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

8. Tilting Toward India, 1961-1963

 

INDIA, ALONG with the developing world as a whole, occupied a position of central importance in the foreign policy of the John F. Kennedy administration. Convinced that the Soviet Union had gained the initiative in the Cold War, the new administration believed it essential to pursue innovative strategies in the Third World lest the balance of forces shift decisively against the United States. The "much enlarged" Soviet effort in the developing world, Secretary of State Dean Rusk told the Senate in February 1961, served notice that the Soviet-American struggle was shifting "from the military problem in Western Europe to a genuine contest for the underdeveloped countries." He warned that "the battles for Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, [and] Asia are now joined, not on a military plain in the first instance, but for influence, prestige, loyalty, and so forth, and the stakes there are very high." ₁

The stakes appeared particularly high with regard to the so-called neutralist bloc. The new president and his top advisers were agreed that their predecessors had placed too much emphasis on the establishment of formal alliances and military aid relationships with certain developing nations, such as Pakistan, and had failed to cultivate friends among the nonaligned countries. As a result, the Soviet Union had gained influence with such key nonaligned states as India, Indonesia, Egypt, and Ghana. Kennedy hoped to reverse that trend by demonstrating a more tolerant attitude toward neutralism and offering a more generous financial commitment to the economic development plans of neutralist nations. That inclination plainly bore major implications for American policy toward South Asia.

"Of all the neutral countries," White House adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., later recalled, "Kennedy was most interested in India, which he had long regarded as `the key area' in Asia." ₂ Indeed, during his career in the Senate, Kennedy discussed India with more frequency and with more passion than any other nation. On May 4, 1959, speaking in Washington at a conference organized by the Committee for International Economic Growth, the Massachusetts legislator reminded his listeners that India's population "represents 40% of the uncommitted world. It is larger than the total populations of the continents of Africa and South America combined." In that speech, he called for a major increase in U.S. aid, recommending that Washington provide India with as much as $1 billion a year in overall developmental assistance. "We must be willing," he declared, "to join with other Western nations in a serious long-range program of long-term loans, backed up by technical and agricultural assistance--designed to enable India to overtake the challenge of Communist China." ₃ As president-elect, he appointed a special, pre-inaugural task force for India that essentially endorsed the proposals laid out in that earlier speech. It recommended $500 million in annual American aid for the duration of India's third five-year plan (1961-1966), with another $500 million per annum in commodity assistance under the PL 480 program. ₄

With tact, patience, and dollars, Kennedy thought that India and the other nonaligned states could eventually be won for the West; at a minimum, communist influence could be arrested and increased support for U.S. policies gained. "We cannot permit all those who call themselves neutral to join the Communist bloc," the president told his National Security Council early in 1963. If we "lose" the neutrals, "the balance of power could swing against us." ₅

India's importance to Kennedy administration strategists derived also from their fixation with China's presumed threat to the Asian equilibrium. "The central problem we face in Asia," Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles wrote the president, "is the existence of Communist China." Kennedy and his national security specialists viewed China as an increasingly hostile and militant adversary. As the Sino-Soviet split deepened, they feared that Chinese policy might become even bolder and more aggressive, especially in Southeast Asia. Some senior officials believed that New Delhi could play a critical role in containing Beijing's power and influence. Bowles insisted that India, along with Japan, "must be encouraged to recognize its own stake in the containment of China, the limitations of American power in dealing with this danger, and the consequent necessity" for those two Asian powers "to take the initiative in `guaranteeing' the security of Asia against China's aggressions." All of those ideas, however inchoate and imprecise, helped elevate India to a diplomatic priority of the first order for the Kennedy administration. ₆

Pakistan figured much less prominently in the global strategy of the Kennedy White House. The president and his principal advisers hoped that they could strengthen Indo-American ties without alienating Pakistan, which they still considered a valuable strategic asset. Not only was Pakistan formally allied to the West through two regional security agreements, but it ranked as one of the leading recipients of American military assistance worldwide and it provided the United States with extremely important intelligence installations. The Kennedy administration, like the Eisenhower administration before it, desired friendly relations with both India and Pakistan. But, unlike their predecessors, Kennedy and his senior aides viewed India as a Cold War prize of such magnitude that they were willing to run substantial risks with Pakistan in order to secure India's alignment with the West. In a memorandum that reflected JFK's own thinking, NSC aide Robert W. Komer frankly acknowledged that "if we must choose between Pakistan and India, the latter is far more important." ₇

Not surprisingly, India responded warmly to the new administration. Nehru had been impressed by Senator Kennedy's persistent efforts to garner additional economic aid for India and by candidate Kennedy's repeated pleas for a more realistic approach to the Third World. The new president's reference to Nehru's "soaring idealism" during his first state-of-the-union address helped reinforce those positive impressions. Ambassador-at-Large W. Averell Harriman, who visited New Delhi in March 1961 and spoke to Nehru at length, remarked that Kennedy's early speeches had an "enormous effect in India," fostering the impression "that there was a new sympathetic understanding of India's problems." ₈ The appointment of several well-known advocates of stronger Indo-American ties to key diplomatic posts also signaled the new administration's pro-Indian bias. Much to the delight of Indian officials, Kennedy installed their old friend Chester Bowles as the number two man in the State Department hierarchy; named scholar-journalist Phillips Talbot to serve as the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (NEA), the first--and last--time that an Indian specialist had been named to that important position; and appointed his personal friend, Harvard economics professor John Kenneth Galbraith, as the new U.S. ambassador to India. Like Bowles, Talbot and Galbraith were familiar and popular figures in Indian governmental and academic circles, the former having begun his long association with the subcontinent as an exchange student in 1939 and the latter having served as a visiting professor in India for two years during the mid-1950s. ₉

Perhaps of even greater importance, although largely unknown to Indians at the outset of the Kennedy presidency, was Robert Komer. Komer, who occupied a strategic position on Kennedy's revamped and strengthened NSC staff, became the administration's most effective advocate of a pro-Indian policy. Convinced that Eisenhower's NSC system, with its formal papers, detailed staff work, and weekly meetings, had hampered rather than encouraged policy innovation, Kennedy instructed his national security adviser, former Harvard dean McGeorge Bundy, to assemble a small, energetic staff of foreign affairs experts who would help formulate, coordinate, and implement policy from the White House. Observers dubbed this new operation "the Bundy State Department." Komer, who served as an intelligence analyst with the CIA and part-time NSC staff member during the Eisenhower administration, became Bundy's first appointment. The two men, along with their common Harvard backgrounds, shared a belief in the critical importance of the Third World; they agreed that Washington needed to exploit every available means in its effort to gain influence with the nonaligned nations. ₁₀

With a legendary appetite for work, Komer quickly gained policy responsibility for a vast domain that included South Asia, the Middle East, and the entire African continent. He took a particular interest in South Asia, which he viewed as the prime example of an area in which America's real interests had been subverted by shortsighted policies. "We had put too much emphasis on Pakistan at the expense of India," he later recalled; "a rebalancing was desirable." A shrewd observer of the tendency of large bureaucracies to equivocate and to resist change, Komer recognized that only a relentless activism could spur a significant policy shift. "I didn't think there was a way to help India more and bring Pakistan to heel more without breaking some eggs somewhere," he quipped. The State and Defense departments, although they recognized that larger interests seemed to justify a tilt toward India, "wanted to find a riskless policy." He was sure such a policy did not exist. "When you worry too much about risks," Komer recollected, "you end with a non-policy or with more of the same." The new structure of decision making employed by Kennedy dealt the ambitious Komer a strong hand; confident that he enjoyed the support of both the president and Bundy, he was determined to use his White House post to help effect a transformation in U.S. policy toward South Asia. ₁₁

The new administration's ardent courting of India brought some favorable early returns. After a visit to New Delhi and a long private talk with Nehru following the election, former Senate colleague and personal friend John Sherman Cooper wrote Kennedy that the "relations of India and the United States [are] the best I have known." ₁₂ In order to capitalize on that favorable trend and develop more intimate personal ties with the redoubtable Indian leader, Kennedy exchanged a series of increasingly friendly letters with Nehru during the early months of his presidency. "I want you to know how much I appreciate your continuing efforts to create a peaceful world community," Kennedy said in one. Referring to India's economic growth under its five-year plans, he exclaimed: "This progress augurs well not only for the future of India but is an example for the whole world of the achievements possible to a free society." ₁₃ In his reply, Nehru waxed equally effusive: "Our task, great as it is, has been made light by the goodwill and generous assistance that has come to us from the United States. To the people of the United States and more especially to you, Mr. President, we feel deeply grateful." ₁₄

Nehru's warm words doubtless reflected his deep gratitude with the outcome of the recent meeting of the India Aid Consortium. During the consortium sessions, held in Washington in April 1961, the United States pledged to provide India with $1 billion in economic assistance over the next two years. That commitment, together with pledges from the other major donors, virtually guaranteed that India would meet its essential foreign-exchange needs over that period. If actions spoke louder than words, then there could be no mistaking the depth of the new administration's commitment to the economic development of India. Remarkably, Kennedy's foreign aid request to Congress in the spring of 1961 earmarked $500 million in developmental support for India for fiscal year 1962 in comparison to only $400 million for the rest of the world. In an effort to maintain a rough parallelism toward the subcontinent, so as not to offend the sensitive Pakistanis unduly, the United States organized a Pakistan Aid Consortium that met in Washington in May 1961. The American pledge of $125 million in economic aid to Pakistan over the next two years did little, however, to assuage Pakistani leaders who recognized the obvious shift under way in America's South Asian priorities. ₁₅

Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson's visit to New Delhi in May 1961, part of a wider Asian trip, reflected the new cordiality and mutuality of interest in Indo-American relations. Although a more unlikely pair is difficult to imagine, the earthy Texan and the austere, aristocratic prime minister held a series of friendly and constructive meetings. Johnson found that Nehru's "pleasant attitude and friendliness" well exceeded American expectations. ₁₆ Ambassador Galbraith reported that the trip was a "first rate success." ₁₇ He thought Johnson's mission had "markedly strengthened [the] Indian picture of [the] new administration as liberal and compassionate and much interested in Indian problems." ₁₈ Upon his return to Washington, Johnson sent a report to the president that captured the administration's optimism about its new India policy:

