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

7. Balancing the Scales, 1957-1961

 

BY THE middle of the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration detected a significant change in the character of the East-West conflict. U.S. planners believed that although the Kremlin had not altered its ultimate objective of vanquishing the "free world," it had adopted, for the short-term at least, more sophisticated and flexible nonmilitary tactics for achieving that objective. Offers of economic and military assistance to selected developing nations, together with promises of expanded trade opportunities, formed the centerpiece of the new Soviet strategy. American analysts believed that the Soviets now saw areas such as the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia as major Cold War battlegrounds. Moscow evidently believed that if it could bolster the neutralist inclinations of the newly emerging areas, it could negate the value of America's Third World alliances, cultivate a host of potential strategic assets for itself, and in the process undermine the military and economic strength that the West derived from its ties to the developing nations. A wide-ranging national intelligence estimate, circulated by the CIA in November 1955, spoke directly to this issue. It emphasized that given the reduction in global tensions, the growing number of "undeveloped and uncommitted" nations raised vexing problems for the United States. "Western failure to meet the demands of these countries for aid," it warned, "may make them susceptible to bloc aid." ₁

South Asia, which the report identified as "dangerously susceptible" to Soviet aid and trade inducements, posed this dilemma in a particularly acute fashion. Capitalizing on the wedge driven between Washington and New Delhi by the Pakistani-American alliance, in 1955 Khrushchev and Bulganin targeted India as a major area of opportunity. The American relationship with Pakistan set limits on the Eisenhower administration's ability to counteract effectively the Soviet economic offensive in India. Convinced that India constituted far too important a nation to "lose" to the Soviet bloc, Eisenhower thus faced an increasingly complex dilemma in South Asia as he began his second term in office. Put simply, how could the United States "save" India for the West without at the same time fatally wounding the Pakistani-American alliance? This chapter examines the intensive, yet ultimately unsuccessful, efforts of the Eisenhower administration to resolve that dilemma.

India's deepening fiscal problems, which by early 1957 were rapidly approaching crisis proportions, brought the issue to a head. A combination of shortfalls in its food production, a rising defense budget necessitated by American arms supplies to Pakistan, and escalating costs both for essential raw materials and capital goods created a sizable gap between the ambitious goals of India's second five-year plan and the foreign exchange needed to meet those goals. Facing an ominous foreign-exchange deficit, India appeared perched on the brink of economic disaster. Writing from New Delhi on January 26, 1957, at the end of a three-week tour of India, former Ambassador Bowles described India's economic plight to Eisenhower in stark terms. India, he said, would not ask for help; it did not want to be an "international beggar." Yet without substantial U.S. assistance over the next several months its five-year plan would almost certainly fail, a failure likely to bring devastating consequences to India and to U.S. interests in Asia. "My deep conviction," Bowles said, is "that we are facing one of those rare decisive points in history which require urgent, imaginative and forthright action." ₂

Although Bowles's penchant for exaggeration was notorious, many well-placed administration officials shared his fear. William M. Rountree, the career foreign service officer who had recently replaced Allen as assistant secretary of state for NEA, sent Dulles two memoranda early in February that framed the case for India in the familiar Bowlesian idiom. Emphasizing the "historical importance of [India's] survival to U.S. objectives," he recommended prompt consideration of an American loan to help India meet its current foreign-exchange crisis. Otherwise, "a substantial failure of the plan may threaten the continuation of democratic institutions within India itself." ₃ From New Delhi, newly appointed Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker also called attention to the urgency of India's economic needs. A native of Vermont, the patrician, Yale-educated Bunker previously held ambassadorial posts in Argentina and Italy. In a personal letter to Dulles, the former businessman estimated that India faced a foreign-exchange gap of between $800 million and $1 billion. The "impending crisis" portended by that gap carried not only "the most serious implications for India's economic stability," but threatened to generate "adverse psychological, political and material effects outside India." Bunker stressed the need for emergency assistance, asserting that American aid to India at this critical juncture would "serve vital U.S. interests." ₄

At Rountree's urging, Dulles commissioned an interagency committee to examine the extent of India's financial plight and to consider the feasibility of additional U.S. developmental assistance. Composed of representatives from the State and Treasury Departments and the ICA, it began meeting on March 13. Eisenhower took an unusually direct interest in the efforts of the task force. Clarence B. Randall, a special assistant to the president and chairman of the Council on Foreign Economic Policy, informed the heads of the agencies involved that his boss wanted the study completed and brought to his personal attention by the end of April. Eisenhower had of course already locked horns with Treasury Secretary Humphrey and other senior officials who had forcefully articulated their philosophical and fiscal objections to additional aid for India. He doubtless recognized that a further expression of presidential interest in the matter could work wonders in expediting bureaucratic action. ₅

An unexpected political development within India lent added urgency to the labors of the interagency committee. As India geared up for its second nationwide election, scheduled for March 1957, U.S. intelligence specialists confidently forecast another sweeping victory for Nehru and his Congress Party. Despite a poor economic performance in some of India's states, which had led to a notable slippage in its popularity in certain regions of the country, American analysts believed that Congress remained strong. Its assets included Nehru, "who dominates the Indian scene," a vast and resourceful organization, control of governmental machinery at virtually all levels, and continued identification among most Indians as the party of independence and national unity. U.S. experts discounted the prospects for a Communist Party breakthrough in the elections. ₆ The vote in Kerala, which gave the communists control of that small, southwestern state, thus came as an especially rude shock to the Eisenhower administration. Although Congress maintained its national dominance, Rountree informed Dulles that the communists "have established a significant beachhead in Kerala," which they will do everything possible to strengthen and expand. Bunker agreed, adding that the assumption of governmental power by the Indian Communist Party in Kerala posed grave political, strategic, and psychological dangers to the United States. He said this new communist challenge, which fed on economic discontent, underscored the urgency of helping India to meet its overwhelming economic and social needs. ₇

On May 2 the interdepartmental task force on India completed its work and forwarded the promised report to Randall. The committee, which had been expanded to include Department of Agriculture and Export-Import Bank representatives, reached a broad consensus on the gravity of India's current economic troubles. It estimated that India faced a truly staggering foreign exchange gap of $700-$900 million. In line with policy guidelines set forth in NSC 5701, the report stated that the United States should help India close this deficit "in every practicable way." It identified four likely sources for additional developmental assistance: 1) existing PL 480 agreements could be supplemented to provide further commodity aid; 2) loans from the newly established Development Loan Fund (DLF) could be advanced for economically sound projects; 3) Export-Import Bank loans could be provided to strengthen certain private enterprises; and 4) the United States could support India's applications for public- and private-sector loans from the World Bank. Discussion of measures that went beyond those relatively modest proposals, however, unveiled deep divisions within the committee. State Department representatives argued that India's problems were so severe that the administration might need to request from the U.S. Congress special legislation to provide a long-term loan. Treasury and ICA representatives, on the other hand, refused even to consider such an option, making clear their adamant opposition on both budgetary and practical grounds to any effort aimed at seeking new congressional appropriations. ₈

Treasury and ICA were not alone in their wariness about approaching Congress for new monies. The White House was, at that very moment, locked in a bitter struggle with the Senate and House of Representatives over foreign aid funding. In what was becoming an annual exercise, both chambers had slashed the administration's initial request for fiscal year 1958 appropriations for the mutual security program. With a national recession at hand, the time hardly seemed propitious to seek additional funds from a budget-minded Congress, especially for a nation that would never have won a popularity contest on Capitol Hill. Given the current mood of Congress, quipped Dulles, he did "not think that boosting India will be a popular pastime." ₉ During a home visit early in June, in which he pleaded India's case with almost anyone who would listen, Bunker learned that harsh reality firsthand. Dulles told his envoy that money was tight and that the negative congressional bashing of the administration's foreign aid program seemed to preclude emergency funding for India. The secretary acknowledged that he simply did not know what the United States should--or could--do for India, but recommended that Bunker himself sound out key congressional leaders. ₁₀

The ambassador took Dulles's advice, only to find confirmation for the secretary's skepticism. He met individually with a bipartisan cross-section of the Senate leadership, including Democrats Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the new majority leader, Carl Hayden of Arizona, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and Mike Mansfield of Montana, and Republicans John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, William Knowland of California, Prescott Bush of Connecticut, George Aiken of Vermont, and Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin. Bunker also spoke with Democrat John McCormack of Massachusetts, the House majority leader. Nearly all proved sympathetic to India's desperate straits and cognizant of both the importance of India to the United States and its genuine need for additional aid. With the exception of Cooper, however, Bunker's predecessor at the embassy in New Delhi, none saw even a glimmer of hope for getting special legislation for India during the current legislative session. On the basis of those conversations and his talks with numerous administration officials, Bunker reluctantly concluded that there was "practically no prospect of any legislative action on a loan or credit to India in this session of Congress," a situation unlikely to change "unless we were faced with an imminent collapse" in India. ₁₁

Although India certainly did not face an imminent collapse, evidence mounted throughout the summer and autumn of 1957 that its foreign-exchange problems were rapidly spiraling out of control, prompting renewed administration debate about how to respond to an expected Indian request for help. The Operations Coordinating Board, the Council on Foreign Economic Policy, and several working groups within the State Department each tackled the problem in separate reports. Remarkably, all agreed on the need to make a strong appeal to Congress. The State Department took the lead in pressing for an aggressive and imaginative response to India's fiscal crisis, framing the issue in dire Cold War terms. "No American wants to see the Communists take over India," declared a paper prepared in SOA, and "if assistance given in time and in the right amount can substantially contribute to forestalling this, it would be a reasonable investment from the point of view of the national security of the United States." It warned that "once a country, like China, comes under Communist control it is lost to the free world; no amount of dollars can buy it back." ₁₂ When, on September 25, Indian Finance Minister T. T. Krishnamachari formally requested U.S. assistance during a meeting with Dulles, senior department officials marshaled their strongest arguments in an effort to win the secretary's support. In a memorandum of October 16, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Robert Murphy and Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs C. Douglas Dillon joined with Assistant Secretary Rountree in urging Dulles to seek Eisenhower's backing for a plea to Congress on India's behalf. ₁₃

Dulles's favorable response to the recommendation was conditioned by his appreciation for what he saw as the broader, global stakes involved in the question of aiding developing nations. At an earlier NSC meeting, he stressed that American national security interests required a more generous economic commitment to the developing nations. "If the United States and the Free World cannot provide some real hope of lifting these poverty-stricken countries out of their misery," the secretary remarked, "they were quite likely to follow Soviet examples and methods." The prospect of Third World nations finding common cause with the Soviet Union raised for him the frightening specter of a global balance of power tipping toward the East. "So large were these under-developed areas," Dulles mused, "that if they turn to the Soviet Union the area of the Free World will shrink by another two-thirds." ₁₄

Although the secretary harbored continuing reservations about the political feasibility of the program proposed by his subordinates, he endorsed their recommendation. On November 4 he wrote Eisenhower that the State Department believed it was time for the executive branch to reach a decision "in principle" on the India aid question. Dulles enclosed a paper that laid out the case for India in the strongest possible terms. New Delhi's foreign-exchange gap had grown to over $1 billion, raising the likelihood that the second five-year plan will "fall considerably short of its goals" and "that the momentum for economic development will be lost." The political ramifications of such a failure were grim. The communists, who had come to power in the economically depressed state of Kerala in the last election, could "extend their power to the more populous and strategically situated province of Bengal. This could trigger off a chain reaction which would lead to growing extremism and separatism in other parts of the country. The chances of chaos and a Communist advent to power in the sub-continent would be vastly increased." Given that risk, the State Department concluded that it would serve the interests of American national security to provide India with approximately $250 million annually over the next three fiscal years, over and above the $100 million that could probably be secured from the Development Loan Fund. Such a financial package would necessitate legislative action during the current or the next session of Congress. ₁₅

