above all the need to deal with immediate security threats. That Pakistanis like
Aitzaz Ahsan would quarrel with Washington’s priorities, if not necessarily
with the American people or way of life, is unsurprising. These quarrels are
likely to resurface until U.S. officials gain confidence that Pakistan’s civilian
democrats are not merely more popularly legitimate than (or morally superior
to) their military counterparts, but that they are also better at running the
country and managing relations with Washington. Only then can America’s
democratic principles and security interests achieve an easy harmony.
the anti-americanism of pakistan’s nationalists
Returning to the depths of the Cold War, Eisenhower’s successors in the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations had even less patience for Pakistan.
Their perspectives had everything to do with the evolution of the Cold War
and their strategies for waging it.
On January 6, 1961, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a secret
speech to a closed-door meeting of some of the principal organizations for
the formulation and dissemination of official Soviet ideology.38 In a summary
text released by the Kremlin just two days before Kennedy’s inauguration,
Khrushchev declared ominously, “We will beat the United States with small
wars of liberation. We will nibble them to exhaustion all over the globe, in
South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.”39
37 Aitzaz Ahsan speech to the American Bar Association, New York, August 9, 2008, http://apps
.americanbar.org/rol/luncheon_08/aitzaz_ahsan_speech_8-9-2008.pdf.
38 “Hearing before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Internal Security Laws,” Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, June 16, 1961,”
http://www.foia.cia.gov/BerlinWall/1961-Spring/1961-06-16.pdf.
39 Frederick Kempe, Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011), p. 78.
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No Exit from Pakistan
The speech caught the eye of young President Kennedy. The new presi-
dent probably should have given greater weight, in ways Eisenhower did, to
the fact that Khrushchev was prone to rhetorical bluster of this sort. In fact,
Khrushchev had taken a number of steps to reach out to the incoming President
Kennedy, hoping that he might be a more cooperative partner than his Repub-
lican predecessor.40 Kennedy should also have been advised that Khrushchev’s
words were primarily directed not at the United States but at the Chinese in
a vain attempt to manage their revolutionary appeal within the communist
world.
Instead, Kennedy read a great deal into the speech. He told his advisers,
“You’ve got to understand it, and so does everybody else around here. This
is our clue to the Soviet Union.”41 He believed Khrushchev was launching
a new “campaign to seize control of anti-colonial and other revolutionary
movements in the Third World.”42 Already inclined to worry that the Soviets
were on the march and that the Eisenhower administration had been too lax
in its response, Kennedy determined that Khrushchev’s speech demanded an
immediate response.
Kennedy’s first State of the Union speech, in January 1961, provided that
opportunity. He called on the Pentagon to “reappraise our entire defense strat-
egy,” and warned darkly that “Each day, the crises multiply. Each day, their
solution grows more difficult. Each day, we draw nearer the hour of maximum
danger, as weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger.”43 In transform-
ing this rhetoric into action, President Kennedy – and after his assassination
President Johnson – expanded civilian and military assistance to a wide range
of states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Prominent among these states
was India, a country Kennedy considered a major battleground in the anti-
communist struggle. In the spring of 1961, Kennedy requested $500 million
in economic assistance for New Delhi and only $400 million for the rest of
the world.44 This was three times what the Eisenhower administration had
requested for India just the year before.45
Another major strategic shift also took place in the 1960s. After the har-
rowing Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 passed without degenerating into
nuclear war, senior U.S. officials started to view the Soviet Union as relatively
less radical in intent than communist, nuclear-armed China. By mid-decade,
Beijing and Moscow had parted ways; they no longer posed the monolithic
communist threat perceived by Eisenhower and Dulles. So concerned were
40 Kempe, Berlin 1961, pp. 73–5.
41 Michael R. Beschloss, The Crisis Years (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 61.
42 Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 208.
43 Beschloss, The Crisis Years, p. 63.
44 McMahon, Cold War in the Periphery, p. 277.
45 Dennis Kux, India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, 1941–1991 (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1992), p. 186.
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Why Do They Hate Us?
