The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000
From Kux, Dennis. The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies. (Washington, D.C.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 359-368.
© 2001 Dennis Kux. Reprinted by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chapter 13: An Unstable Partnership
The preceding twelve chapters have traced the history of the complex interaction between the United States and Pakistan. At the outset, when Pakistan gained its independence in August 1947, few observers would have predicted the course of this relationship, which has veered between alliance intimacy and cordiality and times of friction and tension, but has also seen periods of standoffishness and indifference. As an impoverished new nation, Pakistan was struggling to get on its feet after the trauma of partition. Its future, even its survival, was far from secure. In contrast, the United States had emerged from World War II as the world’s strongest and most prosperous country and by the summer of 1947 had become the leader of the anticommunist bloc in the Cold War. Washington showed only modest interest in the new state, and it expected to have closer ties with larger and more important India that with Pakistan.
Yet after New Delhi chose a neutralist path, Pakistan became attractive as a potential partner in security arrangements for containing Soviet expansion in the Middle East. The U.S.-Pakistan alliance partnership that followed in 1954-55, however, proved unstable. It came apart in the 1960s during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, came together again with Nixon in the White House, but fractured once more with Jimmy Carter as president. During the 1980s, the struggle against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan provided new glue to bind the two countries together. Since the departure of the Red Army and the end of the Cold War, relations once more have been plagued by differences.
How to Explain the Many Ups and Downs?
How can one explain the roller-coaster character of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, marked by so many ups and downs? Pakistanis tend to attribute this to American inconsistency and fickleness. In turn, Americans often assert the frequent twists and turns stem from Pakistani wrong-headedness, especially its fixation on India. But neither view explains satisfactorily why the two countries have failed to sustain stable relations after becoming allies in 1954-55. The reason, in the author’s view, lies in the fact that over the years U.S. and Pakistani interests and related security policies have been at odds almost as often as they have been in phase. The United States and Pakistan were, broadly speaking, on the same wavelength during the Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan presidencies. During the Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Bush, and Clinton administrations, however, policy differences have been significant.
Given these realities, the volatility of the relationship should not be surprising. Absent a greater and more continuous congruence of security goals, U.S.-Pakistan ties have lacked a solid underpinning of shared national interests. Major differences and consequent disputes were probably inevitable. The partnership was likely to prove a fragile structure. The tendency of Americans and Pakistanis to gloss over this basic problem has only served to sharpen the sense of frustration and disappointment about the actions of the other.
The core fact of Pakistan’s national security policy has been its hostility toward India, especially over Kashmir. This antipathy has led to two parallel imperatives: first, heavier military expenditures than Pakistan’s underdeveloped economy could afford, ever since the country’s first budget in 1948; and second, the pursuit of external partners, especially the United States, to offset India’s preponderance of strength. This preoccupation with India caused Pakistan to upset the Americans on numerous occasions, first by cozying up to China in the 1960s, then by going to war over Kashmir in 1965, next by launching a clandestine nuclear program in the mid-1970s and by pressing ahead with that program in 1990, more recently by supporting the anti-Indian jihad in Kashmir during the 1990s, and finally by matching their neighbor’s nuclear tests in May 1998. For its part, the United States never shared Pakistan’s perception of India as an enemy, even though Washington and New Delhi were often estranged. Except for Nixon’s “tilt” during the 1971 Bangladesh crisis, U.S. administrations have been unwilling to side with Pakistan against its larger neighbor.
From the late 1940s until the Iron Curtain disintegrated in 1989, the main determinant of U.S. policy was the struggle with what Ronald Reagan picturesquely called the “evil empire.” The American superpower expected allies such as Pakistan to be cooperative members of the Cold War team. When one of the junior partners refused to play the game of geopolitics according to Washington’s rules—as Pakistan did in the 1960s over China—trouble ensued.
Furthermore, although unrelated to the Cold War, conflicting U.S. and Pakistani policies over who should and should not have nuclear weapons has been a major source of friction since the mid-1970s. Congressionally mandated sanctions severely hamstrung the ability of the White House to manage the nuclear problem with Pakistan through diplomacy. The inflexibility of sanctions, and their broad scope, also substantially increased the damage to relations when sanctions were imposed. Indeed, few supposed U.S. friends, let alone allies, have been on the receiving end of as many sanctions as has Pakistan.