On November 12 Eisenhower called a White House conference to consider the State Department proposal. In addition to Dulles, Dillon, and Under Secretary of State Christian Herter, the attendees included Vice-President Nixon, newly appointed Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson, Budget Bureau chief Percival F. Brundage, and White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams. Anderson opened the discussion by emphasizing the political risks that a special appeal to Congress would entail. "Aid to India will be a very hard proposition to sell," he cautioned, "because their behavior has been very offensive on the Communist issue, and because they have gone out of their way to insult us on many occasions." Dulles, perhaps because his political antennae were at least as sharply attuned as Anderson's, offered only a half-hearted defense of his own department's proposal. He pointed out the danger that India's economic failure could trigger internal disintegration with consequent communist gains, but tempered that observation by stressing the negative implications that a major loan for India would have "all across the map." Allied countries such as Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, whose needs were nearly as great as India's, would surely demand additional support while complaining that neutralism paid greater dividends than alignment. Echoing Anderson, Dulles added that a request for special legislation for India raised the strong possibility of "a spectacular defeat in Congress." He recommended, instead, that the administration try to piece together loans from several different sources, principally the Export-Import Bank and the DLF, thereby helping India squeeze through the present fiscal crisis without turning to Congress. Eisenhower and the other participants concurred with Dulles's compromise solution and the president, in closing, directed that Indian representatives be so informed. ₁₆

Over the next several months the administration refined the proposed aid package, discussed it with Indian officials, secured commitments for the necessary funding, and prepared a public relations campaign designed to call attention to the new initiative. On December 4 Under Secretary of State Dillon told the Indian chargé, Hareshwar Dayal, that the United States intended to help meet India's needs through existing resources, thus avoiding "an inevitably controversial debate in the Congress." Early the next month, Bunker informed Nehru that Washington's economic aid package was nearly completed and would total approximately $225 million. Nehru, facing an increasingly desperate foreign-exchange crisis, expressed deep appreciation for American support. On March 4, 1958, Dulles publicly unveiled the emergency aid package. The United States, he declared, had agreed to loan India $225 million and to provide large quantities of wheat and other food grains under the PL 480 program. ₁₇

From the first, State Department analysts recognized that any new economic aid for India--no matter how modest its scope and no matter how desperate the need--would entail significant risks vis-à-vis Pakistan. They feared that the ever-sensitive Pakistani leadership would bristle upon learning of such an initiative, finding in it fresh evidence for the theory that Karachi's importance to Washington was diminishing. Pakistani diplomats quickly confirmed that they did, indeed, harbor that suspicion. On September 26, 1957, Foreign Minister Feroz Khan Noon sent a "brusque" letter to Dulles in which he raised a series of pointed questions about the rumored Indian aid package. He requested an American pledge to defend Pakistan in case of an Indian attack. Further, Noon insisted that any U.S. economic assistance to India be made conditional on its support for a just and equitable settlement of Kashmir and other outstanding Indo-Pakistani disputes. A week later, Ambassador Amjad Ali observed that U.S. economic aid to India might lead Pakistan's rival to augment its supply of military armaments. If that occurred, he lamented, Pakistan too would be forced to divert scarce economic resources to an unproductive military buildup. ₁₈

The escalating arms race on the subcontinent alarmed U.S. officials. In July 1957 Pakistan expressed an interest in planning for "Phase Two" of its military expansion in order to counter a military buildup by India. Fearful that the continued supply of U.S. arms and equipment might embolden the Pakistanis to risk war, India had stepped up its own defense spending from $399 million in 1955 to $580 million in 1957. The result, according to an NEA memorandum, was a "deplorable and wasteful" arms race. "India's increased military expenditures," noted a State Department intelligence assessment, "appear to be primarily and immediately motivated by a desire to possess military power in such force that Pakistan cannot merely be beaten but will be effectively deterred from risking war with India." ₁₉ From New Delhi, Bunker warned in August 1957 that "a very serious situation" prevailed in the subcontinent. "The Indians appear almost pathologically afraid of Pakistan," he noted, "despite their superior numerical strength, and are building up their air and naval strength to offset our aid to Pakistan." As a result, the United States faced "an arms race between these two countries, contributed to in fact, though not in intent, by our military aid to Pakistan." ₂₀

Keenly aware that emergency loans for India might lead ultimately to an intensification of Indo-Pakistani military competition, U.S. planners groped for ways to aid India without at the same time alienating Pakistan and further destabilizing the subcontinent. In October 1957, at the same time that the administration was deliberating about how best to alleviate India's foreign-exchange problems, NEA's South Asia experts developed an integrated "package plan" for the subcontinent. It proposed to defuse Indo-Pakistani tensions through an American-brokered mediation effort designed to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the three most nettlesome bilateral problems: Kashmir, the arms race, and the dispute over the waters of the Indus River. NEA's ambitious initiative, which Dulles tentatively supported in November, was based on a few simple but sound propositions: namely, that U.S. relations with India and Pakistan were indivisible; that Washington could have friendly, productive relations with both Karachi and New Delhi only if they resolved their long-standing differences; that the subcontinent's problems indirectly harmed U.S. regional and global interests; and that the imminent provision of more economic assistance to India, in combination with the high level of U.S. military support for Pakistan, provided the United States with a certain degree of leverage that could be used to a positive effect. The State Department's South Asia experts hoped as well that a bold regional initiative might attenuate the cries of outrage almost certain to be heard from Pakistan upon announcement of the fiscal bailout for India. ₂₁

American observers worried that U.S.-Pakistani relations, already suffering from unfulfilled expectations on both sides, might spin dangerously out of control if the U.S. economic commitment to India was not balanced by a renewed effort to resolve intraregional tensions. Pakistani leaders had, ever since the inception of the alliance, complained about their ally's failure to deliver promised military equipment with as much vehemence as they carped about America's inability to break the Kashmir impasse. The Eisenhower administration's reluctance even to define with precision the extent and purpose of its military support further rankled the military and civilian rulers of Pakistan. They had gambled their country's future--along with their own reputations and careers--on an external patron they increasingly found wanting. Throughout 1957 Pakistani representatives continually requested U.S. officials to expedite the provision of a light-bomber squadron promised under the terms of the 1954 aide-mémoire. American officials, pleading for patience, refused to commit themselves to a definite delivery timetable. Major General Louis W. Truman, chief of the MAAG mission in Pakistan, blamed the essential ambiguity of the original aide-mémoire for the constant haggling between U.S. and Pakistani officials. "There is no firm idea in anyone's mind, either US or Pakistan," he admitted, "as to what the commitment is or as to the extent of it." ₂₂

The problem actually went much deeper. A growing number of American policymakers, including the president himself, openly questioned whether the value of the Pakistani alliance justified its costs. Military analysts voiced mounting skepticism about the capabilities of Pakistan's armed forces. Pakistan's repeated pleas for more U.S. equipment and support, American defense officials realized, derived from an obsession with its more powerful Indian rival rather than from any genuine commitment to collective security measures against the Soviet Union. Yet, as General Truman observed, the Pakistani army would prove hopelessly inadequate against an Indian attack. During a regional conference of MAAG chiefs, held in Karachi in February 1957, he frankly acknowledged that if such an attack occurred East Pakistan "would be gobbled up in no time" and West Pakistan could hold out for only about thirty days. ₂₃ A committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff offered a similar assessment of Pakistan's military limitations, emphasizing that its army stood at only two-thirds strength, with all of its divisions hampered by inadequate equipment. A nation unable to defend itself against a potentially aggressive neighbor could plainly be expected to demand ever more military aid, placing increased burdens on America's overstretched mutual security budget. Moreover, despite the grandiose plans of leaders such as Ayub Khan, who urged U.S. support for a million-man Pakistani army, U.S. defense officials correctly judged the prospects for a meaningful Pakistani contribution to regional defense efforts in the foreseeable future to be about nil. ₂₄

The Eisenhower administration of course appreciated the consistently pro-Western tenor of Pakistani foreign policy. In view of the powerful pressures that Pakistan's leaders faced from a public dissatisfied with that policy's slender returns, Karachi's international orientation stood as a singular bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture. A lengthy analysis prepared in March 1957 by the State Department's Office of Intelligence Research raised grave questions about current trends, however. It pointed to a growing gap between elite and popular opinion with regard to the value of Pakistan's alignment with the West. "Many Pakistanis during the last year and a half," the report noted, "have become increasingly disillusioned with their country's Western ties and increasingly vocal in their advocacy of a more independent foreign policy." Especially troubling was a "growing divergence . . . between the government's position and the views of the majority of politically conscious Pakistanis." ₂₅

The ascension of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy to the prime ministership in November 1956, following the strong anti-Western demonstrations that helped topple the Chaudhri Mohammed Ali ministry, only partially eased American anxieties. U.S. experts considered the shrewd Bengali among the most able of Pakistani politicians, despite his well-deserved reputation for self-aggrandizement and duplicity. They were delighted with Suhrawardy's early and unequivocal embrace of the pro-Western principles espoused by his predecessors, especially since his Awami League Party of East Pakistan had taken the lead in advocating a fundamental reorientation in the nation's foreign policy. The State Department's South Asia specialists believed that Prime Minister Suhrawardy and President Mirza, if they worked together, promised to provide Pakistan with its most effective leadership to date. American analysts continued to fret, however, about Pakistan's endemic political instability. Ambassador Hildreth voiced disgust with the "merry-go-round of ministers" in Karachi. "A minister no sooner gets his seat stuck in a chair, [and] warms it up," he complained, "before everybody starts shooting at him." ₂₆ That syndrome might as a singular bright spot in an oteventually claim the new prime minister, too, U.S. analysts cautioned. Popular resentment with the government's foreign policy posed one obvious hazard; the natural rivalry between two such powerful and ambitious politicians as Mirza and Suhrawardy posed another. ₂₇

Eisenhower invited the new Pakistani prime minister to visit Washington in the summer of 1957. The State Department hoped that the visit would "not only aid in quelling the dissatisfaction in Pakistan with what the Pakistanis consider to be our policy of appeasing the neutralists . . . but would also strengthen Suhrawardy's position as Prime Minister." ₂₈ In fact, Suhrawardy's meetings in Washington contributed little to either objective. Following the tradition of previous Pakistani visitors to the United States, he quickly unfurled a list of requests. Pakistan needed additional economic assistance from the United States, especially foodgrains, Suhrawardy implored, in order to "avoid starvation, revolution, inflation and chaos." It also needed more military support, especially a light-bomber squadron and a submarine, in order to deter Indian aggression. Although Dulles and other senior officials sounded appropriately sympathetic, Suhrawardy left Washington with little more than moral support and promises from the State Department and Pentagon to take a close look at his requests. ₂₉ The prime minister put the best face on his inconclusive meetings with U.S. officials during a brief stopover in London, offering British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan "a very graphic account" of his triumphal American visit. "He was the cynosure of every eye and the darling of the people," Macmillan recorded in a private memorandum that crackled with the British leader's characteristic dry wit. "The President and Mr. Dulles made much of him, listened to all he had to say and hailed him as the saviour of the world." ₃₀

Back home, Suhrawardy proved unable to save even his own political hide. Bickering between Mirza and his prime minister, exacerbated by conflicting views on measures for defusing the nation's spreading agricultural and labor unrest, led to the latter's resignation on October 10, 1957. He was replaced as prime minister by I. I. Chundrigar, a weak and colorless figure, about whom American analysts could find little to enthuse. The immediate reasons for the fall of Suhrawardy, according to newly appointed U.S. Ambassador James M. Langley, could be located in the "personal rivalry" between him and Mirza, a rivalry intensified by underlying sectional, provincial, and political tensions. Mirza disingenuously attributed Suhrawardy's dismissal to the Bengali's "propensity for nightlife"; he informed a U.S. diplomat that Suhrawardy exhibited distasteful conduct toward women during a recent visit to Lebanon in which he cavorted at various Beirut nightclubs until 5:00 A.M. each evening. ₃₁ The personal foibles of a man once renowned as the godfather of the Calcutta underworld may have contributed to his downfall. In a larger sense, however, the country's latest governmental crisis served as but another symptom of the Pakistani state's structural imbalances.

