Correspondence

CORRESPONDENCE To the Editor: Charles Maechling's "The Pakistan Mirage" (SAIS Review, Winter 1980-81) is one of the most impassioned defenses of the position that U.S. interests in Asia would best be served by strengthening India rather than Pakistan. He writes that this would have been realized by U.S. officials long ago but for "India's ill-concealed dislike for American capitalism and search for a satisfactory relationship with the Soviet Union," and that both the Kennedy and Carter administrations "reached this conclusion, only to retreat in the face of India's aggressive neutralism and administration fears of a right-wing backlash." He argues that "two factors have primarily influenced recurrent U.S. attempts to make Pakistan a security anchor in Asia: an exaggerated estimate of Pakistan's geopolitical significance, and the common link with China. . . . Unfortunately [this] not only ignores or downgrades Pakistan's tenuous state of nationhood and its commitment to a resurgent Islam hostile to the West . . . but writes off the most important power factor in the area, namely India." Mr. Maechling appears to believe not just that militarizing Pakistan carries a danger of weakening India and creating a rift between India and the United States (a quite reasonable belief) but also that the United States should do just the reverse —strengthen India and write off Pakistan. He in fact makes the very surprising claim —or is it a recommendation? — that: "If India were unified along prepartition lines, it would be stronger yet." This is obviously wrong. Pakistani generals themselves discount the threat of a full-scale Indian invasion because they know that an India with double its present Moslem population would be ungovernable. Memories of 1947 still run deep. Moreover, simply strengthening India while writing off Pakistan would just not address the objectives that have led U.S. policymakers to militarize Pakistan. Declassified policy documents from the 1950s and early 1960s state U.S. objectives explicitly. They do not seem to have changed greatly since then. Access to facilities has at different times been important. Until 1969, the U.S. had a base at Peshawar for reconnaissance flights and electronic espionage against the Soviet Union. And at least sinceJanuary 1979, when Mohammed Reza Pahlavi left Iran, U.S. officials have explored the possibility of regaining facilities or access rights in Pakistan. The United States has also been concerned to maintain the "internal security and territorial integrity" of Pakistan; only in this way could the United States block the ascension to power of so-called "Communist-inspired" groups (e.g. , NSC 6105). Early on, officials were concerned about the Awami League in East Pakistan, the Afghan-supported Pushtun groups, and the Ustoman Gal 221 222 SAIS REVIEW and the National Awami League in the western frontier areas; more recently, the BPLF and the Jiye Sind movement have concerned Washington and Islamabad. Policy documents acknowledge that "internal security" and the ability to withstand an attack by the Afghan army were the only U.S. objectives in Pakistan that military assistance could endure. It could not guarantee Pakistan's ability to beat back an Indian attack or to offer forces for collective military operations outside the country, although Pakistan could probably offer "token forces," often politically significant. On the other hand, the United States did gain from its ties to Pakistan "more voting support of U.S. positions in the U.N. than most Asian nations give, " according to a briefing paper for President Kennedy. Surprisingly, the issue that Mr. Maechling seems to think most animated U.S. officials — "holding the passes of the Hindu Kush against the plodding hordes of the Soviet Union" —receives little mention. It is not listed among U.S. objectives at all in these documents; perhaps it was not considered a real possibility (one document alludes to "limited Soviet capabilities" because of the terrain) and perhaps this contingency was to be taken care of by the 1959 bilateral defense agreement. The United States' relationship with Pakistan was also intended to facilitate Washington's political goals in Southeast and Southwest Asia. Pakistan was a member of both SEATO and CENTO. Its opposition to American involvement in Vietnam and its ties to China...