Pakistan, which played an important role in containing the spread of communism, continues to be of help to the US
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price recently commented in favour of advancing the “US-Pakistan partnership” in a manner that serves their “mutual interests.” Elsewhere, at the CNN News18 Town Hall, S. Jaishankar stated that a "lot of India's problems with Pakistan are directly attributable to the support that the United States gave to Pakistan." The link between the US support to Pakistan and India’s problems needs to be revisited.
Theoretically, the power of the weak states to attract the great powers has been well established. Weak states cannot defend themselves. Consequently, they seek financial and military aid in exchange for their strategic autonomy and the geostrategic location. Pakistan is one such state.
Soviet Union leader Stalin first extended an invitation to Pakistan PM Liaquat Ali Khan in 1949 to visit Moscow. The fundamental differences between an Islamist state and a communist Soviet prevented that entente; hence, Pakistan sided with the US and played an important role in containing the spread of communism.
By 1955, Pakistan had joined two regional defence pacts, the South East Asia Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization (Baghdad Pact). A little before 1955, in 1953, when Ayub Khan visited Turkey, he reiterated Dulles's 'northern tier defence pact' in which the two countries would occupy a prominent position. Later in 1954, the Turko-Iraqi agreement (Baghdad Pact) superseded the Turko-Pak plan.
Consequently, from 1953 to 1961, Islamabad received nearly $2 billion in US assistance, one-quarter of this in military aid. Apart from this data, information retrieved from the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicates that from 1955 to 1959, US arms exports amounted to $1.02 billion. When correlated with Pakistan's then financial situation, strong indications of a vicious cycle of US aid and US arms exports emerge. In the budding relationship between the two, the core security concerns of India, a democratic nonaligned country, were sidelined.
Upon India's vehement protests, oral assurances were given by Eisenhower to Nehru that the US would take care of the situation in a case of Pakistan's aggression against India. Thus, while India was idealistically following a nonaligned policy, Pakistan was hard bargaining its geostrategic location in lieu of military aid. According to the strategic experts, nearly four-fifths of all the foreign aid Pakistan received during 1951-60 came from the US. From the 1960s to the late 1970s, there was a brief period when US aid to Pakistan decreased.
The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan again allowed Pakistan to extract more aid from the US. In exchange for Pakistan's role in the Afghan war, a $400-million US aid was offered to Pakistan. It was rejected by the Zia-ul-Haq regime in 1980 and was labeled as 'peanuts.' Haq eyed the F-16, which Islamabad later got.
Thus, from 1983 to 1990, Pakistan received military aid of $3.73 billion along with 1,000 Stinger missiles, and the component of US arms sales was $2.2 billion. This was the same period when Pakistan's proxy war in Kashmir started, including the massacre of Kashmiri Hindus.
Also, at a regional level, many security experts attribute the birth of the Taliban to ISI and US agencies. Had the US assistance not been there, Pakistan would not have been so aggressive against India and its other neighbours, such as Afghanistan and Iran. Thus, the relationship between Pakistan and the US has always been based on a patron-client state wherein foreign or military aid is given to serve the US' geopolitical interests.
In the post-Cold War phase, Pakistan was reeling under sanctions due to its nuclear tests and was denied any military aid. However, the 9/11 attacks in the US again brought Pakistan to the forefront of Washington's South Asia policy. As per the SIPRI data, during 2002-14 Pakistan, as a major non-NATO ally, got military aid worth $5.81 billion and the arms sales component was $3.2 billion.
This was the same period when the Nandimarg massacre and Mumbai attacks took place. All these attacks were attributed to Pakistan. India collected the 'proof' and gave it to the US, hoping that the US might acknowledge it and help India. Little did India realise that the geopolitics of national interests, military aid, and arms trade are closely interrelated factors. Hence Pakistan was never labeled as a 'terrorist state' by the US.
It was only after Pakistan's backstabbing of the US in Afghanistan that former US president Donald Trump realised America's mistake and commented in 2018 that it had "foolishly" given aid and, in return, merely got "lies and deceit."
Today, despite Washington's zero-tolerance policy against terrorism and the backstabbing by Pakistan in Afghanistan, the US is all set to re-engage Pakistan, which will harm India's interests.
Given the evolving situation, India too is changing. The coupling of strategic autonomy and Atmanirbhar Bharat in the defence sector is the answer to the geopolitics of the patron-client relationship.
(The author is Assistant Professor, Central University of Punjab, Bathinda)
