US- South Asia relations - Revision history

Jyoti: /* The Making of US Foreign Policy for South Asia */

2025-06-14T19:13:55Z

‎The Making of US Foreign Policy for South Asia

Pdewan at 21:36, 2 June 2025

2025-06-02T21:36:32Z

Jyoti at 09:46, 6 October 2020

2020-10-06T09:46:09Z

Pdewan at 22:57, 7 July 2015

2015-07-07T22:57:48Z

Pdewan: /* India as Regional Hegemon and US Ally? */

2015-02-21T19:56:08Z

‎India as Regional Hegemon and US Ally?

Pdewan: /* India as Regional Hegemon and US Ally? */

2015-02-21T19:54:03Z

‎India as Regional Hegemon and US Ally?

Pdewan at 19:50, 21 February 2015

2015-02-21T19:50:56Z

Pdewan: /* US foreign policy for south Asia after the cold war era */

2015-02-21T19:42:41Z

‎US foreign policy for south Asia after the cold war era

Pdewan: /* US foreign policy for south Asia after the cold war era */

2015-02-21T19:40:07Z

‎US foreign policy for south Asia after the cold war era

Pdewan at 19:35, 21 February 2015

2015-02-21T19:35:49Z

Show changes

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:13, 14 June 2025
Line 219:		Line 219:
	srudolph@midway.uchicago.edu		srudolph@midway.uchicago.edu

