archive: There's thaw on the Hill
There's thaw on the Hill
Chidanand Rajghatta
The Indian Express
July 23, 1999
Title: There's thaw on the Hill
Author: Chidanand Rajghatta
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 23, 1999
Introduction: How Washington used Kargil for a foreign policy course
correction.
Adrastic and possibly fundamental shift is taking place in American
policy towards India amid some thoughtful reflection in both
governments about whether they can carry the change beyond the
elections and electoral compulsions in both countries, besides
overriding the constituency of hawks and hard-linen on both sides.
There is now a sense here that the United States used the Kargil
episode to correct what many policy folks felt was a long history of
needless reserve towards India. "Pakistan, and its Kargil
misadventure, presented the perfect opportunity to pitchfork the
correction. The question now is: how do we move forwards" one of the
many administration officials who spoke to this correspondent on what
is being described, as the 'Kargil spring', said.
"Who would have thought we would arrive at this point only a year
after the nuclear tests? And that too with a BJP government?" another
official asked in wonderment, highlighting the vast diplomatic
distance covered between the two Countries, in just 12 months.
Underscoring this change is the meeting that Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright has sought with India's External Affairs Minister
Jaswant Singh on the margins of the Asean meeting in Sing4pore later
in the week. Singh was not scheduled to go to Singapore, but US
officials suggested that Madame Secretary would be pleased to meet
Singh.
"Yes, the word... the signal... went out from here," a State
Department mandarin acknowledged while speaking of the sea-change in
mood and language from a year ago when the two met under frost
conditions in Manila soon after the Indian nuclear tests,
The fact that Albright, who was slightly out of the loop on South
Asia, has suddenly decided to get back into the thick of things, has
caused trepidation among some Indian analysts who believe she is not
particularly well-disposed towards New Delhi.
"Her renewed interest is both good news and bad news. The Kargil
episode could have changed her, but on the other hand, her strong
personality and desire to get 'things done could push it all back,"
said one official.
But US analysts believe it is now the White House which is laying down
the line on India and the State Department - and many countries across
the world - are following it. According to several sources the
change, which was oil the cards at the start of Clinton's second term
but was derailed by the May 1998 nuclear tests, was reinitiated
through the White House - from the highest levels - and was
transmitted to the State Department and the Pentagon in the last week
of May and throughout June this year.
"The institutional bias in these places is being overturned," one
analyst close to the decision-making process said. "The question is
whether it can be sustained. But don't be surprised if things move
rapidly from here on."
>From the various accounts put together by Ale Indian Express, the
Clinton administration - like much of the world, and indeed the Indian
government - did not take the Kargil spat too seriously in the
beginning. When reports of the first clashes surfaced in the second
week of May, it was treated fairly routinely by the State Department's
Operations Center, the round-the-clock monitoring unit which alerts
the ad-ministration to flare-ups across the world.
Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott, with one eye on the Kosovo crisis,
gave it no more than a cursory look. Albright, who many Washington
pundits believe is being increasingly marginalised by the White House
National Security Council on foreign policy matters, paid little
attention. "Everyone assumed it was the usual shootouts that happen
after the snows melt;" one official said.
In fact, even as late as May 21, when Assistant Secretary of State for
South Asia Rick Inderfurth testified at a Senate hearing on the Hill,
Kargil was still not on Washington's radar. Senate committee chairman
Sam Brownback did not ask any questions either about the
fast-unfolding developments.
But even as Inderfurth was testifying, New Delhi was readying to press
its Air Force into the operation, signaling a sharp escalation in the
conflict. The next day, the White House convened an NSC meeting on
the situation in South Asia, with President Clinton and National
Security Advisor Sandy Berger calling for the latest reports.
NSC's South Asia experts, Special Advisor to the President Bruce
Riedel (who also handles the Middle East), and Deputy Director Don
Camp, a subcontinental expert who was earlier with the State
Department, scrambled to put together the briefs. Most crucially at
this point, intelligence reports that were slapped together showed
clearly who the aggressors were. "It was an open and shut case of
infiltration. There was no doubt about whose fault it was," one
official familiar with the developments said.
What also worked well for India at this time was that both Riedel and
Camp were familiar with the torrid history of the Kashmir dispute.
"To a leadership that was not entirely familiar with the implications
of Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz's claim that the LoC was not
well-defined, they were able to say, 'It damn well is'. That was the
first line that was laid down... that there is a defined LoC, the UN,
the US and the world knows it, and changing it by force is a no-no,"
one analyst said.
By then, it was also evident that the Kargil gambit was the handiwork
of the Pakistani army and the generals might have forced Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif's hand. In Washington, it is no secret that the
previous army chief, Jahangir Karamat, was a blue-eyed boy of the
Pentagon. Schooled in Fort Leavenworth, he was regarded as a sober,
restrained and deliberate soldier, not given to flamboyance or
ad-venture. When Sharif eased him out him last year-after he called
for the formation of a national security council to ensure
civilian-military coordination - there was some dismay, but Washington
refrained from making a fuss, recognising the primacy of a civilian
prime minister in taking such decisions. But Musharraf was largely an
unknown entity in Washington.
There was also consternation in Washington at the rabid rhetoric and
nuclear brinkmanship that was emanating from Islamabad. In what was
seen in Washington as brazen nuclear blackmail, Pakistani politicians
were saying in effect that if the Kashmir dispute was not resolved,
they would unleash a nuclear war in the subcontinent (the first strike
would have to come from Islamabad, since India's no-first strike
commitment was universally accepted).
"If the best thing India ever did in this episode was not crossing the
LoC, the worst thing the Pakistanis did was talking repeatedly of a
nuclear strike," a state department official said (There were stray
calls for a nuclear strike from the Indian side too, including, as one
US official pointed out, from an oped article in the RSS mouthpiece
Panchajanya, but it stopped when the RSS leadership realised how
foolish and dangerous it was).
The White House then decided that Gen. Anthony Zinni, chief of
CentCom, would go to Islamabad to dampen some of the Pakistani
ardour. Sending Zinni accomplished two purposes: One, as commander of
the CentCom theater under whose jurisdiction Pakistan falls (India
comes under the Pacific Command), he knew the country's military
inside out - institutionally, infrastructurally and individually.
Two, it would also reassure India that it was not at the receiving end
of a military dressing-down
Foreign diplomats in Washington say it was actually a very clever
piece of diplomacy. It was the first signal to the world about .who
the US thought was to blame. To further reinforce this, Washington
sent E. Gibson Lanpher, a deputy assistant secretary who is fairly low
down in the State Department pecking order, to brief New Delhi on the
Zinni mission. The message: iron fist to Pakistan, velvet glove to
India.
American officials say reports that Zinni actually told the Pakistanis
that the US would "take our" their nukes if they even as much as
prepared to launch them was hyperbolic (one school of explanation is
that the missile attack against Osama Bin Laden's terrorist camps was
also aimed at showing to the Pakistanis). But most certainly, the
Pakistanis were asked to back off and behave. In fact, it was during
Zinni's trip that Sharif's Washington trip was first mooted. Although
the US wanted to keep the lid on the proposal, General Musharraf blew
the whistle, saying Sharif would soon be meeting Clinton.
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