BOOK REVIEW Two villages and an elephant Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb by Strobe
Talbott
Reviewed by Chanakya Sen
Metaphors belong naturally to the world of diplomacy. Allusive manners are
considered hallmarks of skillful diplomats. Strobe Talbott, the prodigious
Russian-affairs scholar and former US deputy secretary of state, has brought
alive the crucial period of diplomatic history after the 1998 Indian and
Pakistani nuclear tests with similes - a non-proliferation elephant that barely
crawls to two different villages as destinations, one aspired by the Americans
and one by the Indians.
In 1998, as the Bill Clinton administration's point man on Russia, Talbott knew
India as "merely important", not "urgent", in US foreign-policy priorities.
However, the May nuclear tests in Pokhran stunned the State Department. "India
was no longer merely important"
for an administration that espoused treaty-based non-proliferation regimes.
Over the next two-and-a-half years, Talbott engaged Indian diplomat Jaswant
Singh in historic dialogue, meeting him 14 times in seven countries. In this
intricate game of negotiating chess, Talbott's perspective was that the global
nuclear order was at stake, while Jaswant viewed it in terms of India's
sovereignty, security and equity. Talbott's brief was to limit the development
and deployment of India's nuclear arsenal, while Jaswant's was to get the US to
accept India as a nuclear-armed power. In hindsight, Talbott remarks, "Jaswant
came closer to achieving his objective that I did to achieving mine." (p 5)
Bomb in the womb
In 1964, alarmed by the Chinese nuclear tests, India sought security guarantees
from the US, an unrequited idea. When China was allowed to join the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a nuclear-weapons state, Indians were
infuriated. In 1974, India conducted a "peaceful" nuclear explosion and kept
the option of a nuclear-weapons program open. At that time, then secretary of
state Henry Kissinger assumed that India would conduct more tests and directed
"a basic policy of not pressuring Indians on their nuclear-weapons program",
only to be overruled by the US Congress (p 17). In 1988, prime minister Rajiv
Gandhi warned that if the NPT nuclear-weapons states did not disarm, India had
the right and need to join their ranks.
In 1990, on receiving intelligence that the Pakistani military had assembled
nuclear weapons and was preparing them for use against India, the George H
W Bush administration dispatched Robert Gates and Richard Haas on a
discreet and successful intervention that would carry precedent in future
crises containing nuclear ramifications.
Hide-and-seek
Bill and Hillary Clinton had a fascination for India and were convinced about a
"new opening" to this neglected Asian giant. Yet the first six years of
Clinton's busy globe-trotting had no place for India. His administration
pursued the objective of keeping the lid on Indian nuclear and
ballistic-missile technology, even as widespread domestic antipathy to the NPT
built up in India. Premier Narasimha Rao visited Washington in 1994 with the
trepidation of being "badgered on non-proliferation". (p 31) Talbott conveyed
to Rao Clinton's hope that India would resist the powerful temptation to test
nuclear devices, but received no concrete assurances in return.
In December 1995, US satellites photographed suspicious activity at the
Pokhran test site. The US ambassador in Delhi warned Rao of a "full dose of
sanctions" that would hurt the liberalizing economy and forced the Indians to
pull the plug on the test. The test was again suspended in early 1996 when the
two-week-old government crumbled in Delhi.
Standoff
India's May 1998 tests blindsided the US Central Intelligence Agency and threw
Clinton into "a volcanic fit", dimming hopes of bettering bilateral ties (p
52). Arrays of US sanctions were cranked out against India, leaving few
supporters of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's fateful maneuver. Clinton's
brain trust's immediate aims were to persuade India to join the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and dissuade Pakistan from entering the club of NPT
spoilers. Clinton himself floated the thought of a troika with Russia and China
to rein in India and Pakistan to sign the CTBT. The scheme fell through.