“A Union of Unequals”
Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, a shrewd if undemocratic leader, told Secretary of State George Shultz in December 192 that the United States and Pakistan formed “a union of unequals” and were “incompatible” in terms of culture, geography, and national power.[1] Zia was right. The United States was a global power with global interests and the world’s most economically advanced country. And later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became the sole remaining superpower. For its part, although an important Muslim state, Pakistan was an economically poor regional power whose security interests did not extend much beyond its neighbors—India, Afghanistan, Iran, and China.
In the bilateral relationship, the United States was clearly the senior and Pakistan the junior partner. Indeed, except for the Afghan war years, Pakistan rarely has been near the top of U.S. priorities. One indicator is that American presidents have traveled to Pakistan just four times in fifty-three years; only Eisenhower in 1959 and Nixon ten years later paid state visits. Johnson touched down briefly at Karachi airport in December 1967, and Clinton spent just a little over five hours in Islamabad during his March 2000 South Asia trip. In contrast, Pakistani leaders have traveled to Washington twenty-one times, twelve of these for state or official visits. [2]
The Pakistanis have also made a special effort to cultivate U.S. political leaders and government officials. Although on the whole quite successful in dealing with Americans, they have made some serious mistakes. Two, in particular, produced major negative consequences for Pakistan. Gen. Ayub Khan charmed Washington in the 1950s with his straight talk. Yet, in the 1960s—reacting to U.S. military aid to India—Ayub first jeopardized Pakistan’s economic development progress, largely dependent on American assistance, by moving closer to the Chinese than Lyndon Johnson found acceptable. Then, in 1965, Ayub lost U.S. military help and, for a while, economic assistance as well by allowing himself to be swayed by hawks like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto into plunging Pakistan into war with India over Kashmir.
During the Carter administration in the late 1970s, bilateral troubles were perhaps unavoidable. This was not the case for the events that triggered the imposition of Pressler amendment sanctions in 1990. Among the troika that ruled Pakistan after Zia died, only Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was adept in handling Americans. But she did not have a decisive voice in nuclear policy—which lay with the other two troika members, Army chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan. Neither of these men was skilled in dealing with Washington, and they ignored Bush administration warnings that Pressler amendment sanctions would be imposed if the nuclear program advanced. By not heeding these cautions, Pakistan lost its chance to enjoy the continued flow of American military and economic aid while maintaining its unacknowledged nuclear weapons capability.
Theoretically, the close links with the United States ruptured in 1990 by the imposition of Pressler sanctions could have been restored in 1998 if Nawaz Sharif had desisted from matching India’s nuclear tests. Given the lack of U.S. credibility and the highly emotional public opinion in then-democratic Pakistan in favor of testing, it would have taken a far shrewder and tougher leader than Sharif to have refrained from following India’s example by conducting Pakistan’s own tests.
These instances are only some examples of the United States’s limited ability to influence Pakistan’s policies. Time and again Washington has been shown to have no clothes in dealing with its erstwhile ally, unable to translate superior military, political, and economic strength into effective policy leverage with Islamabad. Even though pressed hard by Kennedy and Johnson after 1962, Ayub went his own way with China; then Zulfikar Bhutto, Zia, and their successors moved ahead with the nuclear program against all kinds of U.S. pressure. In more recent years, Pakistan has rebuffed repeated U.S. urgings to reduce its not-so-covert support for Kashmiri insurgents, to rein in Islamic extremists linked to terrorism, and to take a harder line with the Afghan Taliban.
This inability to sway Pakistan’s policies should not be put down to a failure of diplomacy. It stems more from the fact that American and Pakistani perceptions of what is best for Pakistan and its national security have not been the same, especially where India is concerned. As then-secretary of state Dean Rusk wrote after his May 1963 South Asia trip, “fear, distrust, and hatred of India” mean “we cannot rely on Pakistan to act rationally and in what we think would be in its own interest.”[3] That remains as true nearly four decades later as it was in 1963. When pushed to the wall, Pakistan has pursued its interests as it, not the United States, has seen them, even though this has meant the costly loss of American military and economic assistance.