The dismal performance of the national economy formed the backdrop against which these personal feuds and political intrigues played themselves out. Pakistan, Langley noted, was making no progress in its agricultural productivity; it lacked the capital and foreign exchange necessary for development; and it was plagued by inflation, "disproportionately high military expenditures," a "population growing faster than [the] national economy," and a declining standard of living for its workers. The "only reason why Pakistan [is] able to keep going," the ambassador stated bluntly, "is US aid." A New Hampshire newspaper publisher, Langley had first learned about the devastating impact of economic stagnation and dependency on struggling Third World nations during his maiden foray into diplomacy: as chairman of a U.S. trade mission to the Philippines four years earlier. In view of Pakistan's declining economic and political prospects, the political appointee recommended a comprehensive review of U.S. policy. "Military strength, without a sound economic and political base," he argued sensibly, "does not constitute real strength in South Asia or elsewhere. It is time to rethink our approach to the Pakistan problem." ₃₂

In an end-of-the year letter to Assistant Secretary Rountree, Langley offered an even more pessimistic appraisal. The United States had "an unruly horse by the tail" in Pakistan, he said, and "far from being tamed this horse we assumed to be so friendly has actually grown wilder of late." In virtually every area of Pakistani life, he found stagnation or deterioration. Political instability at the center was rife. Chundrigar, the ineffectual politician who replaced Suhrawardy as prime minister in October, was himself replaced two months later by former Foreign Minister Noon, another "weakling." Those revolving-door ministries revealed the "increasingly byzantine and sterile characteristics" of Pakistani-style parliamentary democracy. Economically, he added, "the rate of deterioration is tending to accelerate," notwithstanding the sizable U.S. aid program. Among the educated populace not tied directly to the present regime, Langley identified "an appalling contempt for the governing clique which is viewed as selfish, corrupt, and intent only on advancing their own political or cash fortunes." Even the vaunted military, he observed, provided much less strength than commonly assumed by U.S. policymakers. It absorbed an exorbitant proportion of the government's resources; yet the "present military program," Langley suggested, "is based on a hoax, the hoax being that it is related to the Soviet threat."

The ambassador contended that "Pakistan's military establishment must be appreciably trimmed," and requested State Department authorization to raise this sensitive subject in a personal and confidential demarche to Mirza. Although Langley wanted to reassure the Pakistani president that the United States had no intention of reneging on its military commitment, he insisted that Washington could not permit the U.S.-Pakistani mutual security pact "to become a mutual `suicide pact.' " The United States "should recognize as its basic premise the indivisible character of its relations with and interest in the entire subcontinent," Langley argued. "We cannot afford to participate in or close our eyes to an arms race between India and Pakistan." ₃₃

The ambassador's concerns, shared by virtually all State Department officials responsible for South Asia, lay at the heart of the proposed package-plan initiative. Officers at SOA and NEA, fully supported by their colleagues at the embassies in Karachi and New Delhi, Ambassadors Langley and Bunker, and Assistant Secretary Rountree, were convinced that the interlocking nature of the subcontinent's problems demanded an integrated, regional approach. Otherwise, announcement of the U.S. economic aid package for India would set in motion a predictable series of destabilizing developments. An aggrieved Pakistan would demand more arms from the United States, and, regardless of Washington's response, Karachi would grow more disaffected with its patron. For its part, New Delhi could be expected to increase its own arms purchases, stoking the embers of discord between the two dominions. To break the cycle, U.S. officials believed that India and Pakistan needed to halt the arms race immediately by accepting an agreement to limit armed forces to current levels. ₃₄

British Foreign Office specialists, whose advice their American counterparts welcomed on this ticklish matter, agreed that an arms moratorium represented an essential first step toward detente in the subcontinent. "At the moment there is a vicious circle," South Asia expert J. B. Johnston complained with acuity in a message to the British embassy in Washington. "The United States gives arms to Pakistan; India restores the balance and goes one better; and we and the Americans then get renewed and frantic demands from Pakistan to enable her to catch up with India. This ludicrous process is having disastrous results on the economies of both countries." ₃₅

During the early months of 1958, as State Department planners worked feverishly to refine the details of the regional policy initiative, developments in Pakistan underscored how badly frayed the ties binding Washington and Karachi had become. Ayub blew up when MAAG chief Truman reminded him that the United States could not continue to supply arms to Pakistan if it suspected that they might be used against India. "I don't think much of your military ability," shouted the Pakistani commander. Describing himself as "thoroughly shocked" by Ayub's outburst, the American general predicted that "this hostile attitude will continue to increase if we do not give him everything he asks for." ₃₆ Prime Minister Noon, who together with Ayub led the charge in demanding more military equipment from Washington, accused the United States of having "gone back on its word" in not supplying the promised light-bomber squadron. ₃₇ On March 8 Noon made his accusations public in a remarkably intemperate speech. He condemned the lack of Western support for the Pakistani position on Kashmir, criticized the shortcomings of the U.S. aid relationship, and decried the ability of neutralist India to receive support from both East and West. The speech allowed Noon to blow off steam, Langley claimed, and did not portend a shift in Pakistani foreign policy. Nonetheless, the ambassador admitted unease with the widespread popular acclaim that greeted the prime minister's broadside. In a cable to London, U.K. High Commissioner Sir Alexander Symon echoed Langley's misgivings; he warned that the speech might increase pressure on the government to reconsider its alignment with the West. ₃₈

At this critical juncture, the Eisenhower administration avidly solicited the advice and support of its British ally. Britain's historic ties to the subcontinent, together with the continuing Commonwealth link, lent weight to its views about South Asia. Furthermore, London's role as a major arms supplier in the region, especially to India, meant that Washington needed its backing for the proposed package plan. The State Department, accordingly, invited a working-level delegation of British diplomats to Washington for three days of intensive discussions in mid-April 1958. It hoped that the talks, described as informal, exploratory, and highly secret, would lay the foundation for a joint Anglo-American approach to the subcontinent. Rountree opened the first session by summarizing America's mounting frustration with recent trends in India and Pakistan. The United States, he said, was pleased with the signs that India, despite its neutralism, had realized that its interests really lay with the West. Regrettably, that positive development threatened to be offset by Pakistan's resentment with U.S. economic assistance to India, and by Pakistan's inclination to direct its military strength, augmented by U.S. aid, against its neighbor rather than against the communist bloc. The package plan, the assistant secretary explained, represented an effort to break through the current impasse in Indo-Pakistani relations by offering a comprehensive rather than a piecemeal approach to the major issues in dispute. ₃₉

The British delegation, headed by Assistant Under Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations Morrice James, found the overall thrust of the American initiative appealing. James and his colleagues agreed with their American counterparts that a comprehensive approach stood a stronger chance of breaking the present stalemate than an approach that sought to resolve the different sources of Indo-Pakistani tension individually. They agreed as well with the American emphasis on the arms race as the most explosive issue at this point, and the one most susceptible to a diplomatic solution. ₄₀

But the British delegation could not fully accept the proposed American solution to the escalating arms race. Eisenhower administration experts feared that Pakistan would oppose any effort to impose an arms moratorium on the subcontinent until it received the light-bomber squadron it was seeking from Washington. Hence U.S. representatives requested that Britain consider providing Pakistan with the desired aircraft, at concessionary prices, while making clear at the same time its intention to reduce future arms sales to the two countries. Such an arrangement would let the United States off the hook with Pakistan, avoid the inevitable Indian complaints that would follow an American decision to supply Pakistan with the bomber squadron, correct the single most important military imbalance between Pakistan and India, and create an atmosphere conducive to serious negotiations regarding an arms limitation agreement. Several weeks earlier, Dulles first broached this idea to Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd during a Baghdad Pact ministerial meeting at Ankara. The British fully sympathized with the concerns that prompted the American suggestion. Indeed, a briefing paper prepared by the Commonwealth Relations Office and handed to U.S. officials during the Washington talks framed the issue with remarkable forthrightness. "Both countries have--with Western aid and/or acquiescence--armed against each other," it observed. "The cost has been crippling. Economic progress has been impeded and they are poorer and no more secure than they were. The fear and hate generated on both sides by the current arms race help to poison relations." ₄₁ James objected, however, that providing Pakistan with a light-bomber squadron would harm Anglo-Indian relations. London, in addition, simply could not violate a well-established Commonwealth policy on arms purchases; that policy allowed all members of the Commonwealth to buy whatever military equipment they could afford. On those important issues, the U.S. and U.K. delegations found themselves at odds. ₄₂

The meetings revealed, nonetheless, that an essential agreement prevailed between London and Washington on the overall scope of Indo-Pakistani problems and on the importance and viability of the package plan. Doubtless fortified by Britain's enthusiastic response to the much-discussed initiative, on April 17 Dulles formally requested Eisenhower's approval. In a brief memorandum, the secretary noted that current trends endangered the prospects for political stability and economic prosperity in India and in Pakistan, thus necessitating "a new approach toward solving the basic differences" between the two nations. "The essence of this would be to consider the Indus, Kashmir and arms questions as closely related so that a wider field for compromise will exist." To accomplish that important objective, Dulles recommended that the president make a personal appeal to the leaders of India and Pakistan, offering U.S. good offices in helping them to achieve a comprehensive settlement. ₄₃

Eisenhower, who had in the past frequently vented his frustration with the counterproductive nature of Indo-Pakistani tensions, gave the initiative his unqualified endorsement. To ensure the success of the negotiations, he wrote, "there is no inconvenience at which I would balk," including a personal visit to the subcontinent. Buoyed by the president's strong support, the State Department proceeded to hammer out the final details of its plan. ₄₄

On May 16, 1958, Langley delivered to Mirza and Noon a personal letter from Eisenhower. That same day in New Delhi, Bunker presented Nehru with a near-identical message. The letters formally offered the "friendly assistance" of the United States government in helping to explore possible solutions to the problems dividing India and Pakistan and proposed the dispatch of a special U.S. representative to aid in the opening of formal, detailed negotiations whenever the two parties were ready. "I cannot emphasize too strongly my deep personal concern with this problem," Eisenhower said, "and my great desire, and that of the American people, to help bring about its solution." ₄₅

It took the Eisenhower administration over eight months to craft the internal bureaucratic consensus needed to launch this delicate diplomatic overture; it took the Indian government less than a day to deflate American hopes. In a letter of May 17, Nehru assured Eisenhower that he would consider the matter with the utmost care. He emphasized, however, that the bitter anti-Indian attitudes held by most Pakistanis coupled with the dangerous level of instability within Pakistan rendered the prospects for successful negotiations exceedingly slim. In a subsequent message, Nehru struck an even more negative note. The Pakistanis, as expected, reacted positively to the American initiative, but it took two parties to open serious negotiations. Some U.S. officials held out a glimmer of hope that the initiative might be revived at a more propitious moment. Most, however, were sufficiently realistic to take Nehru's rejection at face value. ₄₆

Once again, India's calculation of its national interests had run counter to the best laid of American plans. Nehru simply saw no compelling reason to reopen the Kashmir sore at this juncture, especially since India remained in possession of the most valuable part of that disputed territory. And without a disposition on India's part to pursue a Kashmir compromise, the package plan was rendered moribund. Restrained fury best describes the reaction to Nehru's veto among the architects of the package proposal. One U.S. diplomat confessed a certain degree of befuddlement as well. "How could [the Indians] reject the President's offer so bluntly," he wondered, "when they are seeking further aid from us?" He probably came closest to answering his own question when he mused that "the Indians feel they are in the driver's seat and don't really want a settlement." ₄₇

India's rejection of the American initiative dealt a crippling blow to the Eisenhower administration's hopes for placing its South Asia policy on a sounder footing. The plan essentially signaled the administration's recognition that its previous approach to the subcontinent had been rooted in a series of flawed premises. American policymakers had forged an alliance with Pakistan in 1954 because of a misplaced conviction that Pakistan, bolstered by U.S. military and economic aid, could emerge as a valuable geopolitical asset in a troubled region. They reasoned at the time that the advantages accruing to the United States from its commitment to Pakistan would more than offset any resultant damage to Indo-American relations. By 1957, a growing number of administration planners recognized the fallacy of those assumptions. The enormity of Pakistan's political and economic problems vitiated its potential value as an ally while calling into question its very viability as a nation. Moreover, the increased regional tensions sparked by U.S. military aid to Pakistan, in particular the frightening specter of an uncontrolled Indo-Pakistani arms race, made clear the counterproductive results of America's South Asia policy.