Nehru, during our visit, was clearly `neutral' in favor of the West. This administration is highly regarded and well received in India
. . . Mainly, there is an intellectual affinity, or an affinity of spirit. This, in my judgment, should be exploited not with the hope of drawing India into our sphere--which might be as unnecessary as it is improbable--but, chiefly, with the hope of cementing under Nehru an India-U.S. friendship which would endure beyond any transition of power in India. ₁₉

Kennedy's accession to the presidency produced the opposite effect in Pakistan. Most Pakistani policymakers privately hoped that Nixon, widely viewed as a strong friend of Pakistan, would triumph in the 1960 election. Disappointed with the results of what had been one of the closest elections in American history, Ayub Khan and his chief aides feared that Kennedy's emphasis on promoting warmer ties with the nonaligned states would lead to a devaluation of Pakistan's alliance with the United States. The appointment of prominent critics of the Pakistani alliance such as Bowles, Talbot, and Galbraith to important policy posts fueled those fears. In order to allay Pakistan's concerns, in March 1961 Kennedy dispatched Ambassador-at-Large Harriman to Karachi to clarify American intentions. Harriman assured Ayub that the United States intended to continue its strong support for collective security pacts, and that it intended to maintain a close working relationship with valued allies like Pakistan. At the same time, he pointed out that the United States considered it essential for nonaligned nations to receive American support and help for, although nominally neutral, they were determined to preserve their independence and to avoid a communist takeover. Ayub, for his part, explained that although he hoped to normalize relations with China and the Soviet Union, the focal point of Pakistan's foreign policy remained its friendship with the United States. He struck a discordant note in the otherwise amicable conversation when he argued that the United States should press Nehru to settle the Kashmir dispute. ₂₀

Johnson's visit to Pakistan in May, immediately following his trip to India, revealed the growing importance that Ayub attached to the Kashmir issue. When Ayub urged that the United States use its influence with India to break the current impasse, Johnson rejoined that Pakistan overestimated U.S. influence with Nehru. Ayub disagreed. India, he remarked, relied heavily upon American economic aid; the deterioration in its relations with China only increased that dependence, thus strengthening U.S. leverage. The vice-president tried to reassure Ayub that Washington maintained a distinction between allies and neutrals, but the Kashmir imbroglio dominated the talks. The American response to that tangled question, Ayub made clear, would serve as a litmus test for Pakistan in its assessment of the new administration's reliability. ₂₁ In a subsequent report to the president, Johnson downplayed U.S.-Pakistani differences. He described the Pakistani president as "a very impressive fellow," a "seasoned" leader who was not only confident, frank, and straightforward but, more to the point, appeared a "dependable" ally. ₂₂

That assessment was put to the test in the weeks prior to Ayub's July 1961 arrival in Washington for his first state visit. Criticisms of the United States at that time reached unprecedented proportions in Pakistan. The Civil and Military Gazette pointed to the "developing crisis in relations" between the two countries caused by America's growing support for India. ₂₃ Decrying Washington's newfound sympathy for the neutralists, the Pakistan Times railed: "No country can advocate two diametrically opposite philosophies without getting into a mess." ₂₄ Ayub himself stoked the fires in a series of candid interviews prior to his arrival in Washington. He told an Associated Press reporter that Pakistan was "reexamining its membership" in SEATO and complained that American aid to India posed a direct threat to Pakistan's physical security. "Can it be," he asked rhetorically, "the U.S. is abandoning its good friends for the people who may not prove such good friends?" Washington, he added, did not "realize [the] gravity of the situation." He also bluntly told a correspondent for the Times of London that the United States was "too shy or too frightened" of India to use its influence to induce a Kashmir settlement. ₂₅

On July 1 Ambassador William M. Rountree cautioned the State Department that the current drift in relations would most likely accelerate if the United States "turned a deaf ear" to Pakistan's position on Kashmir. The Pakistanis believed strongly and passionately that their claim to the disputed territory was just, that Nehru had repeatedly reneged on India's commitments to a plebiscite, and that the United States, as an ally, must use its leverage with the Indian leader to induce a fair resolution of that all-important problem. "Furthermore, their intense apprehension over [a] fundamental shift in American policy in favor of India, and to their disadvantage, can find expression and be tested against the U.S. reaction to [the] Kashmir problem." If Pakistan brought its case before the United Nations once again, the ambassador warned, and the United States took no action to support it, there would be "foreseeably serious, probably lasting, repercussions on [the] whole gamut of our relations with Pak[istan] and Pak[istan]'s position in [the] East-West conflict." ₂₆ Although sympathetic to the Pakistani viewpoint, administration experts remained pessimistic about the chances for a breakthrough. "About the best we can hope for," observed Bowles, "is the gradual acceptance of the present de facto situation." ₂₇

During Ayub's Washington visit, the Pakistani leader repeatedly stressed the singular importance of the Kashmir dispute to his nation. He urged the president to use American economic assistance as a lever to force India to break the current deadlock. Kennedy countered that American aid was intended to keep India free, not to force India to follow Washington's direction. He agreed, however, to speak with Nehru about Kashmir during the Indian's scheduled visit to the United States in November. If his overture to Nehru proved unsuccessful, Kennedy promised, the United States would then support Pakistan's position on Kashmir at the United Nations. Ayub worried too that the United States might someday provide military assistance to India, especially in view of its escalating border tensions with China. Kennedy replied that the United States did not intend to provide arms to New Delhi. If a Sino-Indian conflict ever erupted, and India asked the United States for military aid, he would first consult with Ayub before making any commitment. Having secured Kennedy's assurances on both Kashmir and military aid to India, as well as a pledge by the new president to expedite the delivery of twelve F-104 aircraft promised by Eisenhower, the Pakistani president departed Washington convinced that his visit had been a major success. ₂₈

Certainly the trip must be considered a public relations master stroke for Ayub. One U.S. official recalled that the personable Ayub "charmed everybody." ₂₉ He ingratiated himself to the president's equestrian-loving wife with the gift of a magnificent Arabian stallion for the Kennedy estate in Virginia, and he shone at a gala state dinner in his honor at Mt. Vernon, one of the high points of the New Frontier's first social season. On more substantive grounds, American officials also gave the Ayub visit high marks, believing that the face-to-face meetings with Kennedy had helped repair what was promising to become a dangerous crack in the U.S.-Pakistani alliance. ₃₀

In contrast, the Kennedy-Nehru talks of November 1961, in which the president and his top advisers had lodged so much more hope, produced only disappointment and disillusionment. The two leaders clashed over Vietnam, Berlin, and nuclear disarmament, the issues that mattered most to the American administration. Particularly frustrating to U.S. officials was Nehru's refusal to accept the mantle of leadership in Southeast Asia. Kennedy later described the meetings as "a disaster." It was "the worst head-of-state visit I have had." ₃₁ The president did most of the talking since, in Galbraith's recollection, "Nehru simply did not respond." ₃₂ According to Schlesinger, Kennedy remarked that talking to Nehru was "like trying to grab something in your hand, only to have it turn out to be just fog." ₃₃ The widely divergent styles and personalities of the forty-four-year-old American and the seventy-one-year-old Indian prevented any genuine meeting of the minds, such as had occurred during the latter's talks with Eisenhower. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the president's younger brother and closest confidante, later acknowledged that JFK "never liked Nehru" and found the arrogance and sense of superiority that he displayed during his Washington visit "rather offensive." ₃₄

Kashmir was the most controversial topic Kennedy raised. Keeping his promise to Ayub, the president emphasized the importance that the United States attached to a peaceful and fair resolution of that question. He asked Nehru if he could see any possible line of settlement that would prove acceptable to both India and Pakistan. The prime minister discussed the history of the Kashmir dispute in great detail and with considerable emotion, concluding that no solution, aside from minor boundary adjustments, would be acceptable to India short of a formal recognition of the status quo. Kennedy pressed the Indian leader on several points, but found no flexibility. Recognizing that his initiative looked stillborn, the president instructed Galbraith to break the bad news to Ayub during a personal visit to Karachi. In the aftermath of the Nehru visit, many U.S. analysts concluded reluctantly that the Indian prime minister was an aging, tired leader who would simply not be capable of playing the active world role that the administration wished to assign him. For his part, Nehru departed Washington with a deep sense of unease about the young president's brashness, aggressiveness, and inexperience. ₃₅

Even more distressing to American policymakers than Nehru's intractability on the Kashmir dispute was his decision to invade Portuguese Goa. The Indian ruler viewed the December 17 attack as justifiable on several grounds: the enclave was an imperial anachronism that culturally, economically, and ethnically belonged with India; Portugal's rule was both repressive to its subjects and provocative to India; the United Nations had repeatedly condemned Portuguese colonialism; all other means short of force had been tried. Although sympathetic to such arguments, the Kennedy administration believed it had no choice but to protest India's resort to force. Nehru's rejection of last-minute pleas for restraint from Kennedy and Galbraith especially annoyed Washington. "If the United Nations is not to die as ignoble a death as the League of Nations," declared Ambassador Adlai Stevenson at the UN, "we cannot condone the use of force in this instance and thus pave the way for forceful solutions of other disputes." ₃₆ Stevenson's strong language infuriated Indians as much as Nehru's "brisk exercise in Machtpolitik" appalled Americans. ₃₇ In a long personal letter to Kennedy, Nehru sought to defend India's action while expressing his concern that the Goa invasion might harm Indo-American relations. JFK took "a rather philosophical attitude" toward the flap, according to Komer, viewing Goa as "one of these colonial residual appendages which sooner or later was going to disappear." ₃₈ Galbraith and the State Department agreed that even though the invasion violated an important principle and thus warranted public condemnation, Indo-American relations were too important to allow such a relatively minor affair to cause permanent damage. ₃₉