Talbott was bluntly informed in Islamabad, "You don't understand the Indian
psyche. The people of Pakistan will not forgive if we do not do the right
thing." (p 61) Prime minister Nawaz Sharif said he could resist pressure to
test if India allowed a plebiscite in Kashmir. As soon as Pakistan detonated
nuclear devices in Chagai, Clinton declared that there was a threat of "nuclear
war" and that South Asia would be "front and center" in diplomacy during his
last two years in office.
Epic dialogue
Vajpayee decided on damage control and sent his adviser Jaswant to sit and talk
"as long as the United States entered without preconditions". (p 76) At the
envoy's first meeting with Talbott in June 1998 in Washington, Jaswant
justified India's decision to go nuclear for defending itself against its
enemies. China being "the principal variable in the calculus of Indian foreign
and defense policy", Jaswant deplored US tendencies of "hyphenating us
with Pakistan". (p 85) Talbott replied that Indian and Pakistani fates were
interlocked since they had just conducted back-to-back nuclear tests. Jaswant
dangled out feelers that India "might" sign the CTBT in exchange for the
lifting of the US sanctions.
The second session of the dialogue took place in Frankfurt in July, where
Jaswant repeated that "maybe something could be worked out on
non-proliferation" if sanctions were lifted. The third meeting was in Delhi in
the same month. Talbott presented five benchmarks for carrying the
non-proliferation elephant to its ideal village. They included India's signing
of the CTBT within a year and adopting "strategic restraint" in missile
building. Jaswant demurred that these benchmarks were based on "American
judgments about Indian defense requirements" and that the CTBT signature would
"take time". The Indian side was unsure how much of a nuclear arsenal was
enough. When Talbott had an audience with Vajpayee, "on the subject of CTBT,
his silence was absolute". (p 100)
Jaswant foxily gave oracular utterances to the press creating the impression
that he was getting along famously with Talbott, fanning suspicions and anxiety
in Pakistan. Talbott found Pakistani diplomacy "reactive and ineffectual in
part because Pakistani democracy was so fragile". (p 107) Sharif kept linking
the CTBT to Kashmir, a strategy that went nowhere with the Americans.
Talbott next met with Jaswant in August in Washington. The Indians played
the card of Republican senators in the US hell bent on thwarting the CTBT and
claimed that it made their government's signature on the CTBT harder. In light
of the recent East African bombings, Jaswant's ploy was to lie back and wait
for the administration's preoccupation with Islamic terrorism to replace its
upset over the Indian nuclear program. His ultimate goal was to get sanctions
lifted without India meeting any of the "elephant benchmarks".
At the next meeting in New York in September, Jaswant slipped in references
that he would meet with Jesse Helms, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
chairman who detested the CTBT. Pro-India and farm-belt members of US Congress
were putting pressure on the Clinton administration - exactly as the Indians
hoped. Jaswant and Talbott sat down next in November in Rome. The Americans
explained that the US did not automatically side with Pakistan in the zero-sum
game of the subcontinent.
At the next summit in Delhi in January 1999, Jaswant (now foreign minister in
Vajpayee's cabinet) exploited the Clinton administration's slipping grip for
applying weight on India. The US Congress, France, Italy, Germany and the
United Kingdom were all inclined to lower the bar for sanctions relief. The
Indians offered minuscule movement on two benchmarks and asked for a large
reward. Their partial steps were "couched in future conditional tense and
riddled with escape clauses". (p 146) Relenting to the soft stonewalling and
needing to display an appearance of progress, the US released a big World Bank
loan to India.
Brokering peace
The May meeting in Moscow convinced Talbott that India would not sign the CTBT
that spring because of political paralysis. Meanwhile, Pakistani
military infiltrators into Indian Kashmir brought about a full-fledged border
conflict that appeared to have portents of nuclear cataclysm (Talbott had
information that Pakistan might be preparing its nuclear forces for
deployment). The US put the blame squarely on Pakistan for instigating the
crisis and demanded its withdrawal from Kargil as a precondition for a
settlement and for US intervention.