India's growing economic difficulties, which presented new opportunities for Washington to forge a close relationship with the dominant power in the subcontinent, had prompted a wide-ranging reexamination of U.S. goals and tactics in South Asia. The reassessment produced three separate, but interrelated, policy tracks: a major new economic commitment to India, formally announced in March 1958; a halting, low-key effort to begin limiting, if not reducing, the U.S. military commitment to Pakistan; and the personal appeals from Eisenhower to Nehru and Mirza, urging another round of Indo-Pakistani negotiations. Taken together, those initiatives constituted a daring gamble. The Eisenhower administration was seeking in a single stroke to cut through the knot of contradictions that had plagued U.S. policy toward the subcontinent ever since the inauguration of the Pakistani alliance and to return, instead, to the more evenhanded, regional strategy it had abandoned in 1954.

Nehru's polite but firm resistance to Eisenhower's mediation offer knocked one leg out from under a three-legged stool, leaving U.S. officials to ponder how, in the absence of any movement toward regional reconciliation, they could maintain an intimate relationship with Pakistan. Most signs indicated that they could not. Ambassador Langley observed that "U.S. handling of its relations with India have convinced most Pakistanis that the U.S. rewards those who snub it, takes its sworn friends for granted, and is hesitant in forceful direct action in the cause of international justice." He said that in Pakistan "the abstractions of neutralism are being voiced more and more . . . as a consequence of increased U.S. aid to neutral India." In a particularly revealing comment, Langley acknowledged that most of the editorial expressions favorable to U.S. foreign policies appearing in the Pakistani press--and there were very few--were "plants" by the CIA. ₄₈ The anti-Western sentiments that increasingly dominated public discourse in Pakistan reflected the deepening disillusionment throughout the country with Karachi's unproductive dependence on Washington. In June 1958 the embassy reported an even more alarming trend. "Pressures are already growing within the country," it informed the State Department, "to turn to the Communist Bloc" for economic and military aid. ₄₉

Despite those disturbing trends, the American "country team" in Pakistan emphasized the urgent need for Pakistan to reduce sharply its defense spending. In an assessment of June 6, 1958, which offered specific recommendations for future levels of U.S. military aid, it stated the problem bluntly and concisely, calling attention to the negative economic implications of Pakistan's bloated military establishment. The report emphasized that Pakistan's armed forces placed so heavy a burden on the state's scarce resources that they drained funds necessary for economic development. As a result, even with substantial U.S. developmental assistance Pakistan had barely managed "to keep afloat," still could not feed itself, and lacked even a minimal export capacity. "A U.S. objective in Pakistan is to create a viable nation," the country team message noted; "but despite the fact that there has been an American aid program in Pakistan for seven years with total aid amounting to almost $700 million, Pakistan offers little or no hope for viability in the foreseeable future." ₅₀

For essentially political reasons, the report did not recommend an abrupt curtailment in U.S. military aid. "Failure by the United States to fulfill its commitments could jeopardize the United States political position in the area," it warned, "could alienate the military, which is potentially the most stable and actively the most cooperative element in Pakistan, and could lead Pakistan to retreat from its present anti-Communist, pro-Western policy." Instead, the country team proposed that the United States fulfill its military aid commitment-- even promise further assistance in the future--while at the same time "seeking to persuade Pakistan to reduce the size of its military establishment." This assessment offered a penetrating critique both of Pakistan's political economy of defense and of the self-defeating nature of U.S. military aid. On the key tactical question of how to achieve a voluntary Pakistani reduction of its defense establishment, however, the report was silent--a rather ominous silence given the military-bureaucratic stranglehold on power within Pakistan. ₅₁

In August 1958 the Eisenhower administration adopted the time-honored bureaucratic formula for dealing with a seemingly intractable problem: it formed an interagency committee. The committee's charge--to evaluate and make recommendations regarding the future of the U.S. military assistance program in Pakistan--was fraught with daunting obstacles. The State Department, with Under Secretary Dillon and Assistant Secretary Rountree taking the lead, wanted to reduce the U.S. military commitment. Dillon was unusually blunt on this point during a private conversation with Langley. "The military role and value of the Pakistan army is dubious at best," the under secretary complained. "In retrospect, it now appears clear that the military program in Pakistan was launched as a political measure designed to induce Pakistan to join regional security pacts. From a purely military standpoint, maintaining large armed forces in Pakistan cannot be justified." ₅₂

The defense and intelligence communities did not entirely share that perspective. Although certainly cognizant of the weakness of the Pakistani military and the depth of the country's economic and political difficulties, they proved far less willing to dismiss Pakistan's potential strategic salience. Indeed, early in 1958, U.S. defense officials opened extremely sensitive negotiations with the Mirza government concerning long-sought bases and communications facilities in Pakistan. Those negotiations, which continued throughout the year, served as a potent reminder that Pakistan's geographical proximity to the Soviet border might yet transform Pakistan into a concrete strategic asset to the United States. Pentagon and CIA officials, like their counterparts in the State Department, had years earlier grown disillusioned with the prospect of Pakistan contributing significantly to the defense of the Middle East, the original rationale for the alliance. They now increasingly calculated the potential worth of the Pakistani connection in terms of electronic listening posts that could be installed by the United States to provide intelligence about Soviet missile capabilities, and in terms of air bases that, if made available to the United States, could serve as staging areas for U-2 overflights of Soviet territory. With those needs in mind, the Joint Chiefs of Staff worried that Pakistan would accuse its American ally of bad faith if it failed to fulfill the letter of the 1954 aide-mémoire. Consequently, in May 1958 the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the provision of a few light bombers to Pakistan, with assurances that the rest of the promised squadron would be delivered by 1960. ₅₃

On July 13, 1958, a bloody coup in Iraq produced a seismic shift in the political landscape of the Middle East, a shift with important consequences for U.S.-Pakistani relations. The plotters toppled Iraq's pro-American monarchy and established in its stead a radical, anti-Western regime that withdrew Iraq from the Baghdad Pact and sought common cause with Nasser's Egypt. In the wake of the Iraqi coup, the Eisenhower administration feared that Soviet influence could spread rapidly throughout the Arab world; it consequently sought to ensure the pro-American orientation of the region's remaining Baghdad Pact members, an effort that temporarily boosted Pakistan's stature with senior U.S. policymakers. At a meeting of the National Security Council on August 1, Secretary of State Dulles reported that the prime ministers of Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran were in a "state of considerable gloom" as a result of developments in Iraq. He said that the United States needed to reassure all three by stepping up its economic and military assistance to them. ₅₄ The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed. "The strategic importance of Pakistan, in the light of recent events in the Middle East," they argued, "has increased tremendously." The Joint Chiefs accordingly recommended that future U.S. military assistance to Pakistan be expanded "in view of U.S. security requirements" in the Middle East. "Only Pakistan with its small, compact, and efficient naval force," they said, "can provide the security and the `on the spot' naval capability required in this area." ₅₅

The conflicting policy cross-currents involved in any reevaluation of the U.S. stake in Pakistan were given yet another jolt by developments within Pakistan itself. On October 7, 1958, President Mirza issued a proclamation which abrogated the Pakistani constitution, dismissed the central and provincial governments, dissolved the national and provincial assemblies, abolished all political parties, proclaimed martial law, and appointed General Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law Administrator. "Parliamentary and democratic forms of government in Pakistan were unceremoniously done away with on the night of 7th/8th October, 1958," reported long-time British envoy Sir Alexander Symon, as "the Army moved in throughout the country with clockwork precision." Describing the efficiency of the coup makers as "most impressive," Symon emphasized that the dominant public response to Mirza's actions "seems to have been one of profound relief that the rascally politicians had been so summarily disposed of." He commented that Pakistan's "efficient, honest, and loyal" army now provided the country with "a last chance to achieve stability and progress." ₅₆ London agreed. "At first sight[,] however sad it is to see democratic forms extinguished in a fellow-member of the Commonwealth," noted an appraisal by the Commonwealth Relations Office, the "new regime promises to replace a weak and discredited team of politicians by a stable Government which will provide a decent[,] practical and constructive administration and restore Pakistan's badly shaken self-confidence." ₅₇

American officials shared that perspective. Discomfited by Pakistan's endemic internal disorder and the anti-Western currents that it fueled, they were hopeful that the Mirza-Ayub duumvirate would offer stability to a body politic teetering on the brink of chaos. During a National Security Council meeting of October 16, CIA Director Allen Dulles noted approvingly that Mirza's takeover had so far "gone reasonably calmly." Along with a recent military coup in Burma, he mused that developments in Pakistan "provided further indications of how difficult it was to make democracy work in such underdeveloped countries." ₅₈ Informed of the coup in advance by Mirza, U.S. officials expressed little surprise with its success. Nor did they voice many regrets about the abrupt demise of democratic forms in an allied country. American observers had for some time predicted exactly such a development. A year and a half earlier, for example, Ambassador Hildreth called the Pakistani military "the most stabilizing force there is" in the country. "It would not surprise me at any time within the next fifteen years," he averred, "to see democracy fall `flat on its face' in Pakistan." ₅₉ The order and stability promised by Mirza and Ayub, together with their renewed pledges to follow an unequivocally pro-Western foreign policy, more than offset any unease in the United States or Great Britain with Pakistan's move from democracy to dictatorship. ₆₀

On October 27 Ayub forced Mirza out and assumed the presidency himself, ending an awkward period of power-sharing that had lasted but three weeks. Symon spoke for many observers of the Pakistani scene when he commented that a break between Ayub and Mirza seemed inevitable from the beginning. "It was almost a question of `when,' he remarked, "rather than `if.' " ₆₁ U.S. officials viewed this latest twist with equanimity. Ayub, most had come to believe, constituted the strongest figure within Pakistan, and hence represented the best bet for stabilizing the country and maintaining its links to the West. Ayub quickly assured U.S. and British officials that he did indeed intend to draw Pakistan closer to the West; and they in turn assured the new president that his martial law regime had their full support. After receiving such a pledge from Ridgway B. Knight, Langley's deputy, Ayub told the American chargé that U.S. aid remained a "matter of life and death" for his nation and that he expected Pakistani-American relations to be warmer than ever. ₆₂

The honeymoon between Pakistan's new ruler and his American patrons proved remarkably short-lived. Just days after assuming the presidency, Ayub presented visiting Defense Secretary Neil McElroy with a fresh "shopping list" of military equipment that Pakistan considered necessary for the modernization of its armed forces. The list included modern fighter jets to replace Pakistan's U.S.-supplied F-86s and sophisticated Sidewinder missiles for its air force. Ayub almost certainly considered Washington's response to Pakistan's latest defense priorities as the initial litmus test of its commitment to his martial-law regime. Much to the new president's consternation, the Eisenhower administration dragged its feet in responding to any of the specific items he requested. Even worse, by the end of 1958 it still had not formally approved a military assistance program for the next fiscal year. Pakistani Foreign Minister Manzur Qadir told Langley of his government's great concern with the delay and wondered if American reservations about the "undemocratic" nature of the new Pakistani regime might have caused it. The American ambassador immediately sought to reassure the skeptical Qadir that "political considerations" were not to blame for the delay. In a cable to the State Department, however, Langley complained that Washington's silence, which was "creating [an] increasingly embarrassing situation" for him, was no less inexplicable to the embassy than it was to the Pakistanis. ₆₃

In fact, it was the ongoing interagency review of the future size and scope of the military assistance program for Pakistan, rather than any desire to signal political disapproval with Ayub's government, that had held up the Eisenhower administration's aid commitment for fiscal year 1959. That review, begun several months before the Mirza and Ayub coups, had been enormously complicated by them. On the one hand, most South Asia hands within the State Department accepted as an article of faith that Pakistan's already excessive defense burden needed to be reduced lest it aggravate further the nation's parlous economic conditions. Consequently, in December 1958 Rountree recommended to Dillon that the administration express to the Pakistani leadership "our serious concern over Pakistan's increasingly onerous defense expenditures." ₆₄ On the other hand, Defense Department analysts and some more senior State Department officials worried that such representations would send exactly the wrong message to a Pakistani regime already wary about American reliability. John O. Bell, Dulles's special assistant for mutual security coordination, called Rountree's suggestion "very risky." He noted that the Ayub government, "in the light of our obvious change of attitude toward India," suspected that Washington had fundamentally altered its policy toward Karachi. At this delicate juncture, Ayub needed to be reassured about the continuing U.S. military commitment; otherwise, he might seek needed military equipment from elsewhere, even from the communist bloc. "I am sure this is not a result we want to encourage," Bell cautioned Dillon. ₆₅ The Joint Chiefs of Staff, who insisted that "a strong cooperative Pakistan is still an important element in our world-wide strategic plans," recommended the immediate resumption of the military assistance program there "as a matter of urgent strategic necessity." ₆₆