85
U.S. officials about the Chinese that in 1964 the Johnson administration seri-
ously considered – but in the end did not endorse – a policy of cooperation with
Moscow to counter China. Washington even debated the wisdom of “preven-
tive military action” against Beijing’s nuclear facilities.46
For U.S. policy in South Asia, context was everything. Whereas Dulles had
placed Pakistan in the context of his “Northern Tier” defense strategy for
the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, Kennedy and Johnson saw Pakistan and
India within the context of the global threat posed by the appeal of Soviet-
style development and revolutionary China. Unlike Dulles, who saw Nehru’s
India as irresponsible and hypocritical, the subsequent two administrations
saw in India a potential Asian bulwark against communist expansion. Unlike
Dulles, who viewed Pakistan as a steadfast ally, Kennedy viewed Pakistan as
irresponsible and prone to adventurism, while Johnson became increasingly
frustrated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s anti-imperialist rhetoric, particularly as the
United States sank into the morass of Vietnam.
Washington’s response to two wars in the region clarified its new stance
and sent shockwaves through Pakistan. In the autumn of 1962, India badly
miscalculated its military balance with China. A long-standing border dispute
spiraled out of New Delhi’s control when Chinese forces overwhelmed Indian
positions in the country’s north and east. By November, India’s leaders feared
that China might strike Calcutta and could even seize control over much of
eastern India. The Kennedy administration, confronting Soviet adventurism
in the Cuban Missile
Crisis at almost the same time, saw an opportunity to
confront another face of communist aggression. The White House quickly
agreed to send emergency military aid to India, which was now embroiled in a
full-scale war, and followed up by moving the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier task force to the Bay of Bengal in a show of support. Eventually, however,
it was Beijing’s own restraint that ended the war. In mid-November, China
declared a unilateral cease-fire. Chinese troops then pulled back from eastern
India but retained control over the areas that Beijing had from the start claimed
as its own.47
Not surprisingly, Pakistan was enraged by America’s assistance to India.
Washington had come to the aid of Pakistan’s worst enemy. As General Ayub
pointed out to anyone who would listen, it had done so in spite of the fact
that, quite unlike Pakistan, India had done nothing to cast its lot with the anti-
communist world.48 Eventually, Ayub argued, India would use its American-
supplied military equipment against Pakistan. Moreover, the Sino-Indian war
had taken place at the same time that Pakistan was drawing closer to China,
46 Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 210.
47 For more on the war, see Kux, India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, pp. 201–8.
48 Mohammed Ayub Khan, “The Pakistan-American Alliance: Stresses and Strains,” Foreign Affairs, 42, no. 2 (January 1964), pp. 195–209.
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86
No Exit from Pakistan
normalizing relations in the hope that the relationship would provide another
means to balance against India.49
For all of these reasons, Washington’s standing with Pakistan suffered after
1962. But it was U.S. policy during Pakistan’s 1965 war with India that
knocked the relationship to a new low. Resolved to neutrality in a war that
had no potential benefit to the United States whatever its outcome, Washington
suspended military aid to both India and Pakistan. Washington felt no need
to come to Pakistan’s defense since it viewed Pakistan as the aggressor, not a
hapless victim. As a further slap in Pakistan’s face, the Johnson administra-
tion left the management of postwar negotiations to Moscow, which Pakistan
assumed would be biased in India’s favor. The final straw came later that year,
when President Johnson explained to General Ayub that the alliance, at least
in anything resembling its earlier form, was over.50
In Pakistani eyes, the U.S. abandonment was complete; not only was Wash-
ington content to walk away when Pakistan’s partnership was less prized, but
the Americans were even willing to abandon their ally to India’s depredations
without remorse. Bhutto, who had by then emerged as a chief critic of the Amer-
ican alliance, saw America’s “betrayal” as a confirmation of his long-standing
distrust.51 But 1965 was a bitter pill to swallow for many other Pakistanis
who had perceived their alliance with the United States primarily as a means
to secure their nation against India. Most chose to cast blame on Washington
rather than to accept responsibility for their own leaders’ disastrous decision
to start another war over Kashmir. Pakistani leaders ignored the fact that the
United States had promised only to defend against unprovoked aggressors, not
to provide assistance if Pakistan picked a fight with India.52
That said, Pakistanis were correct to conclude that U.S. policy toward Pak-
istan had been dictated by broader Cold War calculations and not by any spe-
cific American interest in Pakistan per se. This remained the case throughout
the Nixon administration. Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security advi-
sor at the time of the next major Indo-Pakistani war in 1971, explains that
Washington’s decision to tilt in Pakistan’s favor during that war was entirely a
consequence of Washington’s plan to approach China and to peel it away from
the Soviet camp.53 “Pakistan was our only channel to China,” Kissinger writes.