		+
		+	=India- Pakistan issues=
		+	==1947-2025==
		+	[https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-history/us-role-in-india-pakistan-issues-history-10044015/ Yashee, June 8, 2025: ''The Indian Express'']
		+
		+	''' US role India Pakistan conflict: What is India's hyphenation with Pakistan, and why does New Delhi oppose it? Why is New Delhi against third party intervention? And what has the US role been in India-Pakistan hostilities in the past? We explain. '''
		+
		+
		+	US role India Pakistan conflict: US President Donald Trump has yet again claimed that he “got India and Pakistan to stop fighting” by using trade talks as a bargaining chip. “We talk trade, and we say we can’t trade with people who are shooting at each other and potentially using nuclear weapons… They understood and they agreed, and that all stopped,” Trump said on May 31.
		+
		+	New Delhi has repeatedly emphasised that the recent ceasefire in Operation Sindoor came after bilateral talks with Pakistan, and that trade with US did not figure in the calculations.
		+
		+	While Trump is known for making extraordinary statements, his claims of “stopping a potential nuclear war” between India and Pakistan touch a raw nerve for New Delhi.
		+
		+	Trump’s rhetoric — deliberately or unwittingly — is ‘hyphenating’ India and Pakistan again, something India has long fought against. Secondly, it goes against India’s established position that its problems with Pakistan have to be resolved bilaterally, without the need for third party intervention. And as far as third parties go, the US on many occasions has acted more in Pakistan’s interests than India’s.
		+
		+	What is India’s hyphenation with Pakistan, and why does New Delhi oppose it? Why is New Delhi against third party intervention? And what has the USA’s role been in India-Pakistan hostilities in the past? We explain.
		+
		+	''' ‘Betrayal’ and hyphenation at the UN '''
		+
		+	The history of the hyphenation and of India’s distrust of third parties are intertwined.
		+
		+	Barely two months after independence in August 1947, infiltrators from Pakistan attacked Jammu and Kashmir. Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten advised India to go to the UN, which it did on January 1, 1948. India had expected that its rights over a territory which legitimately acceded to it would be respected at the UN. However, the British did not support India, which many Indians perceived as a betrayal.
		+
		+	Historian Ramachandra Guha writes (in the book India after Gandhi) of the January-February 1948 UN sessions, “India suffered a significant symbolic defeat when the Security Council altered the agenda item from the ‘Jammu and Kashmir question’ to the ‘India-Pakistan question’.”
		+
		+	This is how the formal hyphenation on international fora began. India’s objection to this treatment broadly are — such a framing puts India and Pakistan on the same level when the two parties are not comparable actors, India is the victim of Pakistan’s territorial aggression; and that India’s identity, as a democratic country and significant economy, can’t be tied to Pakistan’s. New Delhi believes that the world should engage with India in its own right and not as one half of a conflict zone. This is a goal it has been able to achieve to a large degree.
		+
		+	The UN episode also put India off bringing in bigger powers, while Pakistan preferred internationalising the Kashmir issue.
		+	During the Cold War years, the West, led by the US, saw Pakistan as a critical ally in the tussle with the Soviet Union, while the non-aligned India was considered less dependable. Later, the war in Afghanistan and the US ‘war on terror’ ensured Pakistan’s importance for the US and the West, often to India’s disadvantage.
		+
		+	Also, India with its potential to emerge as a leader of the Global South, does not believe it depends on bigger powers to help solve its problems.
		+
		+	''' The role of the US '''
		+
		+	To understand this in brief, the USA’s actions during four wars fought by India can be considered.
		+
		+	Alongside this, India and US have had a storied bilateral relationship quite independent of the Pakistan issue.
		+
		+	The 1947 India-Pakistan war: Quite contrary to what Trump is doing now, in 1947, the US wanted India and Pakistan to resolve their issues bilaterally.
		+
		+	A position paper sent by the US Secretary of State to the embassy in India says, “We would much prefer that the Kashmir question be settled by direct negotiation between India and Pakistan. However, in the event that a resolution requesting the intervention of the United Nations, and in particular requesting the United Nations to supervise a referendum in Kashmir, is introduced by India or Pakistan and supported by the United Kingdom, the United States Delegation should also support the resolution.”
		+
		+	The 1962 India-China war: In this war, the US helped India, airlifting military supplies. However, it used the goodwill thus generated to get together with the UK and pressure India to talk to Pakistan. Six rounds of talks were held, with no progress.
		+
		+	Then US Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles wrote about that period, “We had also—rather ineptly—seized upon India’s acute need for US assistance as a lever to force India to make concessions to the Pakistanis in regard to Kashmir, which no democratic Indian Government could make and survive.”
		+
		+	While the fighting was on, then US President John F Kennedy is believed to have stopped Pakistan from opening another front against India. Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow of the American think tank Brookings, wrote in 2015, “Then Pakistan President Ayub Khan told Kennedy that he wanted “compensation” from India in Kashmir for Pakistan’s neutrality during the war. Kennedy made clear to Ayub that no such compensation would be tolerated, and that Pakistani intervention in the war in the Himalayas would be seen by Washington as a hostile act.”
		+
		+	The 1971 India-Pakistan war: This was the time the US backed Pakistan most forcefully and publicly, even dispatching warships towards the Bay of Bengal.
		+
		+	The US Department of State has a website called Office of the Historian. Its article on the 1971 war says that as Pakistan had recently helped the US and China start diplomatic ties, Washington decided to back Pakistan against India, but the “action against the mass protests in East Pakistan was well-publicized and widely condemned, which limited the extent to which the US Government was willing to help the Pakistani Government…”
		+
		+	Eventually, America’s actions during this war damaged its prestige “in both nations, in Pakistan for failing to help prevent the loss of East Pakistan and in India for supporting the brutality of the Pakistani regime’s actions…”
		+
		+	The Kargil war of 1999: If the previous war had seen the US veer very close to Pakistan, the Kargil war redefined its relationship with India.
		+
		+	Riedel wrote in 2019, “When the US determined that Pakistan had deliberately violated the Line of Control near Kargil, [then President Bill] Clinton did not hesitate to blame Pakistan for risking a broader war. For the first time, an American administration was siding publicly with India against Pakistani aggression.”
		+
		+	Clinton played a major role in getting Pakistan to retreat behind the LOC.
		+
		+	After this, Clinton visited the subcontinent in 2000. He was the first US President to come to India in over 20 years. He spent five days in India, in contrast with just a few hours in Pakistan.
		+
		+	Apart from these wars, the US has also worked to defuse tensions after the Parliament attack in 2001 and the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008.
		+
		+	However, preventing tensions from escalating is different from meditating on Kashmir or other bilateral issues, which Trump has been making claims and offers about.
		+
		+	[[Category:Foreign Relations\|U US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONSUS- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS
		+	US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS]]
		+	[[Category:India\|U US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONSUS- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS
		+	US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS]]
		+	[[Category:Pakistan\|U US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONSUS- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS
		+	US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS]]
		+	[[Category:Politics\|U US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONSUS- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS
		+	US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS]]
		+	[[Category:USA\|U US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONSUS- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS
		+	US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS]]