Impact on Pakistan of U.S. Security Engagement
Notwithstanding the failures noted above and the consequent ups and downs—and varied intensity—of U.S. security engagement with Pakistan, that involvement has had a profound impact on the sometime American ally. In the 1950s, early in the life of the new state, U.S. military aid reinforced the position of the army, which eventually seized power in 1958. The Pakistani military has ruled the country for half its existence, and, after the October 1999 coup, is back in power for the fourth time. Yet, it would be wrong to conclude that the alliance with the United States was to blame for the failure of democracy to take hold in Pakistan in the 1950s. The weakness of the Muslim League after the deaths of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan and the antidemocratic leanings of the West Pakistani elite were more important factors in explaining the collapse of civilian rule. It is hard to see that events in Karachi would have unfolded very differently if the Eisenhower administration had decided against extending military aid in 1954.
It is also true, however, that American arms assistance greatly bolstered the confidence and prowess of the professional military, enabling Pakistan to develop a larger and more capable defense force that the country could have afforded on its own. Along with India’s poor showing in the 1962 border war with China and in the 1965 Rann of Kutch encounter with Pakistan, the enhanced military strength contributed to the overconfidence that led the usually cautious Ayub to blunder into the 1965 war with India.
Although Washington soon eased the resultant arms embargo, it was not until a decade and a half later, after the Red Army entered Afghanistan, that large-scale aid was resumed. The renewed flow improved Pakistan’s military posture, even though Zia failed to take advantage of the opportunity to build up indigenous defense production capabilities.The cutoff of government-to-government arms transfers through the application of Pressler amendment sanctions in 1990 was costly, especially when coupled with the parallel loss of U.S. development assistance. The negative impact was amplified when new sanctions imposed after the 1998 nuclear tests went a step further and barred commercial arms purchases.
On the security front, a second significant area of U.S. engagement that has had mixed results was covert aid for the Afghan resistance. Even though the partnership between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) proved highly successful in combating the Soviets and ultimately ousting them from Afghanistan, the unintended consequences—apart from the tremendous harm to Pakistan and nurtured a new breed of terrorists, the best known of whom is Osama bin Laden. The enormous inflow of arms into the region under the covert program was also an important cause of the violence and lawlessness that wracked Pakistan during the 1990s. Covert aid, in addition, strengthened the hand of the ISI, Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, which has continued to fan the flames of Islamic extremism since the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan.
U.S. acquiescence in the ISI’s channeling of most arms aid to fundamentalist resistance fighters was perhaps understandable during the struggle against the Soviet occupation. Once the Red Army pulled out, however, the Bush administration erred in walking away from Afghanistan. The United States was remiss in failing to press harder for a peace settlement and in not opposing more emphatically continued ISI backing for Islamic extremists. More vigorous U.S. engagement might not have averted the tragic civil war that spawned the Taliban and provided a haven for bin Laden. Nevertheless, given previous deep U.S. involvement and the threat ultimately posed to U.S. national interests and regional stability, Washington made a bad mistake in not trying much more energetically to stabilize Afghanistan after the Soviets left.
Pakistani and U.S. Perceptions
From the Pakistani perspective, the legacy of past dealings with the Americans has been negative.A sense of resentment and distrust of the United States pervades Islamabad. Many Pakistanis sincerely believe that their country has been unfairly and unjustly treated. Three main complaints were repeatedly pointed out to this author: first, Washington’s refusal to help Pakistan during the 1965 war with India; second, the United States discarding of Pakistan “like a used Kleenex” when it was no longer needed after the Afghan war; and, third, the discriminatory nature of U.S. nuclear sanctions, which—until the May 1998 nuclear tests—hit only Pakistan and did not affect India.
Paradoxically, in spite of this disenchantment and the absence of bilateral security and economic assistance programs for nearly a decade, the sole remaining superpower casts a long shadow over Islamabad. There is a popular saying among Pakistanis, only half in jest, that their country’s fate is determined by three A’s: Allah, the army, and America. The fact is that this wobbly developing country, still insecure after more than half a century of independence, continues to yearn for a closer relationship with the United States.
The resulting ambivalence plays itself out graphically in the contrasting attitudes of different social groups. A desire for the American connection remains especially strong among he English-speaking elite who run the country: senior military and civil service officials, rural ties to the United States through educational, official and commercial contacts, through family links with the burgeoning Pakistani-American community (Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s brother is a U.S. citizen), and through the shared use of English. Members of these upper reaches of Pakistani society may sincerely bemoan in public and in private U.S. policy toward their country. Yet, they send their children to American colleges and graduate schools, prefer business and investment ties with the United States, and, as possible, promote enhanced political and military liaison with Washington.
