GALBRAITH’S MEMOIRS make it clear that, even as he faced the Chinese threat, he had to devote an equal measure of his energy and skill to managing Indo-Pakistani relations. Pakistan promptly sought to exploit India’s distress. Ayub’s government suggested to the American embassy in Karachi that Pakistani neutrality in the war could be assured by Indian concessions in Kashmir. Implicitly, an Indian refusal would bring Pakistan into the war. China tried to sweeten the deal by offering a nonaggression pact with Pakistan. Galbraith writes that throughout the crisis:

My concern . . . was about equally divided between helping the Indians against the Chinese and keeping peace between the Indians and Pakistanis. . . . The nightmare of a combined attack by Pakistan and China, with the possibility of defeat, collapse and even anarchy in India, was much on my mind.

In short, at a defining early moment in U.S.-Indian relations, when China and India were military adversaries, America found itself trying to manage the Indo-Pakistani rivalry to avoid Armageddon in India. Pakistan was outraged that America was arming its rival and wanted to be bought off in Kashmir. Working with his American and British counterparts in Karachi, Galbraith persuaded India and Pakistan to begin a dialogue on Kashmir. Nehru reluctantly agreed. Galbraith describes him as a much-diminished prime minister. He had devoted his entire life to Indian independence but now was forced to rely on Washington and London. American C-130s were delivering vital military aid, and an American aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise, was visiting Madras to show tangible support.

Galbraith suggested to Kennedy in one of his private letters that the United States and United Kingdom seize the opportunity to quietly move toward a Kashmir settlement. Galbraith opposed a territorial settlement; he envisioned a much more subtle deal that would transform the entire nature of South Asian politics, a fundamental rapprochement based on regional cooperation that would make Kashmir largely irrelevant. In a letter to the president on December 6, 1962, the ambassador wrote:

It would be fatal, however, to show hesitancy at this moment when [the Indians] are relying on us and when the fear of the Chinese is so great. Now that we have got the Kashmir issue out in the open—a significant achievement in itself—we must press it but in such a manner as not to involve ourselves in the inbuilt antagonisms between the two countries. We must continue to make it clear to the Indians that it is their task, not ours and not Pakistan’s. In my view, incidentally, Kashmir is not soluble in territorial terms. But by holding up the example of the way in which France and Germany have moved to soften their antagonism by the Common Market and common instruments of administration, including such territorial disputes as that over the Saar, there is a chance of getting the Indo-Pakistan dialogue into constructive channels.

Galbraith had reached the right conclusion about the proper American role in South Asia in the midst of a terrible crisis.

Instead of Galbraith’s sophisticated approach, the Kennedy team joined forces with the British on a more conventional policy. After letters from JFK to Ayub and Nehru, the two South Asian leaders reluctantly agreed to resume bilateral discussions on Kashmir, with American and British diplomats pushing each side to compromise on territorial offers. On the eve of the first round, Pakistan’s new foreign minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, announced that China and Pakistan had reached an agreement to demarcate their border in Kashmir. China received a considerable concession of territory from historic Kashmir. The Indians were furious. After being attacked and invaded by China, India now saw Pakistan giving away part of the territory still in dispute and about which bilateral negotiations were about to commence. Bhutto maintained the Chinese had tricked him into prematurely announcing the deal. The United States and Britain accepted this farce; Nehru did not. Talks began, but they were destined to fail. After six desultory rounds, they collapsed.

Kennedy began his presidential tenure eager to build the ties with India that had languished under Eisenhower and Truman. By the time of his death, the United States was helping build a new Indian Army with six mountain divisions to face China. But Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, would not sell India high-performance jet aircraft like the F-104s Pakistan was getting. In 1965, Pakistan used the F-104s in an unprovoked war on India in Kashmir, Operation Grand Slam. LBJ promptly cut off military aid to both countries.

JFK was determined to keep a strong alliance with Pakistan even as he improved ties with India. But as U.S. arms flowed to India in the wake of the Chinese invasion, the U.S.-Pakistani connection began to sink. Islamabad did not want an ally that armed both sides. It had not joined SEATO and CENTO to see American arms flowing to its archrival, India. Ayub feared the American arms sent to India were rapidly diminishing his qualitative advantage over his rival, and he was right.

Not surprisingly, Pakistan turned increasingly to China. After the border agreement, Pakistan signed an aviation agreement with the Chinese, which broke an American-inspired campaign to isolate that communist nation. Pakistan International Airlines began regular flights between Dacca and Shanghai. The Kennedy team responded with the first of what would become a long list of sanctions on Pakistan—canceling a deal to upgrade the Dacca airport.

In his last days, Kennedy became increasingly irritated with the Pakistanis and with Ayub. In one of his last meetings with his national-security team, he asked, “What do we get from Pakistan? In return for the protection of our alliance and our assistance what do they do for us?” The answer was another secret intelligence base that the CIA and NSA used to eavesdrop on China and Russia. Ayub skillfully exploited America’s desire for the base to keep Kennedy’s question rhetorical. The base was expanded considerably in a new secret protocol in September 1963. Less than two months later, Kennedy was dead. Sardar, the horse Ayub had given Mrs. Kennedy, followed his casket down Pennsylvania Avenue, riderless.

The failure of Pakistan’s efforts to extort concessions from India on Kashmir led Ayub in 1965 to unleash Operation Gibraltar, a campaign of subversion in the Himalayan state. That ended in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965, which was disastrous for Pakistan. It lost the war, and the conflict led to a rupture in trade and transportation links between the two South Asian states that continues today. It also ushered in a series of increasingly dangerous crises between the two, contributing to the subcontinent being probably the most likely arena for nuclear conflict in the twenty-first century.

The Sino-Indian war had one other major consequence: India moved closer to its decision to develop a nuclear deterrent. Nehru had begun a nuclear-power program early after independence and acquired reactors from the United States and Canada. But he insisted India would use them only for peaceful purposes. His worldview held the use of nuclear weapons to be unthinkable. But in the wake of the Chinese invasion, the first Indian voices emerged in favor of a nuclear-weapons program. The opposition party called for the development of the bomb to deter further Chinese aggression. Nehru still demurred, but the path to a peaceful nuclear-explosive test had begun.

Meanwhile, the Americans also came to realize that the United States and India likely would need the bomb in order to stop another major Chinese invasion. In 1963, Kennedy met with his military advisers shortly before his death to review options in the event of another Chinese attack. Secret tapes record Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara telling Kennedy, “Before any substantial commitment to defend India against China is given, we should recognize that in order to carry out that commitment against any substantial Chinese attack, we would have to use nuclear weapons.” Kennedy responded, “We should defend India, and therefore we will defend India if she were attacked.”

THE KENNEDY era underscores several key points about U.S. diplomacy in South Asia. First, it is virtually impossible to have good relations with both India and Pakistan. We may want them to stop being rivals, but they can’t escape their history and geography. Almost every American president has sought to have good ties with both, though none really has succeeded because it is a zero-sum game for two rivals who cannot abide America being their enemy’s friend. When we give one country a substantial gain, like the 2005 U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, the other feels hurt and demands equal treatment.

Second, China is our rival for influence in the region because it has the capacity to frustrate American goals. For Pakistanis, China is the “all-weather friend” that they can rely on, unlike the unreliable and quixotic Americans. China provided Pakistan with key technology to build the bomb in the 1970s while America was trying to prevent Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons. Today, Beijing is building new reactors to fuel the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world in Pakistan.

Image: Pullquote: It is virtually impossible to have good relations with both India and Pakistan. We may want them to stop being rivals, but they can’t escape their history and geography.Essay Types: Essay