Clinton chided Sharif point-blank at a Blair House emergency appointment, "I'm
not - and the Indians are not - going to let you get away with blackmail." He
threatened making public a statement detailing Pakistan's role in supporting
terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Pakistan withdrew from Kargil soon after.
The elephant's swansong
For the first time, the US had allayed Indian doubts about "whether we would
take their security interests properly into account". (p 163) Kargil made
Vajpayee more trusting of Clinton, but more wary on nuclear matters. India
released its draft nuclear doctrine that enunciated a "strategic triad" based
on the more-bombs-are-better philosophy of deterrence. In October 1999, the US
Senate rejected the CTBT, a severe setback to the administration's efforts with
India and Pakistan. Clinton had to waive significant sanctions against India.
The next formal dialogue round happened in London in November. Indian
interlocutors wanted an end to all sanctions as well as rights and privileges
available to NPT signatories in exchange for signing the CTBT. Talbott
declined. Jaswant, embattled by domestic allegations that India was caving in
to US bullying to curtail its defenses, could give little at the next
meeting in January 2000 in London.
Eyeing reality, Clinton dropped all preconditions for his long-postponed India
trip. In contrast to stripped-down visits to Pakistan and Bangladesh (partly
for security concerns), Clinton's visit to India was transformational for
US-India relations. Vajpayee pressed for full acceptance of India as a
nuclear-weapons state and president K R Narayanan chastised the guest for
commenting that South Asia was "the most dangerous place on Earth". Clinton did
not hide differences on nuclear issues and hinted that the US could advance
India's quest for permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council
if it advanced non-proliferation. But the emerging possibility of the anti-CTBT
Republican candidate, George W Bush, winning the next elections gave the Indian
government space to wait for even better terms.
Jaswant and Talbott met for the last time in Bangkok in July 2000. "Our work
was done and we both knew it." (p 206) Jaswant officially notified that India
would not sign the CTBT.
A new tenor
The George W Bush presidency maintained NPT-related restrictions
on India for two-and-a-half years, especially due to Secretary of State Colin
Powell's desire for continuity of policy. The cushion of trust created in
Clinton's time helped the Bush administration send another troubleshooting
mission to South Asia after the terrorist attack on India's parliament in
December 2001. Richard Armitage, Talbott's successor, elicited an assurance
from Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf that cross-border
infiltration would stop. Even Clinton prodded behind the scenes in 2003 when
tensions heightened over terrorist incidents in India.
Talbott concludes that the Indian bomb remains "very much at issue" (p 224),
though Bush's re-election in effect shelves it. The talk now, under
Condoleezza Rice when she takes over the State Department and Stephen Hadley as
national security adviser-designate, is of "ending the nuclear dispute" with
India and boosting military-strategic cooperation.
Talbott's empathy for Jaswant's India outshines his policy disagreements. Engaging
India arrives as a fascinating primary source about the ever-tightening
"strategic partnership" between the United States and India. It takes readers
through the pivotal moments when US-India relations stepped on to greener
pastures after 50 years of fallowness.
Engaging India. Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb by Strobe Talbott.
Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2004. ISBN: 0-67-005771-1 Price US$8.75, 268
pages.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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important"
for an administration that espoused treaty-based non-proliferation regimes.
Over the next two-and-a-half years, Talbott engaged Indian diplomat Jaswant
Singh in historic dialogue, meeting him 14 times in seven countries. In this
intricate game of negotiating chess, Talbott's perspective was that the global
nuclear order was at stake, while Jaswant viewed it in terms of India's
sovereignty, security and equity. Talbott's brief was to limit the development
and deployment of India's nuclear arsenal, while Jaswant's was to get the US to
accept India as a nuclear-armed power. In hindsight, Talbott remarks, "Jaswant
came closer to achieving his objective that I did to achieving mine." (p 5)