The situation is quite different with most non-English speakers, the large majority of Pakistanis. If literate, they read the harder-line Urdu language press, not the more moderate English-language media. They also hold a more negative view of the United States as unfriendly, even hostile, toward Pakistan and toward the Muslim world in general. Even though foreign policy gas largely been the domain of the elite, the views of the “man in the street” in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Quetta have importance, particularly as Pakistan’s society has grown more open in the past decade.
In contrast, the proverbial American “man in the street” hardly puts Pakistan high on his list of overseas concerns. Nonetheless, there have been extensive contacts over the years between the two countries’ peoples, in different spheres and at various levels, especially between the military, intelligence, economic development, and business communities. These encounters have generally been positive—in contrast with the often more difficult and prickly dealings between Americans and Indians. Until recent years, in spite of the wide swings in the bilateral relationship, Pakistan’s image remained positive on Capitol Hill and with the U.S. media. Of late, however, these good feelings about “our old ally” have been increasingly tarnished by growing concerns about an erratically led and unstable Pakistan chronically given to military rule, armed with nuclear weapons—and possibly drifting toward Islamic fundamentalism.
As the Twenty-first Century Begins
From the American perspective, relations with Pakistan have come full circle from half a century ago. When Pakistan gained its independence in 1947, the United States wished it well but perceived few compelling positive interests. The main policy concerns were negative: fear that renewed fighting with India over Kashmir would result in further large-scale human suffering and that this would cause instability in another major region of Asia.
As the new century gets under way, the United States similarly wishes Pakistan well but similarly perceives few compelling positive interests. The main concerns, as in 1947, are negative. The United States fears that renewed conflict with India—over Kashmir again—could trigger the first use of atomic weapons since 1945 and cause a South Asian nuclear holocaust with incalculable consequences. The United States worries that an economically weak Pakistan might export nuclear technology. Washington is troubled by the failure of democracy, the return of military rule, and the threat of Islamic extremism.
For Pakistan, there are fewer parallels with 1947. The hope then that the United States would serve as a stable source of security and economic help has vanished in the many twists and turns of the bilateral relationship. The bright promise on which Pakistan was founded has also vanished in the country’s disappointing and often sad first half-century. Chronic political instability, failure to realize economic potential, a poor record in meeting basic human needs, and the continuing fixation on India have left Pakistan teetering on the edge of national failure.
So, what of the future for these allies of yesteryear? After the wide swings of the past half-century, predicting what will happen next is hazardous. What we can note are certain constants that will remain influential. Geography continues to give Pakistan strategic importance as the junction of western, southern, and central Asia. It is a large Muslim state with a population of nearly 150 million. The coming to power of an extremist Islamic regime in Pakistan, as has happened in Afghanistan, would have a profoundly negative impact not only on the subcontinent, but throughout the Islamic world. Helping to avoid such a development is clearly an important U.S. interest.
Now that Pakistan and its traditional enemy, India, have declared themselves to be nuclear weapons states, their chronic tensions have assumed a vastly more dangerous significance. How Islamabad and New Delhi manage their nuclear rivalry will have an impact far beyond the subcontinent. Indeed, averting a nuclear holocaust on the subcontinent has become a key U.S. policy goal, one that ensures that the United States will remain engaged with Pakistan in the years to come.
When President Clinton met General Musharraf in March 2000, the two leaders—and their governments’ policies—differed over major issues: how best to deal with the Kashmir dispute with India, with the Taliban and other Islamic extremists, and with the nuclear question. If Washington and Islamabad are unable to narrow these differences, the bilateral frictions of recent years are likely to continue and perhaps even worsen. Should Islamabad temper its obsession with India and devote its full energies to addressing Pakistan’s serious political and economic problems, however, the country could reverse its downward slide and make progress toward realizing its potential as a regional power. Such circumstances could lead to a more stable and productive relationship with the United States. Although Pakistan faces grave difficulties, it is not yet a failed state.
[1]Memorandum of conversation between President Zia and Secretary Shultz, December 6, 1982, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
[2] State or official visits were made by Liaquat Ali Khan (1950), Mohammed Ali Bogra (1954), H.S. Suhrawardy (1957), Ayub (1961 and 1965), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1973 and 1975), Zia (1982), Mohammed Khan Junejo (1986), Benazir Bhutto (1989 and 1994), and Nawaz Sharif (1998).
[3]Notes by Rusk on his South Asia trip, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-63, Vol. 19, 575-77.
© 2001 Dennis Kux. All rights reserved.