In the wake of the Goa invasion, the State Department and the NSC staff offered sober assessments of the administration's early accomplishments and failures in South Asia. Both found cause for guarded optimism. In spite of the frustrations engendered by the Nehru visit, the failure of the Kashmir initiative, and the Goa flap, Indo-American ties appeared essentially sound. India's border dispute with China and its continued reliance on American economic aid inexorably pushed New Delhi closer to the West. At the same time, administration analysts were pleased that Kennedy had helped reassure Ayub about U.S. intentions, at least temporarily checking Pakistan's flirtations with China and the Soviet Union. ₄₀

Nonetheless, the State Department and the NSC staff acknowledged that a huge gap existed between the administration's ambitious goals in South Asia and its thus far modest achievements. The Kennedy White House sought nothing less than a major reversal in the priorities that had shaped American policy toward India and Pakistan for nearly a decade. NSC aide Robert Komer, who served as Kennedy's point man for South Asia, expressed growing impatience with the pace of change. In a memorandum for the president of January 11, 1962, he framed the crucial issue with characteristic bluntness: "If we must choose between Pakistan and India, [the] latter is far more important. Obviously, we want both. But is this feasible until we dispel Ayub's illusions that we will back him against India?" ₄₁

The broader concern for Komer stemmed from his conviction that increased tension between India and China would lead the United States eventually to supply arms to India. He recognized that Ayub would "raise hob" with the United States if it opened a major military supply pipeline to India. Only a Kashmir settlement, then, or at least strong progress toward such a settlement, would dampen Pakistan's anxiety about an American-armed India and advance the regional stability that U.S. policy interests demanded. Yet current trends appeared highly unfavorable. Pakistan, unnerved by India's resort to force in Goa and frustrated by the failure of Kennedy's demarche to Nehru, threatened to bring the Kashmir question before the UN once again. Only American diplomatic intervention, administration specialists concurred, could block that unpromising avenue and stop the "painful confrontations looming in [the] subcontinent." Another U.S. initiative, however, also brought risks. "We will never be able to get the compromise solutions . . . which are in our own strategic interests," argued Komer, "without getting some people mad at us in the process. . . . The gut question is whether the risks of so doing outweigh the gains." He thought that they did, and most senior officials agreed. ₄₂

On January 11, 1962, Kennedy endorsed the Komer view at a White House meeting. He authorized a formal offer to India and Pakistan for U.S. assistance in negotiating a settlement of the Kashmir dispute. It was an approach reminiscent of, if more narrowly focused than, the Eisenhower administration's package plan of 1958. Expressing his personal concern with the state of Indo-Pakistani relations, Kennedy said that he "wanted it emphasized to both India and Pakistan that their `arms race' was ruining our economic aid program by diverting their assets from economic development." ₄₃

Kennedy extended the offer in personal letters to Nehru and Ayub. He indicated that World Bank president Eugene Black, the man who had been instrumental in the successful Indus Waters negotiations, had agreed to serve as mediator. Once again, however, Nehru rejected American counsel. Direct negotiations between India and Pakistan were the only road to a solution, he said; third-party intervention might not help matters and might even complicate them. Administration officials were disappointed and angered by Nehru's intransigence. "This effort has clearly been a bust and leaves matters worse than before," admitted Galbraith. "However well-intentioned, it was based on a clear miscalculation of what we could get the Indians to do." ₄₄ Reflecting a view widely held by the government's South Asia specialists, Komer wrote Kennedy that Nehru's explanation for the turndown "was merely a cover for India's basic satisfaction with the present status quo. The Indians no doubt feel that any compromise solution would inevitably involve some change in the status quo to their disadvantage; therefore they prefer to spin out the matter, hoping that Pakistan will eventually relax." But, the adviser added solemnly: "We do not think Ayub will let the issue die down." ₄₅

Komer was right. Kashmir remained a virtual obsession with the Pakistani strongman, as did the Kennedy administration's mounting commitment to India's economic development. In June 1962 the United States did support Pakistan's position on Kashmir in the Security Council--essentially a reaffirmation of previous UN resolutions calling for a plebiscite--but a Soviet veto, as expected, killed the measure. Ayub warmly thanked Kennedy for his backing, but he continued to suspect that the alliance in which Pakistan had invested so much was eroding. Its support for Beijing's representation on the Security Council and its continued efforts to normalize relations with China, measures that deeply disturbed American officials, stemmed logically from the calculation that an exclusive reliance on the United States could no longer be justified. "We are concerned about the attitude of President Ayub Khan at the present time," Rusk told a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "This has moved over into a lack of cooperation on some very sensitive military problems where it is beginning to hurt us," he acknowledged. "We have gone to great lengths to try to move closer with them on these matters, but they are being extremely difficult." ₄₆

On September 24, 1962, Kennedy and Ayub discussed those problems with great friendliness but little accomplishment during an informal three-and-a-half hour meeting at Newport, Rhode Island. Ayub once again called upon the United States to use its economic aid to India as a lever to moderate Nehru's policy on Kashmir. Kennedy, in turn, insisted that American aid to India could not be used as a weapon. Similarly, the president warned the Pakistani ruler against moving too close to the Chinese. Ayub parried that he was only normalizing relations with a potentially troublesome neighbor and the United States had nothing to fear. The inconclusive meeting revealed that the Kennedy administration had yet to deal effectively with the strains in Pakistani-American relations that flowed inexorably from its manifest tilt toward India. ₄₇

Nor had the administration succeeded in effecting the dramatic turnaround in Indo-American relations that it sought. Part of the problem lay with Congress. Periodic bursts of congressional displeasure with the administration's massive economic commitment to India continued to spark friction and misunderstanding between Washington and New Delhi. The influential Democratic Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, who harbored a visceral dislike for Nehru, Defense Secretary Krishna Menon, and the broader nonaligned foreign policy that they represented, proved an unusually tough and resourceful opponent of the Kennedy program. In May 1962 he succeeded in gaining his senatorial colleagues' support for an amendment to the administration's foreign aid bill that stipulated a 25 percent cut in the proposed aid package for India. The former secretary of the air force explained his position in a personal letter to the president. "Where is the logic," he demanded, "in providing such multi-billion dollar assistance to a country whose Secretary of Defense constantly attacks us, whose military plans and programs build up the Soviet economy at the expense of our allies and ourselves, and whose chief leaders constantly threaten with military aggression some of the most steadfast and loyal friends the United States has in the free world?" ₄₈

The Kennedy administration lobbied strenuously to restore the budget cuts, only to have a politically explosive announcement play into the hands of the anti-India forces on Capitol Hill. India revealed in May, at almost precisely the same time as the controversy over the Symington amendment was peaking, that it had decided to purchase Soviet MIG fighter aircraft as a counterweight to Pakistan's recent acquisition of American F-104s. Almost immediately, Galbraith warned that the announcement would damage prospects for restoring the budget cuts. Kennedy instructed his envoy to inform Nehru discreetly that India's acquisition of MIGs would likely deal a severe blow to the India aid bill. Some administration officials insisted that Washington seek to block the transaction. Others suggested that it subsidize the sale--or make an outright gift--of American aircraft to India if New Delhi agreed to repudiate its deal with Moscow. Kennedy ultimately tried to get British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to offer India comparable, British-made supersonic aircraft. None of those ploys, however, was sufficient to torpedo a deal engineered by Menon, the politically astute defense minister who saw a stronger Indo-Soviet military connection as a valuable hedge against India's growing economic dependence on the United States. ₄₉

After launching vigorous protests, Kennedy chose reluctantly to acquiesce in what had become a fait accompli. The incident, coupled with the congressional impasse over economic aid to which it was invariably linked in both countries, heightened Indo-American tensions. Nehru took exception to American pressure, especially to what he viewed as yet another effort by Washington to tie strings to its aid. Once again, he publicly denounced U.S. interference with India's vaunted independence. For his part, Kennedy fumed about the unreliability of a nation on the receiving end of so much American largesse. Although the president did manage to restore the bulk of the congressional cuts in the India aid budget, the interconnected problems of U.S. economic assistance for India and the latter's relations with the Soviet Union not only aggravated tensions between Washington and New Delhi but seemed to suggest as well that Kennedy's attempt to redefine America's relationships in South Asia had hit a brick wall. Komer remained one of the few administration specialists who could view this distressing turn of events with relative equanimity. "Sooner or later, of course," he wrote Bundy, "we are going to have to become arms purveyors to India or it will inevitably turn more to Moscow." ₅₀

On October 20, 1962, a catalytic event occurred that would soon put Komer's visionary projection to the test. On that day long-simmering border tensions between India and China erupted in full-scale hostilities. Chinese forces launched major attacks against Indian positions in the rugged terrain of both Ladakh, in Indian-occupied Kashmir, and the Northeast Frontier Agency, quickly driving Indian defenders into retreat. Over the next several days India suffered stunning reverses. The once flourishing self-confidence of its leaders and the general public became profoundly shaken. "We were getting out of touch with reality in the modern world," Nehru conceded in a somber address to the nation, "and we were living in an artificial atmosphere of our own creation. We have been out of it, all of us, whether it is the government or the people." ₅₁ Immediate external assistance, the prime minister and his chief advisers realized, had become essential.

The Sino-Indian conflict carried profound implications for American interests in the subcontinent--and beyond. Kennedy administration strategists almost immediately interpreted the war as a watershed event, one that, if handled properly, would enable them to secure India's alignment with the West. Komer ranked the border clash as "potentially one of the most crucial events of the decade." ₅₂ Within days of the Chinese attack in the Himalayas, he predicted that "we may have a golden opportunity for a major gain in our relations with India." ₅₃ Certain that Indian complacency toward the communist threat would be shattered by the Chinese offensive, the president and his principal foreign policy advisers reasoned that prompt and generous military aid from the United States might simultaneously convince India of American reliability and the folly of nonalignment. They believed that India, awakened finally to the reality of the Chinese threat, would need--and request--American military aid, thereby tacitly abandoning its nonaligned stance and enabling Washington to draw New Delhi into its orbit. ₅₄

In addition, U.S. policymakers reasoned that the conflict would impale Moscow on the horns of a dilemma since it would be forced to choose "between (1) its obligations to Communist China as a military ally and fellow Communist state and (2) its assiduously cultivated ties with India." The Soviets would likely remain neutral and urge negotiations, according to a State Department intelligence assessment, but "as long as the conflict continues, Moscow cannot escape its dilemma and the longer it lasts the more persistent and intense is its divisive impact on the Sino-Soviet relationship." ₅₅ American officials thus saw the border fight as a means both to cement Indo-American friendship and to exacerbate the Sino-Soviet rift.

