Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is trying to foster stronger ties with India but she’s running into a problem that has dogged U.S. policy makers for years: the issue of U.S. ties and arm sales to Pakistan.
Rice has said that ties to India both countries have never been better. But her talks in New Delhi hit a snag, Reuters reports, “over a pipeline from Iran and the possible sale of F-16s to Pakistan.”
Keep in mind that India and Pakistan have clashed several times in a series of wars, starting with the 1947-1948 Indo-Pakistan conflicting following India’s independence which created India and Pakistan out of the British Raj’s India.
During the Nixon administration when I was a student and later a journalist in New Delhi Indian, officials and journalists bitterly accused the United States of “tilting” to Pakistan in the third Indo-Pakistan conflict in 1971. It later came out that the Nixon administration and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in particular was using Pakistan to help build bridges to China so that U.S-Chinese relations could be established. In the meantime, India felt jilted and had signed a 20 year Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet Union.
The United States is now caught in a pincer between these two countries that have been growling at each other for some 50 years:
Rice told her hosts that Washington — seeking to apply pressure on Iran over what it says is a secret nuclear weapons program — was concerned over plans for a $4 billion gas pipeline from Iran through Pakistan to energy-hungry India.
“We have communicated to the Indian government our concerns about the gas pipeline cooperation between Iran and India,” she told reporters after meeting Foreign Minister Natwar Singh.
And then there’s this:
Indo-Pakistani tensions have eased since the two sides began talks last year aimed at ending half a century of enmity.
But New Delhi has opposed U.S. arms sales to Pakistan including F-16 fighters, saying these were aimed against India, while Pakistan has expressed concern about any move by Washington to sell Patriot anti-missile systems to India.
So U.S. will have to act with care once again because every move it makes has consquences for its relations with Pakistan, our ally in the war against terror, and India, the world’s largest democracy.
UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal today focuses on Rice getting ready to offer both countires F-16s — and says this policy has profound implications:
The high-profile sales would be a major policy shift for the U.S. and a step toward tacit U.S. acceptance of both countries’ pursuit of nuclear weapons. They also could draw charges of a double standard from European countries, as the U.S. has been criticizing European Union plans to lift an arms embargo on China.
It also noted that India could reject Washington’s offer since it’s still stung over U.S. sanctions against it imposed after India’s nuclear test in 1998 but gradually lifted after 911. The bottom line for India: it became dependent on the U.S. and Indian policymakers don’t like that:
India is negotiating with arms suppliers from Russia, France and Sweden for as many as 200 new jets, and bids from those countries could trump the U.S. offer. Traditionally, India’s main military supplier has been Russia.
Once again, if you look at the long history going back to the Nixon administration, India seemingly feels like lover jilted in a love triangle. India and Pakistan even in calm times remain wary and the U.S. often chooses Pakistan interests over Indian interests. So the game goes on…..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, writes a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.