A final resolution of those conflicting perspectives, which could only be made at the highest levels of the Eisenhower administration, awaited completion of the report by the State-Defense-ICA task force. In the meantime, though, the State Department recognized the need to provide Pakistan with at least a partial reassurance about the future aid relationship. Accordingly, on January 9, 1959, it informed Langley that U.S. military aid to Pakistan had been approved for that fiscal year and urged the ambassador to notify Ayub immediately of this decision. The State Department added, however, that for "technical and financial" reasons it could not honor Ayub's request for modern fighter jets and Sidewinder missiles at this time, a decision certain to arouse the Pakistani strongman's ire. ₆₇

The changing nature of the American relationship with India fueled Pakistan's growing mistrust with its superpower patron. With deep indignation, Pakistanis accused the Eisenhower administration of an unforgivable breach of faith; they complained that the rapidly escalating U.S. economic aid commitments to India undercut the Pakistani-American alliance and demonstrated conclusively that nonalignment yielded more tangible rewards than alignment. Foreign Minister Qadir told an American diplomat in January 1959 that the Pakistani public particularly resented Pakistan's "satelliteship" to the United States, especially since uncommitted India was receiving comparable levels of aid from Washington. Reflecting the concerns of the Ayub government, Dawn lamented in February 1959 that Pakistan "has no genuine friends among the Western powers." U.S. economic support for India, the semi-official newspaper warned, was allowing Pakistan's rival to gain such "complete and overwhelming military superiority" that it could "hold Pakistan for ransom by sheer physical threat." Commenting on this latest in a series of sharply worded public attacks on the American alliance, Langley said that a growing number of influential Pakistanis believed that the " `pro-Indian' bias" in American policy necessitated a reassessment of the efficacy of Pakistan's ties to the West. ₆₈ Not even the conclusion on March 5, 1959, of a new bilateral agreement of cooperation with Pakistan could staunch mounting Pakistani suspicions about U.S. reliability. ₆₉

In an important sense, of course, Pakistani fears that the United States had shifted its South Asian priorities were well grounded. Total U.S. aid to India jumped from $92.8 million in 1956 to $364.8 million in 1957, while total U.S. aid to Pakistan during the same period increased only slightly, from $162.5 million to $170.7 million. Dulles's announcement in January 1958 of $225 million in new U.S. loans was quickly followed by American promises of additional development support. In August 1958 the Eisenhower administration organized, through the auspices of the World Bank, a novel multinational approach to India's fiscal problems. Following extensive meetings in Washington, Britain, Germany, Canada, and Japan joined with the United States in an international consortium of India aid donors; together they pledged $350 million in emergency financial assistance and held out the prospect of an even larger contribution the following year. The American argument that Pakistan received military and economic aid from the United States while India received only the latter understandably fell on deaf ears in Pakistan, as did the argument that American aid to India just served the broader anticommunist cause. ₇₀

Those commitments to India, shaped by global Cold War considerations, derived almost equally from American calculations about the threats posed by India's continuing economic crisis and from American perceptions about the parallel opportunities afforded by that crisis. The negative part of the equation stemmed from the fear, first aroused in 1955 with the advent of the Soviet economic offensive, that India might succumb to Moscow's financial enticements and draw closer to the Soviet Union. Officials at the embassy in New Delhi hammered that point home with force and consistency throughout the intervening years. "The Soviets have designated India as a primary target in Asia," the embassy concluded in a long report of May 1959. "They have embarked upon a major campaign to capture it." ₇₁ Ambassador Bunker warned in a subsequent message of the rising "tempo and scope" of Soviet aid and trade offers, predicting a large measure of success for the Soviet Union "unless [the] US takes rapid effective countermeasures." ₇₂ The Council on Foreign Economic Policy devoted substantial attention during this period to the issue of how the administration could most effectively counter those offers. ₇₃ Although administration officials tended to exaggerate its impact, Moscow's economic offensive did represent a substantial effort to win favor with a major nonaligned nation. Between 1954 and 1958, the Soviets provided India with $350 million in aid, almost all for public-sector industrial projects, and another $41 million in technical assistance. They also expanded the volume of Indo-Soviet trade from a paltry $1.6 million in 1953 to approximately $94.6 million in 1958. ₇₄

As worrisome as those swelling statistics were to American observers, India's widening budget deficit raised the specter of an even greater danger. U.S. analysts fretted that the failure of India to meet the ambitious economic and social goals of its five-year plans would so discredit Nehru and his ruling Congress Party that the stature, influence, and power of India's only other major national party, the Communists, would be greatly enhanced. Further, American experts were convinced that if India proved unable to achieve its economic development goals under a democratic, capitalist system other Third World countries would be more inclined to adopt the Chinese model. At an NSC meeting of May 28, 1959, Allen Dulles said "the Indians were very fearful of falling further behind Communist China in terms of their rate of economic progress." ₇₅

The positive part of the equation grew from the perceived advantages that the West could realize if it helped India to overcome its monumental economic problems. "A strong India," noted NSC 5701, "would be a successful example of an alternative to Communism in an Asian context." Some U.S. officials pressed for an even more ambitious policy goal. On May 22, 1959, a report by the NSC Planning Board proposed that the NSC endorse as a formal statement of policy that the United States seek an India "more friendly to the United States, and better able to serve as a counterweight to Communist China." ₇₆ The vagueness and impracticality of that aim led Eisenhower to reject the proposal at an NSC meeting of May 28, even though he fully accepted the broader concerns that prompted it. His national security adviser, Gordon Gray, cautioned that the United States would "be on a dangerous wicket if we were to undertake to make the economic growth of India competitive with that of Communist China." Eisenhower shared Gray's reservations, observing that "if the U.S. were actually to try to make India a counterweight to Communist China, the task would be so great that we would probably bankrupt ourselves in the process." ₇₇

But Eisenhower, Dulles, and other senior policymakers were keenly aware of the common belief throughout India, China, and the developing world as a whole that the two Asian giants were competing with each other. Indeed, they shared that belief. Indian Ambassador Chagla might just as well have been expressing the views of American officialdom when he told John Foster Dulles that "an economic race was taking place between India and Communist China" and the world was "watching it to see who would win--India under democracy or China under communism." India needed American help, he declared, in order to help win that race. ₇₈

American officials, moreover, believed that smoldering tensions between India and China might lead to more than just economic competition. Following Beijing's brutal suppression in March 1959 of a revolt in Tibet, Sino-Indian relations had deteriorated drastically. Nehru's decision to grant political asylum to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, along with thousands of his followers, angered the Chinese, who suspected the Indians of complicity in the revolt. By the summer of 1959 Indian and Chinese armed patrols clashed in the remote reaches of Ladakh and the North East Frontier Agency, where the two countries maintained overlapping border claims. The Eisenhower administration, which paid close attention to these signs of mounting friction between New Delhi and Beijing, calculated that India's fear of its communist neighbor might help push it closer to the West. ₇₉

A growing number of liberal congressmen, journalists, businessmen, and intellectuals rallied to the Indian cause in the late 1950s, both supporting the Eisenhower administration's rising financial commitment to India and generating pressure for an even more vigorous and generous effort. After a visit to the subcontinent in early 1959, former diplomat and New York Governor W. Averell Harriman wrote that "the world's most populous democracy is in crucial competition with the world's most populous dictatorship." He predicted that either India or China "will become the model for Asia's awakening people." ₈₀ Walter Lippmann, the most influential columnist of the day, identified India as the "key country" in the West's struggle against communism in the developing world. "I do not know where else a non-Communist alternative can now be demonstrated," he observed, "given the fact that only in India outside of the Communist orbit could a successful demonstration carry conviction to the great masses of the people who are looking for a better way of life." ₈₁ Similarly, Business Week in November 1958 called India "the main test for Western-aided economic development in Asia." ₈₂

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economists Walt W. Rostow and Max Millikan embraced that viewpoint with a vengeance. India, they were convinced, provided the acid test for their theories about the catalytic role Western aid could play in the economic development of the Third World's capitalist societies. MIT's Center for International Studies, which they founded in 1958, engaged in a full-scale study of the prospects for the Indian economy and opened a study center in New Delhi the following year. Rostow and Millikan also proved adept lobbyists for India within the halls of both Congress and the State Department. ₈₃

A measure of their impact, which was indicative as well of the sharp upswing in public interest in India, came during a two-day conference held in Washington on May 4-5, 1959. Sponsored by the private, Washington-based Committee for International Economic Growth, it focused exclusively on the relationship between India and the United States. The sessions attracted an impressive roster of top politicians, intellectuals, journalists, businessmen, and government officials, including Vice-President Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy. ₈₄

The young Democratic senator from Massachusetts, already a presidential aspirant, emerged at this time as one of Congress's most outspoken proponents of an expanded aid program for India. In an essay he penned for The Progressive in January 1958, Kennedy said that, of all the nations of the Third World, India had most successfully pointed the way toward progressive economic development under a democratic system. Expressing a view that he would propound often, Kennedy declared: "If India collapses, so may all of Asia." If India succumbed to either internal disintegration or joined the Communist camp with China, "the Free World would never be the same." ₈₅ In March 1958, and again in February 1959, he joined with Republican colleague John Sherman Cooper in offering joint resolutions to the Senate that called for increased aid to India. ₈₆ Invariably, Kennedy framed the case for India in terms of the broader Cold War struggle between the United States and the communist world, and in terms of the perceived rivalry between India and China. "The outcome of this competition," he said in one speech, "will vitally affect the security and standing of this nation." If India does not "demonstrate an ability at least equal to that of China" to move from stagnation to economic growth, then "Communism will have won its greatest bloodless victory." ₈₇

Although the appeals by Kennedy and other Cold War liberals contained more than a hint of partisan criticism of the administration's record in South Asia, leading government officials for the most part shared the view that crucial global interests were at stake in India. They, too, wanted to deepen the American investment in India's economic development. But, as Dillon explained to Kennedy, the State Department believed there were "difficulties inherent in singling out any one country for special attention." Consequently, he persuaded the Democratic lawmaker to rephrase the resolution "so as to include Pakistan as well as India." ₈₈

As Dillon's response to the Kennedy-Cooper resolution suggests, the administration's conception of its basic dilemma in South Asia remained the same: how could it increase aid for India without further estranging Pakistan? Despite the failure of the package plan approach early in 1958, U.S. policymakers continued to believe that only a reconciliation between India and Pakistan would permit the achievement of U.S. policy goals in the subcontinent. By 1959 American efforts in that regard had shifted from the encouragement of a comprehensive settlement of Indo-Pakistani differences to an exclusive concentration on one dispute, the Indus Waters controversy. American officials believed that, for all its complexity, that dispute offered more favorable prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough than either Kashmir or the arms race.

The Indus Waters question stemmed from one of the vagaries of the partition settlement of 1947. The boundary drawn by the British left predominantly agricultural West Pakistan dangerously dependent for essential irrigation on a river system whose headwaters lay within Indian territory. "This Indus waters problem," Dillon told an executive session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 1959, "is far more vital and more important to the Pakistanis than the question of Kashmir." He characterized the waters dispute as "a sword hanging over [Pakistan's] very existence as a nation"; if India cut off the flow of waters to Pakistan, its food production would be cut in half and "there would be starvation and complete chaos throughout Pakistan." ₈₉ The World Bank, which had been working on this nettlesome dispute for the past seven years, had just completed a plan that offered hope for a compromise settlement. It called for the construction of an intricate series of irrigation dams, canals, and power facilities that would satisfy the needs of both countries.

