‘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)