“We had no other means of communication with Peking. A major American
initiative of fundamental importance to the global balance of power could not
49 McMahon, Cold War on the Periphery, p. 285.
50 McMahon, Cold War on the Periphery, p. 335.
51 Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 225.
52 Kux notes two important conversations prior to 1965 that suggest the United States might well have come to Pakistan’s defense had it been the target of unprovoked Indian aggression, an event Kennedy considered very unlikely. See Kux, The United States and Pakistan, 1947–2000, p. 145.
53 “The Tilt: The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971,” National Security Archive, December 16, 2002, http://www.gwu.edu/∼nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB79/.
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Why Do They Hate Us?
87
have survived” if Pakistan had been left to India’s mercy.54 That choice cast
America as the villain in Indian eyes for decades to come.
Nixon’s pro-Pakistan tilt won Americans relatively little credit in Pakistani
eyes. U.S. policies had not saved Pakistan from dismemberment or humilia-
its connection with Beijing, and once the dramatic opening to China had been
achieved, Pakistan lost even the utility perceived by Nixon and Kissinger. The
subsequent Carter administration found even fewer reasons to invest in part-
nership with Pakistan.
Dr. A. Q. Khan
Pakistan did not ride this roller-coaster comfortably; no self-respecting state
appreciates being treated as a pawn in another’s game. And yet as the U.S.-
Pakistan relationship wore on, it was Pakistan’s own behavior, especially its
decision to develop a nuclear arsenal over American objections, which created
the deepest rifts with the United States.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, that towering figure of Pakistani politics, played a cen-
tral role in the early stages of Pakistan’s nuclear drama. Driven by a deep nation-
alism and an over-arching fear of India, he kick-started Pakistan’s nuclear quest
in the early 1970s. He declared in 1965, “If India builds the bomb, we will
eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. We have
no other choice.”55 In the process, Bhutto was joined by a range of other Pak-
istani nationalists, among them the now-infamous Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan,
who shared Bhutto’s fear of India and skepticism about the United States, not
his leftist ideology.
A. Q. Khan was born in present-day India and only made his way to Pakistan
in 1952, five years after independence. Khan appears never to have forgotten the
trauma of Partition. In order to pursue his scientific studies, he moved to Europe
in the early 1960s. Nothing about this early period of his life suggested any
particular ideological or religious commitment. By
1972, Khan had married a
Dutch-speaking, British-South African dual national named Henny. The couple
had two young girls and seemed destined for a comfortable and productive life
in the Netherlands. Khan’s Dutch colleagues considered him an affable and
generous character. That changed years later when they learned what he had
done right under their noses.
Khan’s work at a highly classified (but poorly secured) facility devoted to
uranium enrichment exposed him to technologies essential to producing the
54 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 913.
55 Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 9. A new, comprehensive history of the Pakistani nuclear program takes this quote for its title: Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).
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No Exit from Pakistan
type of fuel required for a nuclear bomb. On his own initiative, Khan started
stealing plans and equipment for Pakistan’s own fledgling nuclear program in
1974. In 1976, before the Dutch could arrest him, Khan fled to Pakistan with
his family. Once there, Prime Minister Bhutto put him in charge of his own
program to build Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. That program was eventually
named the Khan Research Laboratory (KRL) in his honor. Khan’s successes
in this endeavor – in addition to his tireless self-promotion – earned him the
sobriquet “father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb.”56
In later years, Khan would become the world’s most notorious prolifera-
tor of nuclear technology. By way of an illicit global supply network, he sold
nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.57 More than his scientific
know-how, his genius was his ability to circumvent international controls on
restricted technologies and to stay one step ahead of foreign intelligence agen-
cies. U.S. pressure finally forced President Musharraf to remove Khan from
KRL’s management in 2001, and in 2004 overwhelming evidence of his pro-