The origins of the war are complex. Sino-Indian relations had deteriorated drastically following Beijing's bloody crackdown in Tibet in 1959 and Nehru's decision to offer political asylum to the Dalai Lama and his followers. The two countries' overlapping border claims in the Himalayas provided a constant source of friction; all diplomatic efforts to reach an amicable resolution of those claims, including meetings between Nehru and Zhou Enlai, proved unavailing. In the view of U.S. intelligence experts, the Chinese offensive of October 1962 reflected Beijing's desire "to consolidate its control over Tibet and to safeguard it against infiltration and subversion." China's longer-range goal sprang from "its expansionist ambitions south of the Himalayas" where it hoped "eventually to detach Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan from India's influence and make them satellites of China." American analysts also situated the Chinese military probe within the context of the Sino-Soviet struggle for ideological hegemony within the communist world. They speculated that China's leaders were deliberately forcing the Soviet Union to make an awkward choice between "its major ally" and "its greatest friend in the non-aligned world." Whichever choice the Kremlin's rulers made could only redound to the benefit of their ideological rivals in Beijing. From the inception of the conflict, State Department and CIA specialists dismissed the possibility that China's ambitions included the conquest of India. ₅₆

Reeling from the suddenness and surprising effectiveness of the Chinese attack, several Indian diplomats, as expected, sounded out their American counterparts about the possibility of emergency military aid. Although preoccupied by the Cuban missile crisis, which broke at almost exactly the same time as the Chinese attack, Kennedy moved swiftly. In a personal letter of October 28 to Nehru, he came right to the point: "I want to give you support as well as sympathy." ₅₇ Facing the first significant threat to Indian security since independence, a shaken Nehru immediately accepted Kennedy's offer. The prime minister's acceptance of U.S. military aid, Ambassador B. K. Nehru commented approvingly, marked for Indian foreign policy a "revolutionary development with far-reaching effects." Nehru's subsequent decision to sack Menon, the acerbically anti-American defense minister, as a scapegoat for the military debacle provided additional evidence that a fundamental policy shift might indeed be on the horizon. ₅₈

The Kennedy administration recognized of course that significant risks inhered as well in any commitment of emergency military aid to India. Pakistan would almost surely balk at the prospect of a hostile neighbor being fortified by U.S. military equipment and diplomatic support. American strategists thus concluded that Pakistan's response would be critical to the outcome of this policy initiative. The war "can give us a major breakthrough in Asia," noted the NSC Subcommittee on South Asia, "provided we can find ways to help India stand firm against the Chinese without disrupting our relationships with Pakistan." ₅₉

For the offer of U.S. military support to abet larger American objectives, then, Kennedy and his principal national security planners agreed that Pakistan's acceptance had to be gained. Accordingly, the president also dispatched a letter to Ayub on October 28, explaining that U.S. aid to India was designed solely to counter communist aggression. "These are interests which we all share," he wrote. "Certainly the United States as a leader of the free world must take alarm at any aggressive expansion of Communist power, and you as the leader of the other great nation in the subcontinent will share this alarm." Kennedy called upon Ayub to play the role of statesman by offering a unilateral no-war pledge to India, thus allowing India to shift all its forces to the border fight in the Himalayas. ₆₀ From Washington's perspective, the suggestion was eminently practical; it provided, in Komer's view, "the best and cheapest way to get Indian military resources freed for use against the Chicoms." By making a friendly gesture to India at its time of greatest trouble, moreover, Pakistan could presumably prove to India that its intentions were honorable, thus laying a solid foundation for a new era of Indo-Pakistani harmony and regional stability. ₆₁

Komer thought that Kennedy's "rather tough" letter to Ayub, a message that he had helped draft, struck exactly the right note. "We now have the Paks on the defensive, not the reverse," he boasted in a memorandum to Bundy. Indeed, he was convinced that the Sino-Indian war provided the perfect pretext for effecting the long overdue readjustment in America's South Asian priorities that he had been advocating ever since Kennedy took office. "We're in for a long and painful dialogue with Ayub," Komer predicted, "but one which was essential at some point and which from our standpoint could hardly be conducted under better cover than now." With the sangfroid that typified the New Frontier's approach to even the most daunting diplomatic obstacles, he insisted that the administration's open embrace of India could be achieved "without losing our Pak assets and alliance." Almost as an afterthought, the NSC aide qualified that judgment with the caveat, "if we play our cards right." ₆₂

Pakistan's reaction to the U.S. announcement of its decision to aid India severely tested Komer's brash optimism. It "has been the precise opposite to that for which we eventually hope," he conceded. ₆₃ Throughout the nation rabid anti-American demonstrations and vitriolic newspaper editorials greeted the U.S. disclosure. An indignant Ayub felt personally betrayed by his ally. Kennedy had promised him in Washington and again at Newport that the United States would consult Pakistan before offering military aid to India; yet he had been informed after the decision had already been reached, not consulted. In his response to the American president, Ayub downplayed the significance of the Sino-Indian border clash. Rather than signaling a new phase of communist aggression, the Pakistani general called it but a minor incident. Ayub predicted that any arms that India acquired for use against China would eventually be turned against Pakistan. "Is it in conformity with human nature," he implored Kennedy, "that we should cease to take such steps as are necessary for our self-preservation?" ₆₄ In evaluating the significance of Pakistan's "violent reaction," Roger Hilsman, director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, noted that "there have been strong intimations that Pakistan is considering a change in its policy of alignment with the West. The government is apparently giving serious consideration to a withdrawal from CENTO and SEATO and to the establishment of closer relations with Bloc countries." ₆₅

Even Komer was taken somewhat aback by the rage unleashed throughout Pakistan. In a memorandum of November 12, he told Kennedy that the Pakistanis were "going through a genuine emotional crisis as they see their cherished ambitions of using the US as a lever against India going up in the smoke of the Chinese border war." Nonetheless, he counseled patience. The United States should not pressure the Pakistanis, but neither should it attempt to placate them. "If we compensate Ayub for our actions vis-à-vis India," he advised the president, "we will again be postponing the long-needed clarification of our position, and this at a time when we've never had a better excuse for clarifying it." Instead, he urged Kennedy to pursue a new relationship with India and not worry unduly about noisy remonstrations from Pakistan. "In the last analysis," he predicted, "the Paks will realize that they get far too much from their US tie to be able to do without it." ₆₆

Kennedy, who received similar advice from Phillips Talbot and W. Averell Harriman, fully endorsed the logic of that analysis. With the president's personal approval and direct involvement, by mid-November the administration adopted a three-track policy: first, it decided to provide India rapidly with appropriate military assistance; second, it chose to use its new leverage with New Delhi to break the Kashmir stalemate; and, third, it sought to mollify the Pakistanis with the prospect of a more moderate Indian position toward that dispute while, at the same time, warning them against the consequences of drawing closer to the Chinese. To accomplish those ends, Kennedy dispatched Harriman, now serving as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, to the subcontinent on a diplomatic-military mission of the greatest delicacy. A seasoned negotiator, he had first earned his diplomatic spurs as Franklin D. Roosevelt's envoy to Josef Stalin during World War II; after spending the early months of the administration in the ill-defined position of ambassador-at-large, the ever-ambitious Harriman had impressed Kennedy with his astuteness and his toughness, enabling him to move closer to the president's inner circle. Great Britain's secretary of state for Commonwealth Relations, Duncan Sandys, accompanied Harriman, along with a small group of military and diplomatic experts from the two countries. An earlier set of meetings in London, which had revealed a common appreciation of the problem, permitted this joint Anglo-American approach. The president instructed his assistant secretary of state to assess India's specific military needs, impress upon Nehru the importance of renewed negotiations with Pakistan, and convince Ayub that cooperation with the United States and India would best serve the interests of his nation. ₆₇

A drastic deterioration in the Indian military position lent added urgency to the Harriman mission. On November 14 Indian forces had counterattacked Chinese lines in the Aksai Chin region of the Northeast Frontier Agency, only to be thoroughly repelled. Tactical ineptness on the part of the local Indian military commander allowed the defeat to turn quickly into a rout. As the Chinese appeared poised to sweep across the Assam plain, Nehru and his chief ministers became gripped with panic. His army seemingly incapable of preventing the occupation of vast portions of Indian territory, on November 19 Nehru appealed in desperation to the United States. In two letters sent to Kennedy that day, a panicky Nehru described India's predicament as "really desperate." He requested the immediate dispatch of twelve squadrons of all-weather U.S. fighter aircraft and the prompt installation of a sophisticated radar network. The prime minister's request stemmed from his fear that, without U.S. help, India simply could not protect its major cities from Chinese air attacks. Most remarkably, Nehru asked that U.S. personnel not only operate the requested radar stations but also pilot the fighter jets; he was asking, in essence, for direct U.S. intervention in the border conflict. It must have been a moment of supreme humiliation for the proud Nehru, a man who had always insisted that India follow the path of independence and self-reliance. Yet, facing what appeared to be an extremely grave security threat, the apostle of nonalignment believed he had no choice but to plead for American help. ₆₈

Then, suddenly, the crisis eased. On November 20, before Kennedy could reply formally to Nehru's extraordinary request of the previous day, China declared a unilateral cease-fire and began pulling its troops back from their forward positions. Beijing's action astonished Indians and Americans alike, who were unsure whether the move signified China's genuine interest in bringing the border conflict to a close or was a mere tactical pause. From the first, U.S. analysts appreciated that the unilateral Chinese action was an adroit diplomatic maneuver. "India has suffered a military defeat," noted foreign service officer Carol Laise, and the Chinese withdrawal promised to "superimpose on this defeat a diplomatic defeat." ₆₉ Indeed, the Chinese, who had already accomplished their principal objectives, could now revel in the statesmanlike role of peacemakers. As Chinese leaders boasted at the time, they had not only secured the border settlement they sought but in the process demolished the "arrogance" and "illusions of grandeur" of their proud neighbor. ₇₀ Equally important, American intelligence experts believed that the Chinese had forced an embarrassing choice on Khrushchev, thus scoring points in the increasingly bitter Sino-Soviet struggle. The Soviets, caught in a no-win position, stuck to an awkward pose of neutrality between the two sides. "Obviously concerned over the implications of Indian acceptance of Western arms aid," observed the CIA, "Moscow is persisting in its efforts to preserve its position in India--without, however, seriously jeopardizing its relations with China." ₇₁

