By Syed Arif Hussaini

  March 18, 2005

‘Engaging India’ - A Valuable Book by Strobe Talbott

After half a century of estrangement in US-India relations, the 1990s marked the beginning of an aura of trust between the two major democracies of the world.
The chief event that triggered this salutary development was the collapse of the Soviet Union, the arch rival of the US in the cold war and the main ally of India.
This basic shift in the world scenario provided a good opportunity to the US as much as to India to initiate measures to mend fences and develop friendly relations. While the two countries were deliberately moving in that direction, suspicions of each others’ intentions continued to linger on under the weight of the baggage of the five-decade history.
Then came the Indian nuclear tests of May 11, 1998 followed a couple of weeks later by those of Pakistan. These rang the bells of alarm in the corridors of US power considering the possibility of the use of these newly acquired weapons by the two arch rivals of South Asia to settle their scores. Both had not signed the NPT. India had called it the charter for an inherently discriminatory club. Pakistan made its acceptance of the treaty subject to India’s. The US decided to bring them both within the regimen of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Strobe Talbott, the Deputy Secretary of State, author of the book under review, was assigned the task of holding informal talks (Track II Diplomacy) with his Indian counterpart, Jaswant Singh, to secure India’s agreement to sign the CTBT. Pakistan did not pose much of a problem in this respect as its leadership held out the assurance that it would sign it once India does so.
The book narrates the fascinating story of the author’s dialogues with Jaswant Singh from June 1998 through September 2,000 in fourteen meetings in seven countries.
Their talks were to cover arms control and nonproliferation, but often extended to other issues perhaps of deeper significance, on the broad spectrum of Indo-US and Indo-Pakistan relations, on Hindu nationalism, national and regional politics, vision of Indian society, and personal proclivities of Jaswant.
Talbott gives a gripping account of the exchanges on such subjects and that is exactly what adds to the color and significance of the book.
The fascinating personality of Jaswant Singh, his penchant for presenting an idea in philosophical terms, his rhetorical flair, his use of double negatives that did not always add to a positive, his resort to Indian mysticism and village wisdom, and above all his friendly demeanor, provided the author the material that attracts and holds the attention of the reader.
Credit must be given to Talbott for not portraying himself, despite being the author and presenter of the account, as the winner in the battle of wits. He kept giving generously space to the views of his counterpart for whom he had developed genuine respect, affection and trust.
In the process he too won the trust of his ever-cautious interlocutor from India. That is what the book is all about.
Owing to India’s close ties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War years, the West -led by the US - had for decades been suspicious of the motives of Indian leaders. The 2½ years of close interactions between Talbott and Jaswant, beyond their official capacities, at home and amidst family members, did help in bringing down, to some extent at least, that wall of doubt and distrust.
Notably, the talks led to no treaty, no commitment as sought by the US and circumvented by India, but they did produce “general and lasting benefits” under the doctrine of “unintended consequences”. They served to alter the direction of Indo-US relations - from estrangement to trust and cooperation.
This is the overarching impression one gains from the book. It is sharply reflected in the chapter “From Kargil to Blair House” which describes the talks between President Clinton and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to defuse the Indo-Pakistan conflict at the Kargil height of the Himaliyas.
The US President kept informing the Indian premier, Bajpayee, of the progress in the negotiations and seeking his advice wherever required. Indian media, intellectuals, and politicians appreciated the manner in which Clinton handled Sharif. That removed many curtains of mutual distrust and enhanced a friendly image of Clinton and the US.
Talbott, a close friend and contemporary of Clinton from their Rhode Scholar days at Oxford and an important member of the US team, can justifiably claim a role in the US stance - so can Jaswant Singh indirectly.
Pakistani side comprising PM Sharif, FM Sartaj Aziz, Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad, emerge from Talbott’s portrayal as mediocre, awkward, inarticulate, diffident and even sycophantic. They appeared to be living still in the days when American patronage could be taken for granted. America could no longer play the granddaddy to Pakistan’s follies. Nawaz Sharif gave the impression of being mortally afraid of his own army Generals and wearing throughout the sessions a persecuted, abject, and hangdog look. He looked all the while towards Sartaj and Shamshad for approval of what he was saying. And, his insistence was on a one-to-one meeting with Clinton which was foreseen by the American team and a senior American official was invariably present to take down notes - a deplorable lack of trust in the highest leader of an erstwhile close ally of the US. It contrasted sharply with the newfound trust in Indian leadership.
“It was hard to see”, writes Talbott “how he (Sharif) had come out on top of a rough-and tumble political system.”
The intimate relationship that Jaswant had succeeded in building with Talbott appears to have influenced his own views on the very concept of Pakistan. Jaswant, a staunch Hindu nationalist of BJP, availed himself of every opportunity to inject highly offensive views on the raison d’être of Pakistan. “Kashmir should be understood as an objectification of Pakistan’s predicament as a lost soul among nations, an ersatz country whose founders’ only legacy was a permanent reminder of what a tragic mistake partition had been.”
Under the constant hammering of Jaswant that Pakistan was a failed state, a civilization gone bad, a rogue state, a misbegotten sibling etc., Talbott too started sharing those views. The following quote epitomizes the outcome of the tutoring:
“There was, at the core of Jaswant’s feelings towards Pakistan, a proposition that I could not fully refute. He was right that partition had been a huge and tragic mistake. He was right that in the fifty intervening years, Pakistan had, more often that not, tended to confirm the apprehension that it was a state based on a flawed - perhaps fatally flawed - idea.”
Strobe Talbott is now the President of the Brookings Institution, a prestigious think tank often consulted by the State Department.
A senior fellow of the institute, Stepehn Cohen, has recently published a book on “The Idea of Pakistan”, reviewed in these columns a few weeks back.
The formulators and practitioners of Pakistan’s foreign policy might be well advised to study closely these two books of Brookings and exercise their minds as to why the very concept of Pakistan is being questioned now - fifty-eight years after the inception of their country. Pakistan has always been a close ally - a member in US-sponsored CENTO and SEATO, a frontline state in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, and even now a non-NATO ally and a crucial partner in the war on terror. Why, then are such questions raised now?
(arifhussaini@hotmail.com March 11, 2005)

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