	=YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS=		=YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS=

@@ Line 12: / Line 12: @@
-=From=
-[http://political-science.uchicago.edu/faculty/rudolphs/us-asia.pdf '' Economic and Political Weekly '' February 25, 2006/ UChicago]
-=Authors=
-LLOYD I RUDOLPH, SUSANNE HOEBER RUDOLPH
 =The Making of US Foreign Policy for South Asia=
 ==Offshore Balancing in Historical Perspective==
 ===Introduction===
@@ Line 250: / Line 251: @@
 US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS]]
 [[Category:USA|U
 US- SOUTH ASIA RELATIONS]]

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 |}
-[[Category:India |U ]]
-[[Category:Politics |U ]]
-[[Category:India |U ]]
-[[Category:Pakistan |U ]]
-[[Category:USA |U ]]
-[[Category: Foreign Relations |U ]]
 =From=
 [http://political-science.uchicago.edu/faculty/rudolphs/us-asia.pdf '' Economic and Political Weekly '' February 25, 2006/ UChicago]
@@ Line 217: / Line 217: @@
 srudolph@midway.uchicago.edu

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 |}
-[[Category:India | ]]
+[[Category:India |U ]]
-[[Category:Politics | ]]
+[[Category:Politics |U ]]
 [[Category:India |U ]]
 [[Category:Pakistan |U ]]
 [[Category:USA |U ]]
-[[Category: Foreign Relations |U]]
+[[Category: Foreign Relations |U ]]
 =From=
 [http://political-science.uchicago.edu/faculty/rudolphs/us-asia.pdf '' Economic and Political Weekly '' February 25, 2006/ UChicago]