Washington appeared well positioned to convert Moscow's impossible balancing act into its own diplomatic windfall. The Harriman mission's arrival in New Delhi on November 25 could not have been better timed; the dramatic developments of the previous week certainly ensured that Kennedy's message would find a receptive audience. After his first call on the chastened Nehru, Harriman described him as still suffering from the shock of the Chinese attack. Roger Hilsman, who accompanied Harriman on that initial meeting, observed that "Nehru looked tired and strained." Hilsman imagined that "it must have been difficult to greet Americans over the ruins of his long-pursued policy of neutralism." ₇₂ It was need and not sentiment, however, that had brought the Americans and the Indians to this pass, and Harriman made the most of the opportunity. With his British counterpart, Duncan Sandys, he assessed carefully India's most pressing military requirements, made clear the willingness of Washington--and London--to assist in the short-term as well as the long-term, and raised "with exquisite delicacy" the need for India to reopen negotiations aimed at settling the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. The latter point proved especially sticky; Nehru initially balked at making any concessions to a nation whose "revengeful reaction" at India's time of trial had deeply angered him. At one point, Harriman joined Ambassador Galbraith in informing Nehru "quite bluntly" that the Kennedy administration would find itself in an "untenable situation" vis-à-vis American domestic opinion if it provided India with significant military assistance without any effort on the latter's part to seek a rapprochement with Pakistan. A realistic Nehru finally yielded to the logic of the American position and agreed to reopen the long-stalled dialogue with Pakistan over the future of Kashmir. ₇₃

Flushed with his success in New Delhi, Harriman shuttled to Karachi for the next stage of his mission. His primary goal: to calm Ayub's suspicions about the new Indo-American relationship. Kennedy anticipated that that task might prove unusually nettlesome. In a personal cable to Harriman, sent before his envoy's arrival in Pakistan, the president acknowledged that "frank" discussions with the Pakistani leader would be necessary. "I do not want to push Ayub so hard as to get his back up," Kennedy said, "yet I think it imperative that he be under no illusion as to where we stand." As a result of the Chinese offensive, "the subcontinent has become a new area of major confrontation between the Free World and the Communists." India had been compelled to recognize that fact; Pakistan had to as well in order to meet its alliance commitments. "Were Pakistan to move closer to the Chinese at a time when we were assisting India to confront Communist China," the president pointed out, "it would cut across the deep commitments of the entire free world. . . . Pakistan must realize that there are certain limits which should not be overstepped if a fruitful Pak-US relationship can continue." Kennedy's message also exuded cautious optimism. Referring to the "one-time opportunity" for bringing about a reconciliation between India and Pakistan afforded by the border war, he ventured that "with a lot of nursing along from us" issues such as Kashmir could be resolved. "I am proceeding on the assumption that in the last analysis he will go along with us," the president said. "I am convinced that with the right combination of patience and firmness we can bring Ayub to take a reasonable course in his own interest." ₇₄

The Harriman-Ayub meetings went slightly better than most American analysts anticipated. Although recent developments had brought a "severe setback" to U.S.-Pakistani relations, according to newly appointed Ambassador Walter P. McConaughy, "sober second thoughts have moderated [the] initial emotional reaction of top policy makers." ₇₅ Ayub acknowledged to Harriman that limited U.S. military aid to India was both understandable and desirable and he made clear Pakistan's desire to maintain a close relationship with the United States. The Pakistani ruler also stressed, however, that his country's interests demanded tangible progress toward a Kashmir settlement, and he urged that the United States make additional military aid to India contingent upon such progress. Kennedy praised Ayub for his "statesmanlike approach." ₇₆ The president's cautious optimism was tempered, however, by expert assessments pointing out the depth of Pakistani resentment toward the United States. McConaughy warned that a collapse of the proposed Kashmir talks, in combination with an uninterrupted flow of American arms into India, "could set into motion virtually uncontrollable pressures for open estrangement from [the] West with deep injury to [the] American presence here, irrespective of logical consequences." ₇₇

In its final report, the Harriman mission emphasized the enormity of the stakes involved for the United States in the South Asian crisis. India's military defeat would enhance China's prestige, especially in Asia, and "a refusal to come to India's aid would bring in doubt our basic posture toward Communist aggression." The war provided "a unique opportunity" to advance a closer Indo-American relationship. It also brought, along with obvious risks, a "unique opportunity for the easing of tensions between India and Pakistan." The report advised that only a Kashmir settlement could ease those tensions; it recommended, consequently, that the United States continue to press both sides to accept a compromise. ₇₈

Harriman, with his long experience and sharp political instincts, worried that there existed "a big domestic political obstacle to major support for India." ₇₉ He made it a point upon his return from the subcontinent to meet with most members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in order to sound them out about the administration's planned initiative. Those meetings more than validated Harriman's concerns. A joint American-British Commonwealth approach to Indian aid, in his view, could answer some of the expected congressional complaints about such a program. It would demonstrate "that the United States is not unilaterally assuming a new and significant burden in the world," thus making "it easier to obtain the support which we will eventually have to get from the Congress to sustain this program." Some progress toward the resolution of the Kashmir dispute represented another minimal requirement for congressional backing. Moreover, as he informed Rusk, "if the present opportunity toward encouraging a settlement in Kashmir is not seized, it is hard to see how any other occasion more favorable will arise." ₈₀

Kennedy closely followed Harriman's advice. On December 10 the president authorized increased military, financial, and diplomatic involvement in the subcontinent. He approved an emergency military aid program for India of up to $60 million, a figure contingent upon a comparable amount from a British Commonwealth program. He also approved in principle an American commitment to provide air defense support for India as well as a renewed American commitment to help achieve a resolution of the Kashmir problem. Later that month Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan jointly endorsed this approach. After a meeting in Nassau, they publicly unveiled an Anglo-American emergency military aid package for India amounting to $120 million. The announcement, which was widely castigated within Pakistan, underscored once again the necessity of breaking the Kashmir deadlock. ₈₁

In an effort to reassure Ayub, Kennedy informed him that the United States and Great Britain had "agreed on a reasonable and frugal program of military assistance designed solely to enable India to defend itself better should the Chinese Communists renew their attacks at an early date." He stressed the importance of the upcoming Indo-Pakistani discussions, calling a Kashmir settlement the key to the subcontinent's security. On a matter critical to the Pakistani leader, however, Kennedy provided him no succor. The United States believed that Chinese aggression posed "as grave an ultimate threat to Pakistan as to India." Therefore, the supply of arms to India to help thwart that threat "should not be made contingent on a Kashmir settlement." ₈₂ In actuality, Kennedy's message was a bit disingenuous on that score; the president clearly recognized that American military aid for India was linked to the Kashmir issue. Indeed, the State Department instructed Galbraith to inform Nehru that "whether we like it or not, [the] question of Kashmir is inescapably related to what we can do to assist Indian militarily. [The] president, therefore, will find it difficult [to] justify extensive aid without progress on Kashmir." ₈₃

On December 26, just days before the Indo-Pakistani talks formally commenced, Pakistan and China announced the conclusion of a provisional border demarcation agreement. American observers were already fretting that the negotiations between India and Pakistan, neither of whom had yet displayed any disposition to compromise, were "in danger [of] bogging down at [the] very outset." ₈₄ The border convention--and the general strengthening of ties between Pakistan and China that it symbolized--intensified those worries. U.S. experts correctly suspected that it would poison the atmosphere for the Kashmir negotiations. Ayub tried to reassure American diplomats that his intentions were honorable, but to no avail. Plainly it looked as if the Pakistanis were seeking common cause with the enemy of India--and America. Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's much-ballyhooed visit to Beijing in February 1963 to sign the border agreement further compounded the problem. "History can be idiotic," Galbraith wrote in his diary. "A staunch American ally against communism is negotiating with the Chinese Communists to the discontent of an erstwhile neutral." ₈₅

The Kennedy administration tried persistently to keep the Kashmir talks on track, probing both sides at various junctures for possible points of compromise. In late February Kennedy reiterated his commitment to use all possible American influence to achieve a settlement. "Up to now we have been in up to our ankles, now we will have to get in up to our knees," remarked Rusk. ₈₆ Yet no amount of American prompting could bridge the fundamental differences separating the Indian and Pakistani positions. In April, following a short visit to the subcontinent, Komer and Walt W. Rostow, head of the State Department's Policy Planning Council, reported that no one familiar with the talks any longer believed that they could be brought to a successful conclusion. Rostow wrote Kennedy that he saw "a stone wall" looming ahead. ₈₇ His prediction was soon borne out. By May the Indo-Pakistani negotiations had reached a complete standstill, and Galbraith sadly observed that there was little the United States could do to revive them. What had originally "looked like a vigorous initiative," the ambassador admitted, "became a disastrous bungle. When it was all over, we were about back where we started." ₈₈

At a critical White House meeting of April 25, Kennedy expressed his strong inclination to go forward with a program of substantial military assistance for India--regardless of the state of Indo-Pakistani relations. Although he recognized that the prospects for a Kashmir compromise were "nil," and that sending more arms to India in the absence of a settlement "will cause us all sorts of trouble with the Paks and our own Congress," the president said he saw no alternative. India, in his view, was indispensable to the containment of China. His secretary of state cut to the heart of the issue. "If we back India against the Chinese," Rusk observed, "we may drive the Paks off the deep end; if we abandon the Indians, they might move toward the USSR and China again." Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara proposed that the United States offer India a modest military assistance program. Describing the Chinese military threat in the near term as a small one, McNamara estimated that $300 million in U.S. aid over the next three years (with another $300 million from Great Britain and the Commonwealth) would prove sufficient to meet India's security needs. He suggested that even $150 million might suffice. Indian military representatives, however, were lobbying for the astronomical sum of $1.6 billion in U.S. defense support over the next three years, a figure McNamara found grossly inflated. ₈₉