The views of C. Douglas Dillon, formerly a powerful Wall Street investment banker with the firm that bore his family's name, carried increasing weight at this time. Dulles's struggle with cancer had forced his resignation in April. Former Massachusetts Governor Christian Herter had replaced the stricken Dulles, with Dillon, who had served previously as Eisenhower's ambassador to France, assuming the number two position in the State Department hierarchy. A combination of Herter's frequent absences and Dillon's superior command of foreign policy issues left the latter as the department's dominant figure for the remainder of the administration. A strong believer in the efficacy of economic aid as an instrument of diplomacy, Dillon forcefully expressed that view during his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and at a subsequent meeting of the NSC. He urged that the United States agree to pledge a portion of the needed external support for the IBRD's Indus Waters plan in order to eliminate a "major cause of tension between the two governments." A successful Indus Water settlement, he speculated, would generate favorable momentum for the negotiation of Kashmir and other bilateral disputes and would also create conditions conducive to an arms limitation agreement between India and Pakistan. ₉₀

When pressed by skeptical senators about the prospects for reducing U.S. military assistance to Pakistan, the under secretary proved much less optimistic. "Any cessation or sharp diversion of U.S. support in the form of a more modest military assistance program to Pakistan," he cautioned, "would be interpreted by the Pakistanis as abandonment by the United States of a staunch ally, with consequent political repercussions not only in Pakistan but throughout the whole area." He argued that the Ayub regime was "a stronger, more solidly based government than there has been since the time of the partition," and that the United States consequently should be careful not to signal a basic change in policy toward such a friendly government. ₉₁

That position, which represented a significant modification of Dillon's earlier inclination to reduce the U.S. military commitment to Pakistan, was consistent with the report of the interagency committee that had been debating the Pakistan problem for nearly a year. On July 2, 1959, the State-Defense-ICA task force finally completed its work and submitted a set of recommendations to Dillon. The report offered the familiar argument that Pakistan's present defense burden was manifestly disproportionate to its economic resources, and that the U.S. military assistance program in Pakistan continued to place heavy yearly demands on America's foreign aid budget. It did not recommend a reduction in that commitment, however. Rather, the interagency analysis emphasized the political and psychological necessity of providing the efficient Ayub regime with at least the same level of support as its inefficient predecessors. The favorable prospect for an Indus Waters settlement, it suggested, might permit Pakistani and Indian arms limitations in the future. But at the present moment the United States had no choice but to maintain its current military commitment. ₉₂

On August 6, 1959, Dillon repeated those recommendations before a meeting of the NSC. Serving as the acting secretary of state in Herter's absence, Dillon argued that it would not be politically feasible to pressure Pakistan to reduce its military establishment. Once again, he held out the hope that an Indus Waters settlement might create a climate conducive to future arms limitation agreements between Pakistan and India. Until such an opportunity occurred, however, he said that the United States had no choice but to continue to provide Pakistan with sufficient military assistance to enable it to maintain current force levels. Eisenhower and Defense Secretary McElroy agreed with the political logic of that position; the president expressed doubt that any substantial savings in the administration's military assistance program could be realized in South Asia. A subsequent meeting of the NSC tackled the issue of whether the United States should press Pakistan to reduce its "non-MAP supported forces": namely, the two and a half divisions it maintained for internal security, over and above the five and a half Pakistani divisions supported by the U.S. military assistance program. Political sensitivities, Dillon insisted, precluded that option as well. At the present moment, Eisenhower remarked, the long-term U.S. goal of reducing Pakistan's armed forces remained little more than a "pious hope." ₉₃

The administration's new statement of policy on South Asia, approved by the president on August 21, reflected the sense of those meetings and the earlier interagency report. NSC 5909/1 declared that any U.S. effort to reduce military assistance to Pakistan, against its wishes, "might lead Pakistan to retreat from its present anti-Communist pro-Western policy, jeopardize the U.S. political position in the area, weaken planned defenses designed to protect U.S. interests in the Middle East, or alienate the Pakistan military leaders who constitute the controlling element in Pakistan." Consequently, the policy paper stated that American national interests necessitated the continuation of the military assistance program, even though the commitments undertaken by the 1954 aide-mémoire were now virtually completed. It added that the United States should ensure the maintenance of military equipment already delivered but should resist all Pakistani entreaties for a significant increase in or modernization of its present forces. ₉₄

The cautious conclusions of NSC 5909/1 on one level seem anomalous. President Eisenhower himself had on several occasions voiced grave reservations about the military aid program in Pakistan. Military assistance to Pakistan, he told the NSC in December 1958, "was of very doubtful value beyond the provision of such assistance as would be required to cope with local security." ₉₅ For the past several years, moreover, the embassy in Pakistan, the MAAG mission there, the State Department, the ICA, and several interagency committees had all called attention to the counterproductive nature of the administration's military assistance program for Pakistan. An ICA evaluation team spoke for many of the program's critics in an early 1959 report. It suggested that the United States found itself in the contradictory position "of pursuing in Pakistan a military objective which, except at substantial and continuing expense to itself, apparently cannot be achieved without compromising its parallel objective of economic stability." The military assistance program, in the ICA's judgment, actually undercut the American objective of fostering in Pakistan a viable, self-sustaining state. That analysis seemed to point unmistakably toward the need for a substantial reduction in American support for the Pakistani defense infrastructure. ₉₆

On a deeper level, the administration's unwillingness to reduce its military assistance program was a perfectly logical response to an almost intractable dilemma. Not even the program's most severe critics in ICA and the State Department considered an aid cutback either practical or prudent. Most believed, on the contrary, that any direct pressure on Karachi in that regard would probably just exacerbate the country's massive economic problems. The ICA realistically estimated that, if a U.S. aid reduction were imposed, "Pakistan would be likely further to curtail its development programs, and further strain its already overtaxed resources, in an effort to find the funds necessary for it to carry on its military program alone." ₉₇ In addition, as NSC 5909/1 so plainly recognized, a reduction in U.S. military support would lead to Pakistani disillusionment and bitterness, further loosening the ties that bound the Ayub regime to the West.

A final argument, stressing the concrete benefits of Pakistan's close association with the United States, cinched the case against any reduction in the military assistance program. At the insistence of the Defense Department, the interagency study of July 1959 included a long section highlighting Pakistan's military value to the United States. "Through its geographical location alone," it began, "Pakistan provides territory within striking distance of the Sino-Soviet Bloc potentially valuable to the effective global use of U.S. forces and those of its allies." Developments in the Middle East following the Iraqi revolution of July 1958, especially growing Soviet influence in Iraq and intensified Soviet pressure on Afghanistan and Iran, served to enhance the political and psychological importance of maintaining a firmly pro-American Pakistan. Pakistan's value to the United States, the committee emphasized, also derived from the presence of "electronics facilities of considerable national security importance in the communications and intelligence fields." Those facilities formed an important part of a global electronic intelligence network that enabled the United States to track Soviet missile capabilities. In addition, several Pakistani airfields and other military installations, which were "constructed with U.S. assistance and to U.S. specifications," were "of potential value to U.S. strategic air operations in the event of hostilities." Not mentioned in the assessment, probably because their very existence remained a tightly held secret, were the most important strategic assets of all: the airfields at Peshawar and Lahore that, together with similar bases in Iran, Norway, and elsewhere, permitted regular overflights of Soviet territory by American U-2 spy planes. That factor alone served as a powerful inducement for maintaining U.S.-Pakistani relations on an even keel. ₉₈

If administration planners expected Ayub Khan to be satisfied with a decision merely to maintain the status quo in U.S.-Pakistani relations, however, they had seriously underestimated the tough and canny leader with whom they were dealing. He continued to press Washington for an increase in U.S. military support throughout 1959 and 1960, using the communications facilities and military installations Pakistan had leased to the United States as bargaining chips. A shrewd negotiator, the general sought a straightforward quid pro quo. Pakistan's air bases, which facilitated the valuable U-2 intelligence missions, also made Pakistan an accomplice in America's blatant violation of Soviet air space. The consequent risk that Pakistan incurred vis-à-vis its powerful neighbor to the north, he insisted repeatedly, could best be compensated by the addition to Pakistan's strategic arsenal of high-performance F-104 jet fighters and Sidewinder missiles. ₉₉

During a brief goodwill visit to Pakistan in December 1959, which preceded a similar trip to India, Eisenhower heard that appeal directly. The president made no commitment to his Pakistani host at that time, but promised to give the request the most careful consideration upon his return to Washington. ₁₀₀ Initially, the bureaucracy opposed Ayub's request as a clear violation of NSC guidelines. It ultimately relented, however, agreeing to provide Pakistan with the desired Sidewinder missiles as well as a squadron of F-104s. Details of the U.S. decision-making process remain classified, preventing a full reconstruction of this important episode. Chester Bowles's observation that Pakistan's central role in the U-2 overflights gave Ayub "a political hammer lock" on U.S. policy in South Asia probably overstates the case. ₁₀₁ Beyond question, though, the bases Pakistan furnished to the United States strengthened Ayub's bargaining position; the administration's appreciation of the value of those facilities to U.S. intelligence-collection operations offers the most likely explanation for this capitulation to Ayub's pressure tactics. ₁₀₂

Despite that major concession, U.S.-Pakistani relations remained troubled during Eisenhower's final year in office. Shortly after an American U-2 pilot was shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960, torpedoing the scheduled Soviet-American summit meeting at Geneva, it became public knowledge that the plane had flown from the U.S. base at Peshawar. The Ayub government stood publicly with the United States in the face of vigorous Soviet denunciations and saber-rattling; but privately, Pakistani leaders began to wonder if the alliance with the United States was worth risking Soviet hostility. ₁₀₃ "Because of the U-2 episode and its aftermath," reported an understated analysis by the U.S. embassy in Pakistan, "President Ayub and Foreign Minister Qadir, while not weakening their adherence to the alliance with the United States, expressed a diminution in confidence in America's ability to act quickly, decisively, and competently in a crisis." ₁₀₄

In the wake of the U-2 incident, Pakistan actually began to inch away from what it considered a dangerous overreliance on the United States. Ayub gave the signal for a fresh start in Soviet-Pakistani relations in June 1960 by announcing that he saw no reason why Karachi could not "do business" with Moscow. Subsequent technical assistance and oil exploration negotiations culminated in a $30 million Soviet loan to Pakistan in early 1961. At the same time, Pakistan announced its interest in negotiating a border-demarcation agreement with China, demonstrating Karachi's interest in developing warmer ties with its other communist neighbor. The latter offer reflected in part Pakistan's willingness to profit from the recent deterioration of Sino-Indian relations by applying the ancient maxim that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." It also signified, along with the opening toward the Soviet Union, a tentative search for new friends to balance what Pakistani leaders viewed as an unhealthy dependence on an unreliable superpower. These moves, prompted in good measure by America's growing economic commitment to India, carried profound implications for future relations between the United States and its South Asian ally. ₁₀₅

As the Eisenhower administration drew to a close, U.S.-Indian relations bore much more favorable portents. An assessment by the OCB described those relations late in 1960 as "increasingly cordial" and surrounded by an "aura of good feeling." ₁₀₆ Eisenhower's visit to India in December 1959 doubtless did much to help foster that improved atmosphere. From a public relations standpoint, the president's four-day tour of India was an unqualified triumph. "With rare unanimity," gushed Ambassador Bunker in a cable to the State Department, the "President's visit [is] considered here to have been [a] brilliant success." ₁₀₇ "Its timing," he enthused in another message, "could not have been more perfect." ₁₀₈ Indeed, the overflow crowd of more than half a million that poured into the Ram Lila grounds in old Delhi to see and hear the American president testified dramatically to the new warmth in Indo-American relations. Even Nehru, not one given to overstatement, wrote his chief ministers that Eisenhower's visit occasioned "tremendous enthusiasm and emotion," far exceeding even the "great welcome" that he had anticipated. ₁₀₉ The Eisenhower visit, the conclusion in May 1960 of an unprecedented multi-year PL 480 agreement between the two countries, the prompt delivery at the same time of U.S. C-119 aircraft purchased by India, and the continuing increase in America's financial commitment to India's development efforts--together they spoke eloquently of the quiet transformation in the Indo-American relationship that had taken place since the forging of the Pakistani-American alliance. ₁₁₀

The Eisenhower administration deserves substantial credit for recognizing the negative regional consequences of its alliance with Pakistan and moving during its second term to at least partially reverse them. Principally through the vehicle of economic aid to India, the administration did achieve a greater balance in its South Asia policy. But America's scale-balancing act in South Asia remained a limited accomplishment riddled with unresolved contradictions. By the late 1950s administration planners were convinced that India and Pakistan each represented, albeit for different reasons, important Cold War assets. Consequently, they did not want simply to improve relations with India at the expense of relations with Pakistan; rather, they sought the more complex and elusive goal of a friendly and mutually productive relationship with both countries. On that score, the Eisenhower policy fell well short of the mark it set for itself.

