandit, June 15, 1950, FRUS, 1950, 5:1412-15. Back.

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The Cold War on the Periphery