The huge gap between India's perceived needs and the American assessment of those needs alarmed Kennedy. He worried that it created the potential for Indian disillusionment with the United States and another explosive political clash between the two countries. "Let's not be penny wise about India," the president told his senior advisers; "let's not let them get into a position where they feel that they can't cope with the Chicoms and Paks on top of their other problems." Kennedy agreed with Bowles, whom he had recently designated to replace Galbraith as his ambassador to India, in viewing India's requirements as more political than military. The administration had worked too hard to move India into a more openly pro-Western orientation to allow the opportunity to slip away because of budgetary caution. Accordingly, Kennedy instructed Defense Department officials to engage in intensive discussions with their Indian counterparts in an attempt "to bring them down to realistic levels," while also making clear that he wanted Pentagon planners to regard McNamara's $300 million recommendation as "a floor rather than a ceiling." ₉₀

With JFK's active support and sympathy, advocates of a sizable military commitment to India appeared to be in the ascendancy. On May 9 Kennedy approved a plan to strengthen Indian air defenses and to provide active American air support, if needed, in the event of another Chinese attack. The next month, following a meeting between Kennedy and Macmillan at the latter's ancestral home, the two leaders issued the so-called Birch Grove communiqué; it pledged that Anglo-American military assistance to India would continue despite the collapse of the Kashmir talks. But the vexing issues of precisely how much aid India should receive, whether a long-term commitment should be made, and when India could be so informed remained far from settled. ₉₁

Galbraith, right up to the end of his tenure in New Delhi, Komer, and Bowles took the lead in pushing for an expansive military assistance program. Unless the administration could soon make a concrete commitment to India regarding future military assistance, Galbraith warned Kennedy, "we are in danger of [a] grave loss here." Acknowledging that such a decision would cause "problems" with Pakistan, the ambassador reiterated the thinking that undergirded so many of the administration's policy decisions in South Asia: "India is the biggest and most stable country in this part of Asia. With it our position is unassailable and without it we have none." ₉₂ With characteristic zeal, Bowles pounded home the same theme following his arrival in New Delhi as Galbraith's replacement. He argued with force and persistence that the United States needed to offer India a five-year military assistance commitment of at least $500 million. The "present situation in India," he stressed, offered "a major windfall for U.S. strategic interests which, if played skillfully, can lead to a close association with the second largest nation in the world, evolving into a de facto alliance and ultimately, under favorable circumstances, even into a formal alliance." A well-trained and equipped Indian army of some one million men, he insisted, could help balance Chinese military pressure in Southeast Asia. ₉₃

Kennedy also heard other voices, voices urging a more circumscribed commitment. Defense and intelligence officials reminded him of the continuing value of the Pakistan connection, especially the important communications facilities at Peshawar. Some State Department officials, including Rusk and Talbot, cautioned that too blatant a tilt toward India might ultimately prove counterproductive, especially in terms of the Pakistani-American relationship. Kennedy shared many of those concerns. He, too, feared that a generous, multi-year military assistance pact with India might push Pakistan further into the arms of China, lead to the dissolution of Pakistan's alliance with the West, and jeopardize continued American use of the intelligence installations at Peshawar. Caught between two seemingly irreconcilable goals--the alignment of India with the West and the maintenance of the Pakistani-American alliance--Kennedy temporized. As he embarked late in November 1963 on his fateful political trip to Dallas, JFK had still not reached a final decision about the shape, extent, and duration of the much-discussed military aid program for India. A final decision awaited the firsthand report and recommendations of Kennedy's chief military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor. When Taylor returned from the subcontinent in December 1963, however, he would report not to Kennedy but to President Lyndon B. Johnson. ₉₄

During his final months in office, Kennedy actually devoted much more time to repairing the breach in the Pakistani-American alliance than he did to forging a new Indo-American relationship. The Kennedy-Macmillan pledge of continued military aid to India, in conjuncture with the failure of the Kashmir negotiations, had plainly strained American relations with Pakistan almost to the breaking point. Those developments deeply unsettled the Pakistani leadership since they seemed to point unmistakably to a fundamental cleavage between the national interests of the two countries. Pakistan had always considered India the chief threat to its security. Since the early 1950s Pakistani leaders had accordingly sought protection through a network of alliances with the West. Now, they saw that policy unraveling as their principal ally furnished military aid, however modest, to their principal adversary. Ayub recognized--correctly--that the Kennedy administration would never favor Pakistan over India, despite the alliance ties. As a consequence, by mid-1963 he had embraced a policy of limited disengagement from the West, a policy based on the cultivation of closer relations with both China and the Soviet Union. Ayub, Ambassador McConaughy reported, believed that he could no longer rely solely on the United States for his nation's security. "I feel that we have perhaps only a limited amount of time," the American envoy warned Washington, "in the order of a year or two, to stem the trend away from Pakistan's current fundamental link with [the] West, before it picks up momentum which could make it irreversible." ₉₅

The Kennedy administration considered Pakistan's limited disengagement from the West a dangerous development that undercut American global and regional interests while contradicting the original rationale for the alliance. Reacting to the recent announcement of a proposed air link between China and Pakistan, on July 4 Harriman told the Pakistani ambassador that "in this period, no member of the Free World should do anything [to] aid and abet" the Chinese Communists. "Pakistan," he cautioned, "should be very careful in its dealings with the Chicoms and not jeopardize its relations with the Western world." Further "rapprochement" between the two states could cause "a very unfortunate reaction" in the United States. ₉₆ Harriman, who had recently been promoted to under secretary of state for political affairs, lamented in a private memorandum that "we are now in the unenviable position of having the Paks play China against us, hoping to scare us into giving them more arms or reducing our assistance to India." The Chinese gambit, together with Pakistan's recent decision to halt the expansion of American intelligence facilities, formed a "type of blackmail" that the exasperated Harriman found "intolerable." ₉₇ Senator Wayne Morse blasted Pakistan's effort at "international blackmail" in even stronger terms from the Senate floor. The independent-minded Oregon Democrat declared that "all foundation for so-called strategic assistance to Pakistan has disappeared, and ought to be eliminated from the foreign aid bill for fiscal 1964." ₉₈

In an effort to clear the air with its rebellious ally, early in August 1963 Kennedy instructed Under Secretary of State George Ball to visit Pakistan for a series of frank and wide-ranging discussions with Ayub. The purpose of the Ball mission was quite straightforward: "To arrest the deterioration in U.S.-Pakistan relations so that our major interests in the security and stability of the subcontinent and in the Peshawar facilities can be protected without at the same time endangering the development of our new relationship with India." ₉₉ But the question of how best to accomplish that elusive goal continued to vex U.S. officials, occasioning a vigorous debate among Kennedy's advisers in the weeks leading up to Ball's departure.

Should the United States offer Pakistan carrots or sticks--or both? A preliminary report from the State and Defense departments recommended that tough talk from Ball was obligatory but should be tempered by the prospect of increased U.S. developmental assistance as well as a new, three-year military assistance commitment for a more cooperative Pakistan. Komer found that approach "too soft," suggesting instead that "we must get across to Ayub that if he doesn't play ball with us our whole aid program will be at risk." ₁₀₀ Harriman concurred with Komer on the need for a no-nonsense approach; like his colleague on the NSC he too saw virtue in the threat of a total aid cutoff. But Harriman insisted that the crux of the problem was rooted in a psychological conundrum: Pakistan's obsessive fear of an Indian attack. Since its leaders could never hope to protect Pakistan from their much larger neighbor, Harriman argued that they needed to accept Washington's reassurances that it would come to Pakistan's aid if such an unlikely occurrence came to pass. In order to lend credibility to those pledges--made on various occasions in the years since the formation of the Pakistani-American alliance--Harriman suggested that the United States promise the future deployment of one of its aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean area. ₁₀₁

At an inconclusive planning meeting, held at the White House on August 12, a skeptical Kennedy expressed serious reservations about Ball's prospects for a breakthrough. Other than reminding the Pakistanis about U.S. distaste for their Chinese policy and making clear that "if they don't play ball, we will give our aid to someone else," Kennedy saw little that the United States could realistically expect to accomplish. "What precisely do we want to get from Ayub," he probed his advisers. Both nations were already familiar with each other's arguments, and both, in their own way, were justified. The United States had a reasonable complaint about a nominal ally that was sidling up to one of America's most detested enemies. Yet Kennedy recognized that Pakistan's security fears were also legitimate; from its perspective, India did pose a real threat. He listened to Harriman's case for a credible U.S. assurance backed by the promise of a naval task force in the Indian Ocean, but rejoined that the matter required more study before a commitment could be made. Kennedy predicted with resignation that the best the United States could expect from the Ball mission was a "standoff." ₁₀₂

The president's sober prediction proved astute. During the Ball-Ayub discussions, held over three days at Pakistan's new interim capital of Rawalpindi, the two men aired familiar positions in a candid but friendly manner. Ayub persistently emphasized his central concern: large-scale American military assistance to India had gravely jeopardized Pakistan's security. Although he had been compelled to normalize relations with China and other neighboring states in order to offset India's enhanced military strength, Ayub insisted that such actions were not aimed at the United States. Ball tried to reassure the Pakistani general that Western military aid to India had become an essential part of Washington's global strategy for containing communism. He reiterated earlier promises to Pakistan that it could depend upon American help in case of an attack from India or any other nation, but those promises lacked specificity. Ayub remained skeptical. The under secretary also expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of U.S.-Pakistani relations and implied that further steps toward the normalization of relations with China might "nullify" the alliance between the United States and Pakistan. While "gratifyingly direct," in Ball's view, the talks, as Kennedy expected, accomplished little of substance. ₁₀₃