The president and other ranking U.S. policymakers pressed repeatedly for a relaxation of tensions between India and Pakistan, first through the abortive package plan approach and later by a concentration on the Indus Waters problem. They believed that only a relaxation of tensions between the two distrustful neighbors would make possible the cultivation of friendly U.S. relations with India and Pakistan. Those efforts yielded at best very modest results, however. Eisenhower's meetings with Nehru in New Delhi did give rise to some temporary false expectations. The Indian prime minister told his American visitor in December 1959 that he would offer a "no war" pledge to Pakistan. Nehru once again dashed American hopes, though, with his curt dismissal of Ayub's subsequent suggestion that the two nations engage in joint defense planning; the Indian leader disparaged that idea as a violation of nonaligned principles. Nor did the much touted Indus Waters Treaty, which was formally signed in September 1960, exert the positive impact on other unresolved disputes that Dillon had unrealistically forecast. ₁₁₁

Regional antagonisms proved far deeper, and much less susceptible to external mediation, than Eisenhower and his principal advisers had been willing to recognize. Powerful social, cultural, and religious forces militated against the Indo-Pakistani reconciliation on which the Eisenhower administration set its policy compass. During his final months in office, the president did give some indications that he had begun to accept the limitations imposed by South Asian realities. ₁₁₂ Or perhaps as the sands of time ran out on his eight years in the Oval Office the former general found comfort in philosophical explanations for policies that fell short of his administration's goals. Eisenhower's activist successor, undaunted by past failures and unwilling by nature to accept the notion that any international problems might elude an American diplomatic solution, ironically would prove even less sensitive to the limits of U.S. influence in South Asia.

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Note 1: NIE 100-7-55, "World Situation and Trends," November 1, 1955, FRUS, 1955-1957, 19:138-39, 143-44; DOS paper, October 3, 1955, ibid., pp. 123-25; NSC 5620/1, "Basic National Security Policy," March 15, 1956, ibid., pp. 267-68. Back.

Note 2: Bowles to Eisenhower, January 26, 1957, 891.00-Five Year/2-2057, DSR; Merrill, Bread and the Ballot, pp. 141-42. Back.

Note 3: Rountree to Dulles, February 4, 1957, 791.5-MSP/2-457, DSR; Rountree to Dulles, February 8, 1957, 791.5-MSP/2-857, DSR. Back.

Note 4: Bunker to Dulles, April 3, 1957, 891.00-Five Year/4-357, DSR. Back.

Note 5: FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:343. Back.

Note 6: Edward P. Maffitt, Counselor for Political Affairs at the Embassy in India, to DOS, February 20, 1957, 791.00/2-2057, DSR. Back.

Note 7: Rountree to Dulles, April 26, 1957, 791.00/4-2757, DSR; Bunker to DOS, April 12, 1957, 791.00/4-1257, DSR; Dulles to the Embassy in India, April 8, 1957, 791.00/4-857, DSR. British High Commissioner MacDonald offered a similar analysis of the elections; see MacDonald to CRO, September 4, 1957, C. (57) 245, CAB 129/89, PRO. Back.

Note 8: Report of the Interdepartmental Working Group on India, "The Economic Problem of India," May 2, 1957, Subject Subseries, Records of the Chairman, CFEP, DDEL; W. Randolph Burgess, Under Secretary of the Treasury, to Dillon, May 2, 1957, 791.5-MSP/5-257; William V. Turnage, Office of Financial and Development Policy, to Dillon, July 9, 1957, 791.5-MSP/7-957, DSR; Dillon to Randall, July 15, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:359-61. Back.

Note 9: Memo of telephone conversation between Dulles and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Anderson, July 25, 1957, General Telephone Conversations, Dulles Papers, DDEL. Back.

Note 10: Memcon between Dulles and Bunker, June 4, 1957, 891.00/6-457, DSR; memo of discussion at a bipartisan congressional meeting with Eisenhower and Dulles, May 9, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 10:190-197; Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Executive Sessions (1957), 8:579ff.; Kaufman, Trade And Aid, pp. 133-41. Back.

Note 11: Bunker to Frederic P. Bartlett, Director of SOA, June 27, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:348-52. Back.

Note 12: Bartlett to Rountree, September 30, 1957, ibid., pp. 377-82; Elbert G. Mathews, PPS, to Dillon, September 11, 1957, ibid., pp. 367-69; Rountree to Dulles, September 25, 1957, 891.00-Five Year/9-2557, DSR; memo from Paul H. Cullen, CFEP, to Randall, September 10, 1957, Chronological File, CFEP Records, DDEL; report by the OCB, "Recommendations for United States Action to Assist India in Realizing its Economic Developments Objectives," September 18, 1957, Subject Subseries, Records of the Chairman, CFEP, DDEL. Back.

Note 13: Murphy, Dillon, and Rountree to Dulles, October 16, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:390-393; memcon between Dulles and Krishnamachari, September 25, 1957, ibid., pp. 373-77. See also memcon between Dillon, Murphy, Rountree, and others, October 11, 1957, 891.00-Five Year/10-1157, DSR; DOS memo, "Financial Assistance to India: Background," October 16, 1957, 791.5-MSP/10-1657, DSR; memo for the record "Status of Special Assistance to India,," October 11, 1957, folder 31, box 113, Fulbright Papers. Back.

Note 14: Memo of discussion at NSC meeting, April 17, 1957, FRUS , 1955-1957, 10:182. Back.

Note 15: Dulles to Eisenhower, with enclosure, November 4, 1957, ibid., 8:393-95. Back.

Note 16: Memo of conference with the president, November 12, 1957, ibid., pp. 404-6. Back.

Note 17: Memcon between Dillon and Dayal, December 4, 1957, 791.5-MSP/12-457, DSR; Dulles to the Embassy in India, January 10, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:415-17; Bunker to DOS, January 14, 1958, 891.10/1-1458, DSR; DSB 38 (March 24, 1958):464-65. Back.

Note 18: James M. Langley, Ambassador in Pakistan, to DOS, October 2, 1957, 791.5-MSP/10-257, DSR; Dulles to the Embassy in Pakistan, October 3, 1957, 791.5-MSP/10-357, DSR; memcon between Dulles and Noon, November 23, 1957, 791.5-MSP/11-2357, DSR. Back.

Note 19: Lampton Berry to Herter, July 26, 1957, 791.5/7-2657, DSR; Hugh Cumming, Jr., Director, OIR, to Herter, October 25, 1957, 791.5/10-2557, DSR. Back.

Note 20: Bunker to DOS, August 22, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:143-44. Back.

Note 21: Dulles to the Embassies in India and Pakistan, October 21, 1957, ibid., pp. 144-47. Back.

Note 22: Address by General Truman, Middle East MAAG Chiefs Conference, Karachi, February 19-20, 1957, CCS 092 (8-22-46) (2) B.P. Part 17, JCS Records; Gardiner to DOS, June 7, 1957, 790D.5-MSP/6-757, DSR. Back.

Note 23: Address by Truman, Middle East MAAG Chiefs Conference, February 19-20, 1957. Back.

Note 24: Address by Ayub, ibid.; report by the Joint Middle East Planning Committee to the JCS, May 29, 1957, JCS 1887/363, CCS 381 EMMEA (11-19-47), sec. 56, JCS Records. Back.

Note 25: OIR, "Prospects and Problems for Pakistan's Ruling Group," March 8, 1957, report no. 7459, DSR. Back.

Note 26: Address by Hildreth, Middle East MAAG Chiefs Conference, February 19-20, 1957. Back.

Note 27: Rountree to Dulles, September 17, 1956, 790D.13/9-1756, DSR; Hildreth to Dulles, September 20, 1956, 790D.11/9-2056, DSR; William Witman, SOA, to Rountree, October 15, 1956, 790D.11/10-1556, DSR. Back.

Note 28: Jones to Rountree, May 28, 1957, 790D.13/5-2857, DSR; Dulles to Eisenhower, July 8, 1957, Pakistan folder, International Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL. Back.

Note 29: Memcons between Dulles and Suhrawardy, July 10 and 12, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:138-39, 481-84. Back.

Note 30: Record of conversation between Macmillan and Suhrawardy, July 29, 1957, PREM 11/1025, PRO. Back.

Note 31: Geoffrey W. Lewis, Chargé at the Embassy in Pakistan, to DOS, November 29, 1957, 790D.11/11-2957, DSR; Langley to DOS, October 12, 1957, 790D.13/10-1257, DSR; Langley to DOS, October 18, 1957, 790D.13/10-1857, DSR; Langley to DOS, November 1, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:484-86. Back.

Note 32: Langley to DOS, November 1, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:484-86; Jalal, State of Martial Rule, p. 254. Back.

Note 33: Langley to DOS, December 27, 1957, FRUS, 1955-1957, 8:487-90. Back.

Note 34: Dulles to the Embassies in India and Pakistan, October 21, 1957, ibid., pp. 144-47; Bunker to DOS, January 29, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:54-57. Back.

Note 35: Johnston to Bottomley, March 21, 1958, DO 35/6470, PRO. Back.

Note 36: Truman to Langley, January 27, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/1-2858, DSR. Back.

Note 37: Langley to DOS, February 27, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/2-2758, DSR; Langley to DOS, February 6, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:622-23; Symon to Sir Henry Lintott, CRO, March 20, 1958, DO 35/6470, PRO. Back.

Note 38: Caccia to FO, March 12, 1958, DO 35/6470, PRO; Symon to Lord Hume, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, April 14, 1958, FO 371/136187, PRO; Langley to Bartlett, April 16, 1958, 790D.11/4-1658; Firoz Khan Noon, From Memory (Pakistan, 1969), pp. 248, 275. Back.

Note 39: Records of meetings at DOS, April 16-18, 1958, DO 35/5470, PRO. Back.

Note 40: Ibid. Back.

Note 41: CRO paper, "India/Pakistan Arms Race," April 14, 1958, DO 35/5470, PRO; memcon between Dulles and Lloyd, January 30, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:618-19. Back.

Note 42: Records of meetings at DOS, April 16-18, 1958; "Arms Supply to India and Pakistan: U.K. Working Paper for Talks with State Department," April 1958, DO 35/5470, PRO; British Embassy in the United States to FO, April 17, 1958, DO 35/6470, PRO. For the U.S. record of the talks, see Herter to the Embassy in India, April 22, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:82-84. Back.

Note 43: Dulles to Eisenhower, April 17, 1958, ibid., pp. 81-82; Rountree to Dulles, April 10, 1958, ibid., pp. 75-81. Back.

Note 44: Eisenhower to Dulles, April 21, 1958, Dulles-Herter Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL; memcon between Eisenhower and Indian Vice-President S. Radhakrishnan, March 19, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:426-27. Back.

Note 45: Bunker to DOS, May 17, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:108-9; Langley to DOS, May 16, 1958, ibid., pp. 106-8. Back.

Note 46: Nehru to Eisenhower, June 7, 1958, ibid., pp. 117-19; Bunker to DOS, June 8, 1958, ibid., pp. 119-23. Back.

Note 47: Winthrop G. Brown, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy in India, to Bunker, June 11, 1958, 690D.91/6-1158, DSR. Back.

Note 48: Langley to Rountree, September 2, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/9-258, DSR. Back.

Note 49: Ridgway B. Knight, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, to DOS, June 6, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/6-658, DSR; OCB Progress Report, July 16, 1958, NSC 5701 folder, NSC Series, SANSA Records, DDEL. Back.

Note 50: Knight to DOS, June 6, 1958. Back.

Note 51: Ibid. Back.

Note 52: Memcon between Dillon and Langley, September 17, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:660-61. Back.

Note 53: Twining to the Secretary of Defense, May 16, 1958, ibid., pp. 646-47; Twining to the Secretary of Defense, June 19, 1958, CCS 381 EMMEA (11-19-47), sec. 71, JCS Records. Back.

Note 54: Memo of discussion at NSC meeting, August 1, 1958, NSC Records, WF, DDEP, DDEL; memcon between Eisenhower and Dulles, July 14, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 11:209; Embassy in Turkey to DOS, ibid., pp. 306-8. Back.