@@ Line 176: / Line 176: @@
 '' Note 32: The heart of the offer of “advanced defence equipment” seems to have been access to F-16s, including possible co-production.  ''Outlook’s ''  cover story on the offer was headlined “No thanks, Mr Bush”.  Outlook  gave five reasons the Indian Air Force was “not keen on the US fighter: Setting up maintenance facilities for the F-16 could cost nearly Rs 10,000 crore [a crore = 10 million; $1.00 = Rs 45]. This is above the Rs 13,500 crore that has to be budgeted to purchase the 126 multi-role aircraft; the US has low reliability on supply of spares and after sales support; the F-16 is a 30-year old design. The US air force no longer purchases the aircraft; there are better or comparable aircraft in the reckoning which could cost less to induct in the long run; the Mirage 2000-5, which the air force is keen on, comes with a modular design which can easily be upgraded. It can be put to use till 2015. The F-16 cannot be upgraded” ( '' Outlook: The Weekly Newsmagazine ''  , April 11, 2005, p 40). ''
- Sometimes India seemed inclined to bandwagon with the US, sometimes to balance against it and sometimes to act on its own in a multipolar world. Acting on its own hasn’t always suited the Bush administration’s global agenda. When secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited New Delhi on March 16, 2005, she made it clear that America’s global secu- rity interests took priority over India’s efforts to become more energy indepen- dent and to do so in ways that encouraged regional cooperation. According to the April 2005 number of  India Review , a publication of the embassy of India, Washington DC: “The two sides differed over their approach to Iran, with secretary Rice expressing her country’s ‘concern over India’s move to source natural gas from Iran through a proposed $ 5 billion pipeline that would run through Pakistan’ ”. Not only would the gas pipeline project help India meet its increasingly severe need for additional sources of energy  33  but also it would break with five decades of Indian and Pakistani intransigence about regional economic and security coopera- tion. Indian and Pakistani interdependence and mutual benefit on the gas pipeline project would require cooperation and reduce the risk of regional war between the nuclear-armed neighbours. 34
+Sometimes India seemed inclined to bandwagon with the US, sometimes to balance against it and sometimes to act on its own in a multipolar world. Acting on its own hasn’t always suited the Bush administration’s global agenda. When secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited New Delhi on March 16, 2005, she made it clear that America’s global secu- rity interests took priority over India’s efforts to become more energy indepen- dent and to do so in ways that encouraged regional cooperation. According to the April 2005 number of  India Review , a publication of the embassy of India, Washington DC: “The two sides differed over their approach to Iran, with secretary Rice expressing her country’s ‘concern over India’s move to source natural gas from Iran through a proposed $ 5 billion pipeline that would run through Pakistan’ ”. Not only would the gas pipeline project help India meet its increasingly severe need for additional sources of energy  33  but also it would break with five decades of Indian and Pakistani intransigence about regional economic and security coopera- tion. Indian and Pakistani interdependence and mutual benefit on the gas pipeline project would require cooperation and reduce the risk of regional war between the nuclear-armed neighbours. 34
 '' Note 33: In 2005 India was the world’s fifth largest consumer of energy. It was importing 70 per cent of its rapidly mounting oil consumption. In another 20 years the Indian government estimates it will be importing 85 per cent (‘Hunger for Energy...’  '' The New York Times '' , June 5, 2005). ''

@@ Line 154: / Line 154: @@
 '' Note 26: Ashley Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. Previously, he served as a senior adviser to Robert Blackwill, US ambassador to India and on the national security council staff. For eight years he was a senior policy analyst at RAND. ''
-''Note 27:
+''Note 27: Ashley J Tellis,'' ‘South Asian Seesaw: A New US Policy on the Subcontinent’, '' Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Policy Brief, May 2005. http://www.carneigieendowment.org/files/ PB38.pdf. The warrants for Tellis’ assertion here is “senior officials” who “revealed through a background briefing on the day [March 25, 2005]... of the president’s phone call [about the sale of F-16s to Pakistan] to [India’s prime minister Manmohan] Singh, that the United States had in fact reached the decision to ‘help India become a major power in the twenty-first century ’ ” (our emphasis), p 1 ''
 Tellis was trying to persuade India to join Pakistan as an ally of the US, the world’s only superpower. 28

@@ Line 69: / Line 69: @@
 Osama bin Laden, Pakistan again became a frontline state for the US in an American- led war against terrorism, a war that included Pakistan’s erstwhile ally, Afghanistan’s Taliban government. Again the US was “tilting” towards Pakistan in the south Asian region by supplying it with military and economic aid. In the name of a presidential global strategy, the US was again poised to destabilise the south Asia region by challenging India’s potential hegemonic role. Pakistan again became the vehicle for the US to engage in offshore balancing in the south Asia region.9
-'' We take the term “offshore balancer” from John Mearsheimer’s  '' The Tragedy of Great Power Politics '', W W Norton, New York, 2002. Peter Gowan inil  ''‘A Calculus of Power’,''   New Left Review , July/August 2002, No 47, critiques the concept of offshore balancer as it appears in that book.''
+'' We take the term “offshore balancer” from John Mearsheimer’s  '' The Tragedy of Great Power Politics '', W W Norton, New York, 2002. Peter Gowan in  ''‘A Calculus of Power’,''   New Left Review , July/August 2002, No 47, critiques the concept of offshore balancer as it appears in that book.''
 But there was a difference; this time the US was trying to enlist India as well as Pakistan in a common cause, the “war against terrorism”.