The Ball mission instead revealed with disturbing clarity that the United States and Pakistan were embarked on a collision course. Kennedy's final months in office provided no respite from the "corrosive" trends in Pakistani-American relations. ₁₀₄ Shortly after the under secretary returned to Washington, American intelligence sources learned that Ayub had invited Chinese Prime Zhou Enlai to Pakistan for a state visit. Combined with a succession of recent agreements between the two countries governing trade, aviation, borders, and cultural exchanges, the invitation convinced administration officials that Pakistan's emerging entente with China had become an essential, and probably irreversible, element of Pakistani foreign policy. Most disturbingly, anti-American diatribes continued to issue forth with great frequency from the Pakistani press. During an October 9 meeting with the pro-American Pakistani Finance Minister Mohammed Shoaib, Kennedy voiced grave concern with recent developments. He said he realized that Pakistan's deep fear of India had been exacerbated by recent American efforts to strengthen India and that his administration, which did not share Pakistan's negative assessment of Indian intentions, wanted to do everything possible to reassure its Pakistani friends. But why, Kennedy asked plaintively, did Pakistanis seem so bitter toward a nation that had done so much to help them? ₁₀₅ In fact, the president had already provided an answer to his own question. As Bhutto later phrased it, American military support for India had "revealed the irreconcilable contradictions between the different assumptions on which Pakistan and the United States had built their special relations." ₁₀₆

Therein lay the ultimate failure of Kennedy's policy toward South Asia. U.S. military aid to India had radically undermined American relations with Pakistan--driving an ally to find common cause with one of Washington's chief adversaries. Yet that aid did not lead to a significant extension of American influence in India. The president had hoped simultaneously to promote regional stability and prosperity, foster an Indo-Pakistani rapprochement, and check Chinese and Soviet influence in the subcontinent. Instead, his initiatives promoted precisely the opposite effects. Kennedy bequeathed to Lyndon Johnson an increasingly explosive situation in South Asia.

The Kennedy administration failed to achieve its policy objectives in South Asia not for want of trying but because its actions rested on a number of dubious assumptions: first, that the United States could have friendly relations with both India and Pakistan and not at the expense of one or the other; second, that the problems dividing the two countries could be solved with timely American encouragement and support; third, that the ominous shadow cast by China would induce India to abandon its cherished policy of nonalignment and Pakistan to join forces with India against a common enemy; and, fourth, that Pakistan's dependence on American aid would deter it from pursuing closer ties with China. Each of those premises proved deeply flawed. Kennedy and his advisers, driven by visions of Cold War victories, disregarded the impediments of history and underestimated the deep divergence between the national interests of the United States, India, and Pakistan. At the same time, they exaggerated the leverage that Washington could bring to bear on those traditional rivals and nurtured the mistaken idea that an outside power could provide answers for regional questions. From their inception, then, Kennedy's initiatives in South Asia were probably doomed.

The administration's decisions were rooted not in regional realities, but in a series of global illusions: the illusion that China posed an immediate threat to the security of Southeast Asia; the illusion that India could--and would--contain Chinese expansion; the illusion that India, in spite of its poverty, military weakness, and vast internal problems, could offer meaningful support to American Cold War policies; the illusion that a Sino-Pakistani entente posed a major threat to U.S. interests. In retrospect, the largely symbolic value that Kennedy attached to bringing India into "our sphere" appears grossly disproportionate to India's true significance. Like the Truman and Eisenhower administrations before it, the Kennedy administration allowed a complex amalgam of Cold War fears and ambitions to impede severely any realistic appraisal of American interests and capabilities in South Asia.

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Note 1: Rusk statement, February 28, 1961, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Executive Sessions, 13, pt. 1:187. Back.

Note 2: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 522. Back.

Note 3: Kennedy speech, "The Basis of U.S. Interest in India--Its New Dimensions," May 4, 1959, India folder, Holburn Files, Senate Files, PreP, JFKL. Back.

Note 4: Merrill, Bread and the Ballot, p. 170; Dennis Kux, "India and the United States, 1941-1991: The Estranged Democracies," unpublished manuscript (in author's possession), pp. 241-42. Back.

Note 5: Remarks by Kennedy to the NSC, January 22, 1963, NSC files, NSF, JFKL. Back.

Note 6: Bowles to Kennedy, July 1, 1961, Kennedy folder, Box 297, Bowles Papers. See also Gordon Chang, Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 239-42. Back.

Note 7: Komer to Bundy, January 11, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL, Austin, Tex. Back.

Note 8: Harriman OH interview, January 17, 1965, JFKL; Harriman to Kennedy and Rusk, March 24, 1961, Ayub Khan folder, box 433, Harriman Papers. Back.

Note 9: Kux, "India and the United States," pp. 232-33; Merrill, Bread and the Ballot, pp. 174-75. Back.

Note 10: Robert Komer OH Interviews, June 18, 1964, October 31, 1964, and December 22, 1969, JFKL. Back.

Note 11: Komer OH Interview, December 22, 1969. On Komer and the Bundy NSC, see also John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow, 1991), pp. 110-14, 118-21. Back.

Note 12: Cooper memo, "Notes on My Talks in India," undated (probably January 1961), POF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 13: Kennedy to Nehru, May 8, 1961, NSF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 14: Nehru to Kennedy, May 24, 1961, quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 3:187-88. Back.

Note 15: Acting Secretary of State George Ball to Kennedy, April 19, 1961, NSF, India, JFKL; DOS memo to Kennedy, "Proposal for U.S. Commitments of Assistance to India and Pakistan," April 19, 1961, ibid.; Kux, "India and the United States," pp. 241-42. Back.

Note 16: Johnson to Bowles, May 22, 1961, VPSF, LBJP, LBJL. Back.

Note 17: Galbraith to DOS, May 19, 1961, NSF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 18: Galbraith to DOS, May 20, 1961, ibid. Back.

Note 19: Johnson to Kennedy, May 23, 1961, ibid. Back.

Note 20: Kennedy to Ayub, March 11, 1961, Ayub Visit folder, VPSC, LBJP, LBJL; Harriman, OH interview; Rountree to DOS, March 22, 1961, Pakistan folder, box 564, Harriman Papers; NYT, March 20, 1961 p. 9, and March 21, 1961, p. 3. Back.

Note 21: Rountree to DOS, March 21, 1961, VPSF, LBJP, LBJL. Back.

Note 22: Johnson statement, May 25, 1961, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Executive Sessions, 12, pt. 1:637. Back.

Note 23: Quoted in Lawrence Hall, Chargé in Pakistan, to DOS, June 29, 1961, POF, Pakistan, JFKL. Back.

Note 24: Quoted in Hall to DOS, July 7, 1961, ibid. Back.

Note 25: Quoted in Hall to DOS, July 6, 1961, ibid. For similar Ayub comments, see Mohammed Ayub Khan, Speeches and Statements, 6 vols. (Karachi, n.d.), 4:7-11. Back.

Note 26: Rountree to DOS, July 1, 1961, POF, Pakistan, JFKL. Back.

Note 27: Bowles to Thomas Hughes, Acting Director, INR, April 4, 1961, Hughes folder, box 299, Bowles Papers. Back.

Note 28: President's Talking Paper, Scope Paper, and other briefing materials for the Ayub visit, July 1961, all in POF, Pakistan, JFKL; Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, pp. 136-39; Choudhury, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, pp. 103-5; Position Paper, "Indo-Pakistan Relations," November 1961, VPSF, LBJP, LBJL; NYT, July 12, 1961, p. 3, and July 14, 1961, p. 1; Selig S. Harrison, "South Asia and U.S. Policy," New Republic 145 (December 11, 1961):12-13. Back.

Note 29: Komer OH interview, June 18, 1964, JFKL. Back.

Note 30: Kux, "India and the United States," pp. 248-49; NYT, July 12, 1961, p. 1; James Reston column, ibid., July 14, 1961, p. 22. Back.

Note 31: Quoted in Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, pp. 525-26. Back.

Note 32: John Kenneth Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 216. Back.

Note 33: Quoted in Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 525. John Kenneth Galbraith and White House Protocol Chief Angier Biddle Duke recently offered equally negative recollections of the Kennedy-Nehru talks. See their reflections in "Let Us Begin Anew": An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency, edited by Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Strober (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 205-6. Back.

Note 34: Robert Kennedy in his Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years, edited by Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 437. Back.

Note 35: Komer to Bundy, October 23, 1961, Komer Staff Memoranda, NSF, JFKL; President's Talking Paper, Scope Paper, and other briefing materials for the Nehru visit, November 1961, all in POF, India, JFKL; Gopal, Nehru, 3:188-89; Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal, p. 242. Back.

Note 36: Stevenson, quoted in Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, pp. 527-28. Back.

Note 37: Ibid., p. 527. Back.

Note 38: Komer OH interview, June 18, 1964, JFKL. Back.

Note 39: Galbraith to DOS, December 5, 1961, NSF, Portugal, JFKL; Galbraith to DOS, December 20, 1961, ibid.; Nehru to Kennedy, December 29, 1961, POF, India, JFKL; Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal, pp. 244-54; Gopal, Nehru, 3:190-203. Back.

Note 40: Komer to Bundy and Carl Kaysen, January 9, 1962, Komer Staff Memoranda, NSF, JFKL; Komer to Kennedy, January 11, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 41: Komer to Kennedy, January 11, 1962. Back.

Note 42: Komer to Bundy and Kaysen, January 9, 1962. Back.

Note 43: Komer to Bundy, January 12, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 44: Galbraith to DOS, January 27, 1962, NSF, India, JFKL; Kennedy to Nehru, January 15, 1962, ibid.; Kaysen to Bundy, January 28, 1962, Kaysen Staff Memoranda, NSF, JFKL. Back.

Note 45: Komer to Kennedy, January 30, 1962, POF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 46: Rusk statement, May 15, 1962, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Executive Sessions, 14:473; Ayub to Kennedy, July 26, 1962, POF, India, JFKL; Roger Hilsman, Director, INR, to the Acting Secretary of State, "The Sino-Indian Border Dispute and its Ramifications," May 7, 1962, VPSF, LBJP, LBJL. Back.

Note 47: NYT, September 25 and 30, 1962; Kaysen to Bundy, October 5, 1962, Kaysen Staff Memoranda, NSF, JFKL; Bundy to Kennedy, October 15, 1962, POF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 48: Symington to Kennedy, May 11, 1962, POF, India, JFKL; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Executive Sessions (1962), 14:411-412; Congressional Record, Senate, June 25, 1962, 87th Cong., 2d sess., 11578; ibid., July 20, 1962, 14255; Washington Post, July 8, 1962; NYT, May 12 and 25, and July 29, 1962. Back.