Note 55: JCS 2099/817, September 26, 1958, CCS 092 (8-22-46), sec. 58, JCS Records; Twining to the Secretary of Defense, October 14, 1958, sec. 59, ibid. Back.

Note 56: Symon to Hume, October 24, 1958, DO 134/26, PRO. Back.

Note 57: CRO to Symon, October 23, 1958, ibid. Back.

Note 58: Memo of discussion at NSC meeting, October 16, 1958, NSC Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL. See also editorial note, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:676. Back.

Note 59: Hildreth address, Middle East MAAG Chiefs Conference, February 19-20, 1957, CCS 092 (8-22-46) (2) B.P. Part 17, JCS Records. Back.

Note 60: FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:664-78; Bottomley to H. A. Twist, CRO, October 13, 1958, FO 371/136180, PRO; Jalal, State of Martial Rule, pp. 273-75. Back.

Note 61: Symon to Laithwaite, November 3, 1958, DO 134/26, PRO. Back.

Note 62: Knight to DOS, October 31, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:681-82; Langley to DOS, October 28, 1958, 790D.11/10-2858, DSR; Knight to DOS, October 31, 1958, 611.90D/10-3158, DSR; Symon to CRO, October 30, 1958, DO 134/26, PRO; CRO to various diplomatic posts, October 28, 1958, DO 134/26, PRO. Back.

Note 63: Langley to DOS, December 21, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/12-2158, DSR; Langley to DOS, January 7, 1959, 790D.5-MSP/1-759; DSR; Langley to DOS, October 30, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/10-3058, DSR; Langley to DOS, December 20, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/12-2058, DSR. Back.

Note 64: Rountree to Dillon, December 7, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/12-558, DSR. Back.

Note 65: Bell to Dillon, December 16, 1958, 790D.5-MSP/12-558, DSR. Back.

Note 66: Brig. Gen. H. L. Hillyard, JCS Secretary, to the JCS, November 21, 1958, CCS 092 (8-22-46) (2), sec. 60, JCS Records; John N. Irwin, Assistant Secretary of Defense, ISA, to Robert G. Barnes, Special Assistant for Mutual Security Coordination, November 21, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:682-83. Back.

Note 67: Dulles to the Embassy in Pakistan, January 9, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:692-93; Rountree to Dillon, January 7, 1959, ibid., pp. 688-93. Back.

Note 68: Langley to DOS, February 26, 1959, 791.5-MSP/2-2659, DSR; Langley to DOS, January 14, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:693-95. See also Pakistan Times editorial, June 23, 1959, enclosed in Langley to DOS, June 23, 1959, 611.90D/6-2359, DSR. Back.

Note 69: The United States signed bilateral agreements of cooperation with Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran on that date in Ankara. Those agreements provided no new commitments on the part of the American government, but were intended to reassure the remaining regional members of the Baghdad Pact of U.S. support in the aftermath of the Iraqi coup. See Langley to DOS, January 14, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:693-95; editorial note, ibid., p. 704; DSB 40 (March 23, 1959):416-17. Back.

Note 70: FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:437-60; Dulles to the Embassy in Great Britain, July 19, 1958, 791.5-MSP/7-1758, DSR; IBRD report, "Recent Economic Developments and Current Prospects of India," February 20, 1959, 891.00-Five Year/3-1159, DSR; PREM 11/1026, PRO; Burke, Pakistan's Foreign Policy, pp. 253-55; Merrill, Bread and the Ballot, p. 144. Back.

Note 71: Brown to DOS, May 12, 1959, Soviet Economic Offensive in India Subseries, Records of the Chairman, CFEP, DDEL. Part of this paper is printed in FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:483-89. Back.

Note 72: Bunker to DOS, May 13, 1959, South Asia folder, Briefing Notes Subseries, NSC Series, SANSA Records, DDEL. See also Bunker to DOS, May 29, 1958, 891.10/5-2958, DSR; Bunker to Dillon, May 29, 1958, 891.10/5-2958, DSR. Back.

Note 73: See especially documentation in CFEP 560, "Soviet Economic Penetration," Policy Papers Series, CFEP Records, DDEL. See also memo of discussion at NSC meeting, December 3, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 4:474-77. Back.

Note 74: NIE 51-58, "The Economic and Political Consequences of India's Financial Problems," September 2, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:452-60; Horn, Soviet-Indian Relations, p. 8. Back.

Note 75: Memo of discussion at NSC meeting, May 28, 1959, NSC Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL; briefing note for the president from the OCB, April 2, 1959, South Asia folder, Subject Subseries, OCB Series, SANSA records, DDEL; Intelligence Briefing Notes for the president, January 16, 1959, Office of the White House Staff Secretary, ibid.; editorial note, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:493. Back.

Note 76: NSC Planning Board, "Discussion Paper on Issues Affecting U.S. Policy Toward South Asia," May 26, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:1-6. Back.

Note 77: Memo of discussion at NSC meeting, May 28, 1959, ibid., pp. 6-14. Back.

Note 78: Memcon between Dulles and Chagla, November 25, 1958, ibid., pp. 146-48. Back.

Note 79: Memoranda of discussions at NSC meetings, March 26, April 30, and September 10, 1959, NSC Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL; MacDonald to CRO, October 21, 1959, PREM 11/2728, PRO; Gopal, Nehru, 3:88-92; Burke, Indian and Pakistani Foreign Policies, pp. 159-64. Back.

Note 80: Harriman, "Report from India and Pakistan," Congressional Record, Senate, 87th Cong., 1st sess., April 20, 1959, 6720-74. Back.

Note 81: Manchester Guardian, November 13, 1958. See also Walter Lippmann, "India: The Glorious Gamble," Ladies Home Journal 76 (August 1959):48-49. For a sampling of similar views, see John Sherman Cooper, "India: Crucial Test of Foreign Aid," NYT Magazine (March 16, 1958):12; Barbara Ward, "To Win the Fateful Duel in Asia," ibid., November 8, 1959, pp. 15; John Kenneth Galbraith, "Rival Economic Theories in India," Foreign Affairs 36 (July 1958):587-96. Back.

Note 82: Business Week, "India Makes Bid for U.S. Capital" (November 15, 1958):102-6. Back.

Note 83: Merrill, Bread and the Ballot, pp. 146-147, 153-55; Rostow to Dillon, March 8, 1959, 791.5-MSP/3-859, DSR; W. W. Rostow, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Foreign Aid (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). Back.

Note 84: Eric Johnston, Chairman of the Committee for International Economic Growth, to Herter, April 6, 1959, 891.00/4-659, DSR; Selig S. Harrison, ed., India and the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1961). Back.

Note 85: John F. Kennedy, "If India Falls," Progressive 22 (January 1958):8-11. Back.

Note 86: Kennedy to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, March 1958, Holburn Files, India, PreP, JFKP, JFKL, Boston, Mass.; Congressional Record, Senate, 86th Cong., 2d sess., March 25, 1958, 5246-55. Back.

Note 87: Kennedy speech, May 4, 1959, India folder, Holburn Files, PreP, JFKP, JFKL. Back.

Note 88: Dillon to Kennedy, April 3, 1959, 891.00-TA/3-2159, DSR; Rountree to Dillon, May 1, 1959, 891.00-TA/5-159, DSR; memo of discussion at NSC meeting, June 18, 1959, NSC Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL; H. S. H. Stanley, British Embassy in the United States, to J. J. B. Hunt, CRO, February 25, 1959, FO 371/144191, PRO. Back.

Note 89: Dillon testimony, May 13, 1959, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Executive Sessions (1959), 11:388-90. Back.

Note 90: Ibid.; memo of discussion at NSC meeting, May 28, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:6-8. See also memo of discussion at NSC meeting, April 30, 1959, NSC Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL. For a similar British analysis of the importance of the Indus Waters problem, see Hume to the Cabinet, April 22, 1959, C. (59) 72, CAB 129/97, PRO. Back.

Note 91: Dillon testimony, May 13, 1959, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Executive Sessions (1959) 11:390-91. Back.

Note 92: Rountree to Dillon, July 2, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:736-40. Back.

Note 93: Memoranda of discussions at NSC meetings, August 6 and 18, 1959, ibid., pp. 15-29. Back.

Note 94: NSC 5909/1, "U.S. Policy Toward South Asia," August 21, 1959, ibid., pp. 29-46. Back.

Note 95: Memo of discussion at NSC meeting, December 3, 1958, FRUS, 1958-1960, 4:438. Back.

Note 96: ICA, "Evaluation of Pakistan Program," February 1, 1959, 790D.5-MSP/8-1059, DSR. Back.

Note 97: Ibid. Back.

Note 98: "Outline of Report of Interagency Working Group on Future Military Assistance to Pakistan," July 1959, attached to Rountree to Dillon, July 2, 1959, 790D.5-MSP/7-259, DSR; draft paper on "Strategic Aspects of U.S. Military Assistance to Pakistan," June 15, 1959, ibid.; statement of Charles H. Shuff, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, ISA, before the Subcommittee for review of the Mutual Security Program of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, February 11, 1959, Mutual Security `58-'59 folder, Bryce Harlow Papers, DDEL; Twining to the Secretary of Defense, August 4, 1959, NSC 5909/1 folder, SANSA records, DDEL; Bechloss, Mayday, pp. 144-47; Robert Adams, SOA, to Rountree, with enclosure, May 5, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:719-25; memcon between Dillon and Rountree, July 30, 1959, ibid., pp. 646-52. Back.

Note 99: Rountree to DOS, October 8, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:777-78; Herter to the Embassy in Pakistan, October 21, 1959, ibid., p. 780; Rountree to DOS, November 16, 1958, 790D.5612/11-1659, DSR; note of discussion between W. A. W. Clark, CRO, and Bartlett, October 7, 1959, DO 35/5470, PRO. Back.

Note 100: Memcon between Eisenhower and Ayub, December 8, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:781-92; Herter to the Embassy in Pakistan, January 26, 1960, ibid., pp. 796-97; Murphy to Herter, December 10, 1959, President's Goodwill Trip, International Trips and Meetings Series, Office of the White House Staff Secretary, DDEL; Status Report, "Follow-Up Action Arising from President's Good Will Trip," undated memo, Subject Series, DOS Subseries, ibid.; minutes of Cabinet meeting, December 11, 1959, DDE Diaries, DDEP, ibid. Back.

Note 101: Bowles, Promises to Keep, p. 559. Back.

Note 102: The documentation printed in FRUS, 1958-1960, about this episode is riddled with deletions and offers no clues as to why the United States reversed its earlier decision to deny Ayub's request. See 15:787-800. Back.

Note 103: Memcon between Herter and Pakistani Foreign Minister Manzur Qadir, June 2, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:810-13; Rountree to DOS, July 5, 1960, ibid., pp. 817-18; Diary Entry, April 25, 1960, Ann C. Whitman Diary, WF, DDEP, DDEL; report by the OCB, November 9, 1960. Back.

Note 104: Editorial note, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:818. Back.

Note 105: Burke, Pakistan's Foreign Policy, pp. 266-67; Choudhury, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, pp. 159-64. Back.

Note 106: Report by the OCB, November 9, 1960, NSC 5909/1 folder, SANSA Records, DDEP, DDEL. Back.

Note 107: Bunker to DOS, December 23, 1959, International Series, Office of the White House Staff Secretary, DDEL. For memoranda of Eisenhower's conversations with Nehru on December 10 and 13, 1959, see FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:521-26. Back.

Note 108: Bunker to DOS, December 18, 1959, India folder, International Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL. Back.

Note 109: Nehru to Chief Ministers, December 15, 1959, JN: LCM , 5:343. On the Eisenhower visit, see also, Gopal, Nehru , 3:103-4; Brands, Specter of Neutralism , pp. 137-38; Merrill, Bread and the Ballot , 150-52. Back.

Note 110: Report by the OCB, November 9, 1960. Back.

Note 111: Eisenhower to Herter, December 14, 1959, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:195-97; Rountree to Eisenhower and Herter, December 23, 1959, ibid., pp. 197-201; report by the OCB, November 9, 1960. Back.

Note 112: See, for example, memcon between Eisenhower and Bunker, April 25, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, 15:535-37; memcon between Eisenhower and Rountree, April 25, 1960, Pakistan folder, International Series, WF, DDEP, DDEL. Back.

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The Cold War on the Periphery