Foreword: Under a maverick President Donald Trump, is America swinging back towards Pakistan? Or simply nettling India? In this mini-series, we do a fascinating replay of history since the 1940s – how the personalities of successive American presidents have had an outsized impact on the quicksilver, vacillating, even fraught, America-India-Pakistan equation. In four earlier episodes, we’ve covered the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George Bush Sr. Here, in Part 5, I will borrow from a popular Bollywood song –“it’s the time to Clinton” – for the charismatic Bill brought an energising verve and excitement in his outreach to India!
India and America Find Common Ground
For the US and India, the era of estrangement was over. The fall of the Berlin Wall eliminated the global threat of Communism, removing a major irritant in the relationship. America’s free-market democracy had emerged triumphant in the Cold War battle of the superpowers, and India saw where its future lay. Delhi’s 1991 embrace of economic reforms only accelerated the thaw; led by US corporations keen to capitalize on the world’s second biggest untapped market, the two countries stepped up their engagement, talking with—rather than at—each other. During the first Persian Gulf War, Delhi granted permission for US military planes en route from East Asia to refuel on Indian soil, heightening the sense of good will.
At the same time, Pakistan’s unwavering determination to build nuclear weapons and ongoing leniency toward terrorist groups seriously strained its ties with Washington. Though the Bush Sr’s administration never publicly named Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism—in the same league as Sudan, Iran, Syria and Cuba—privately it considered it to be one. Toward the end of Bush Sr’s presidency, Secretary of State James Baker wrote to Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, explicitly accusing Islamabad of supporting Muslim terrorists in Kashmir, as well as Sikh terrorists inside India.
‘Our information is certain,’ Nicholas Platt, the US ambassador to Pakistan, followed up in a curt memo. ‘If this situation persists, the Secretary of State may find himself required by law to place Pakistan on the state sponsors of terrorism list.’ Such threats succeeded mainly in compelling the Pakistanis to be more discreet. ‘We have been covering our tracks so far and will cover them even better in the future,’ ISI chief Javed Nasir reportedly told Sharif.
Pakistan’s Paranoia and the Rise of the Taliban
With the Soviets gone from Afghanistan and US weapons no longer forthcoming, Pakistan suddenly felt vulnerable. Isolated and plagued by insecurities, Islamabad allowed the Taliban to flourish.The ISI even reportedly brought the Taliban and Al Qaeda together, hoping that they might combine forces to train fighters to attack Indian targets in Kashmir. In that sense, Pakistan played an unintentional role in hatching the 9/11 plot, which was conceived inside training camps run jointly by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
During the eight years of the Clinton administration, Washington’s strategic shift from Pakistan to India became decidedly more pronounced. At first, Delhi actively pursued better relations with Washington, but the US was still preoccupied with the fallout from the Cold War and in any case concerned mainly with India’s commitment to non-proliferation.
By the start of Clinton’s second term, he was ready to focus on building Indo–US ties. That plan took a hit, however, when India unexpectedly tested five nuclear devices in 1998, sparking widespread criticism, economic sanctions, and a similar test by Pakistan. Though the US still couldn’t get India to sign the NPT, extensive talks between top officials cleared the air between them and created a new level of trust and understanding.
The tide had turned so much that when Pakistani-backed militants invaded Kargil in 1999, Washington pressured Islamabad to withdraw them promptly—a gesture that went a long way toward convincing India the US was serious about closer ties.
Clinton in India: A Diplomatic Triumph
The momentum peaked in a spectacular visit by Clinton to India in 2000—the first by a US president since Jimmy Carter in 1978. Accompanied by his wife, daughter and mother-in-law, the US President charmed everyone from politicians to local shopkeepers with his enthusiasm for Indian food, culture, and history. The massacre of threedozen Sikhs in Kashmir on the eve of his visit only heightened his empathy for the persistent terrorist threat India had endured. In a warm and well-received address to Parliament, Clinton expressed disappointment over Delhi’s refusal to sign the NPT but acknowledged, ‘Only India can determine its interests.’
He went on: ‘I share many of your government’s concerns about the course Pakistan is taking; your disappointment that past overtures have not always met with success; your outrage over recent violence,’ he said. ‘I know it is difficult to be a democracy bordered by nations whose governments reject democracy.
If that didn’t make Washington’s sentiments clear enough, Clinton capped his ‘five glorious days in India’ with ‘five grim hours in Pakistan,’ as Kux describes it—a stop added only after Beijing encouraged Islamabad to press for it.
A Tale of Two Visits: Clinton’s Cold Stopover in Pakistan
Even the nature of his arrival in each country underscored the stark difference in relations; in India, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh broke protocol to greet the USpresident’s entourage at the airport, while in Pakistan a decoy ‘Air Force One’ plane landed ahead of the real one to thwart any would-be assassins.
The White House allowed no photos of Clinton with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, while images of the USpresident with his Indian hosts flooded front pages everywhere. Meeting privately with Musharraf, Clinton implored him to crack down on militant groups waging attacks in Kashmir and to respect the ‘Line of Control’ dividing the region. And in a fifteen-minute television address to the Pakistani people, he acknowledged America’s long partnership with their country but blamed ‘violence and extremism’ for impeding its democratic progress. ‘This era does not reward people who struggle in vain to redraw borders with blood,’ he said. The message was clear: as far as Washington was concerned, Pakistan bore far more blame for the conflict in Kashmir than India did.
Postscript: In Part 6, we turn to the mercurial tenures of George Bush Jr, marked by the 9/11 attack in NY, and nuclear tango with India.