Note 49: Galbraith to DOS, May 13, 1962, NSF, India, JFKL; record of president's meeting, June 14, 1962, ibid.; Rusk to the Embassy in India, June 14, 1962, ibid. Back.

Note 50: Komer to Bundy, May 22, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 51: Quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 3:233. On the origins of the border conflict see Steven A. Hoffman, India and the China Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Neville Maxwell, India's China War (New York: Pantheon, 1970); Yaacov Y. I. Vertzberger, Misperceptions in Foreign Policymaking: The Sino-Indian Conflict, 1959-1962 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984). Back.

Note 52: Komer to Kaysen, November 16, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 53: Komer to Talbot, October 24, 1962, ibid. Back.

Note 54: FE memo, November 3, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 1, box 533, Harriman Papers. Back.

Note 55: Hilsman to Rusk, "The Five-Fold Dilemma: The Implications of the Sino-Indian Conflict," November 17, 1962, Sino-Indian Border Clash folder, box 1, Roger Hilsman Papers, JFKL. Back.

Note 56: Ibid.; CIA memo, "Historical Sketch of the Sino-Indian Dispute," December 18, 1962, NSF, India, JFKL. See also Hoffman, India and the China Crisis, chaps. 8-10. Back.

Note 57: Kennedy to Nehru, October 28, 1962, POF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 58: Rusk to the Embassy in India, October 29, 1962, NSF, India, JFKL; Galbraith to DOS, October 29, 1962, NSF, India, JFKL; Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal, pp. 386-87. Back.

Note 59: NSC Subcommittee on South Asia to the NSC, undated memo (probably early December 1962), NSC files, NSF, JFKL. Back.

Note 60: Kennedy to Ayub, October 28, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 61: Komer to Talbot, October 24, 1962, ibid. Back.

Note 62: Komer to Bundy, November 6, 1962, ibid. Back.

Note 63: Komer to Kaysen, November 16, 1962, ibid. Back.

Note 64: Ayub to Kennedy, November 5, 1962, reprinted in Ayub, Friends Not Masters, pp. 141-43. See also Herbert Feldman, From Crisis to Crisis: Pakistan, 1962-1962 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 86-87. Back.

Note 65: Hilsman to Rusk, "The Five-Fold Dilemma," November 17, 1962. See also Rusk to Galbraith, November 19, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pak, 11, box 535, Harriman Papers. Back.

Note 66: Komer to Kennedy, November 12, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, JFKL; Komer to Kaysen, November 16, 19, and 20, 1962, ibid. Back.

Note 67: Komer to Kaysen, November 16, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL; memo for the record of presidential meeting, November 19, 1962, ibid.; draft memo from Harriman to Kennedy, November 19, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 11, box 534, Harriman Papers; draft memo from Talbot to Rusk, November 18, 1962, ibid.; Hilsman to Rusk, November 20, 1962, Sino-Indian Border Clash folder, box 1, Hilsman Papers, JFKL. On Harriman's position within the Kennedy administration, see especially Abramson, Spanning the Century, pp. 581-91; Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 590-91. Back.

Note 68: Gopal, Nehru, 3:228-29; Kux, "The United States and India," pp. 272-73. See also Michael Brecher, "Non-Alignment Under Stress: The West and the India-China Border War," Pacific Affairs 52 (Winter 1979-80):612-30. Back.

Note 69: Carol Laise to Harriman, November 22, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 1, box 533, Harriman Papers. Back.

Note 70: Quoted in Gopal, Nehru, 3:230. Back.

Note 71: CIA Weekly Summary, November 30, 1962, NSF, India, JFKL; CIA Information Reports, November 20, 29, and 30, 1962, ibid.; CIA, Current Intelligence memo, "Implications of Chinese Communist Ceasefire Offer," November 21, 1962, ibid.; Pravda editorials, October 25 and November 5, 1962, in Bimal Prasad, ed., Indo-Soviet Relations: A Documentary Study (Bombay: Allied, 1973), pp. 257-64. Khrushchev has written: "I think Mao created the Sino-Indian conflict precisely in order to draw the Soviet Union into it. He wanted to put us in the position of having no choice but to support him." Nikita S. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, translated and edited by Strobe Talbot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 311. Back.

Note 72: Memcon between Nehru and Harriman, November 22, 1962, Sino-Indian Border Clash folder, box 1, Hilsman Papers; Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (New York: Delta, 1967). Back.

Note 73: Draft cable from Harriman to Rusk, November 25, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 11, box 535, Harriman Papers; James Grant, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, NEA, to Harriman, November 28, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 9, box 534, ibid.; report of the Harriman Mission, undated (probably early December 1962), VPSF, LBJP, LBJL; Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision, A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), pp. 239-41. Back.

Note 74: Kennedy to Harriman, November 25, 1962, POF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 75: McConaughy to DOS, November 25, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 11, box 535, Harriman Papers. Back.

Note 76: Kennedy to Ayub Khan, December 5, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 77: McConaughy to DOS, November 25, 1962; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 242. Back.

Note 78: Report of the Harriman Mission; NSC Executive Committee Record of Action, December 3, 1962, NSC Files, NSF, JFKL. Back.

Note 79: Michael V. Forrestal, NSC Staff, to Bundy, December 3, 1962, Forrestal Staff Memoranda, ibid. Back.

Note 80: Harriman to Rusk, December 18, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 2, box 533, Harriman Papers; memcon between Harriman and Fulbright, December 4, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 9, box 534, ibid.; memcon between Harriman and Cooper, December 10, 1962, ibid.; Harriman to Bundy, December 10, 1962, ibid. Back.

Note 81: Talbot to the NSC, December 6, 1962, NSC Files, NSF, JFKL; Talbot to the NSC, December 7, 1962, ibid.; NSAM no. 209, December 10, 1962, ibid.; DOS memo, "Sino-Indian Talking Paper for Nassau," December 17, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 2, box 533, Harriman Papers; Mohammed Ayub Khan, "The Pakistan-American Alliance: Stresses and Strains," Foreign Affairs 42 (January 1964):200-3; Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters, pp. 148-52. Back.

Note 82: Kennedy to Ayub, December 22, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 83: Rusk to the Embassy in India, December 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 2, box 533, Harriman Papers. Back.

Note 84: Hall to DOS, December 18, 1962, ibid.; Timmons to DOS, December 15, 1962, folder: Trips & Missions, India-Pakistan, 7, box 534, ibid. Back.

Note 85: Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal , p. 457; Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, The Myth of Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 62-4; Gopal, Nehru , 3:256-57; Choudhury, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh , pp. 178-81. Back.

Note 86: Memo of a presidential meeting, February 21, 1963, Komer Staff Memoranda, NSF, JFKL. Back.

Note 87: Rostow to Kennedy, April 8, 1963, NSF, India, JFKL; Burris to Johnson, April 9, 1963, VPSF, LBJP, LBJL. Back.

Note 88: Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal, p. 509; Galbraith to Bowles, April 24, 1963, Galbraith folder, box 299, Bowles Papers; Bundy to Kennedy, May 4, 1963, Index of Weekend Papers, NSF, JFKL. Back.

Note 89: Memo for record of president's meeting, April 25, 1963, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL; memo for record by Bundy, April 26, 1963, ibid. Back.

Note 90: Ibid. Back.

Note 91: NSC Record of Action, May 9, 1963, ibid.; Komer to Kennedy, May 9, 1963, ibid.; NSAM no. 243, May 10, 1963, NSC Files, NSF, JFKL. Back.

Note 92: Galbraith to Kennedy and Rusk, May 16, 1963, POF, India, JFKL. See also Komer to Kennedy, May 17, 1963, ibid. Back.

Note 93: Bowles to Kennedy, May 18, 1963, POF, India, JFKL; Bowles to Kennedy, May 4, 1963, Kennedy folder, box 297, Bowles Papers. See also Shaffer, New Dealer in the Cold War, chap. 15. Back.

Note 94: Chester Bowles OH Interview, July 1, 1970, pp. 68-9, JFKL; Chester Bowles OH Interview, November 11, 1969, LBJL; Grant to Bowles, October 21, 1963, Grant folder, box 330, Bowles Papers; memo by Bowles, "Toward a Balance of Political and Military Forces in South Asia," November 12, 1963, POF, India, JFKL; Komer to Kennedy, November 12, 1963, ibid.; Bowles to James C. Thomson, October 15, 1963, box 8, James C. Thomson Papers, JFKL; Bowles, Promises to Keep, pp. 439-40, 481-84. Back.

Note 95: McConaughy to DOS, June 22, 1963, POF, India, JFKL. Back.

Note 96: Rusk to the Embassy in Pakistan, July 7, 1963, ibid. Back.

Note 97: Harriman memo, August 5, 1963, Pakistan folder, box 495, Harriman Papers. Back.

Note 98: Remarks by Morse, Congressional Record, 88th Cong., 1st sess., Senate, July 22, 1963, 13083, and July 10, 1963, 12270. Back.

Note 99: Scope Paper for the Ball Mission, August 1963, POF, India, JFKL; "Instructions for Mr. Ball's Mission," ibid. Back.

Note 100: Komer memoranda to Kennedy, August 9 and 12, 1963, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 101: Ibid.; Harriman memo, August 5, 1963. Back.

Note 102: Memo for the record of meeting of August 12, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 103: Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern, pp. 275-76, 282-85; memo for the record of meeting with Kennedy, September 9, 1962, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL; Komer to Kennedy, September 9, 1963, ibid.; Komer to Ball, September 12, 1963, ibid. Back.

Note 104: Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern, p. 282. Back.

Note 105: Memcon between Kennedy and Shoaib, October 9, 1963, NSC HySA, NSF, LBJL. Back.

Note 106: Bhutto, Myth of Independence, p. 105. See also CIA Special Report, "Pakistan's Foreign Policy Under Ayub and Bhutto," April 16, 1965, NSF, Pakistan, LBJL. Back.

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The Cold War on the Periphery