Magnificent Delusions (22 page)

During this period of major changes in Pakistan, Benjamin Oehlert was serving his last few weeks as US ambassador. In a cable to the State Department he observed that the principal reasons for imposing martial law were to prevent East Pakistan from “obtaining national political power proportionate to population.”
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Experience had shown that aid had given Americans considerable access in Pakistan, even if it did not help change the country's policies. Consequently, Oehlert proposed supporting Yahya and his military regime “to expand leverage of our assistance.” In his view, this could help Pakistan by increasing the chances of an American-backed political solution to its internal schism.

Secretary of State William Rogers visited Pakistan in May and met Yahya as well as other members of his junta. He was told that martial law had saved Pakistan from chaos, that elections would soon be held, and that a civilian government would come after a constitution was written. Insisting that he was a soldier who would return to
soldiering after holding elections, Yahya laid out the case for aid. Pakistan was making economic progress, he said, adding that its economic progress could be cited as “vindication of the U.S. philosophy of assistance.”
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When the subject turned to Pakistan's demands for sophisticated weaponry, Yahya argued that Pakistan needed them for its security. But Rogers questioned Pakistan's threat perception and wondered if it was indeed based on reality. He hinted that Pakistan faced problems at home that needed attention. But Yahya seemed more interested in Pakistan's international role, expressing familiar concerns about Afghanistan and India as well as communist subversion. He assured Rogers that Pakistan had no intention to leave SEATO and CENTO and that it remained committed to its alliance with the United States.

The Nixon White House soon decided that it would resume assistance, including military aid for Pakistan, as soon as it could overcome international and domestic anxieties about doing so. Kissinger told Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Agha Hilaly, that the US president had “a very warm spot in his heart for former President Ayub Khan and for Pakistan.” He assured the new government that the United States held “deep concern for Pakistan's interests and responsiveness to Pakistan's requirements,” though he was not sure how that concern might translate into dollars.
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This heartened Yahya, as did Nixon's decision to visit Pakistan as part of a round-the-world tour that summer.

For Nixon, Pakistan was only one stop in an Asia-wide trip. He started his journey on July 23, 1969, by observing the splashdown and recovery of the
Apollo 11
spacecraft from the deck of the USS
Hornet
, followed by an overnight stop in Guam. He traveled to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and India and then made an unannounced stopover in South Vietnam before arriving in Pakistan. The American president's journey continued on to Romania, and after a brief stopover in England to meet with Prime Minister Harold Wilson, he returned to the United States on August 3.

For Yahya, however, Nixon's arrival in Pakistan amounted to receiving the American stamp of approval. He needed it in order to reassure key Pakistani constituencies—especially the army—that the
United States would continue paying some of the country's bills even after Ayub was gone. Thus, Yahya gave Nixon a welcome in Lahore comparable to the one Eisenhower received in Karachi ten years earlier.

While Nixon was there, the Pakistani team made a strong pitch for greater aid. The Pakistani foreign secretary even told Nixon that Pakistan's need for a deterrent to India was so critical that it was content with getting weapons that the United States considered obsolete for its own military. Yahya complained that the United States no longer considered Pakistan its “most allied ally”—a term Eisenhower had used—any longer. “We are still allies,” Yahya said, while offering the assurance that Pakistan wanted to move beyond its disagreements with the United States that followed the 1965 war. Nixon agreed that what happened under previous leaders in both countries could now be put behind them. The two countries “will be on [the] up-and-up with each other,”
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he declared.

Nixon's attitude toward Pakistan was influenced, at least in part, by his desire to engage with communist China. Whereas Kennedy and Johnson had vehemently opposed Pakistan's close ties with Beijing, Nixon hoped to take advantage of them. During the presidential election campaign Nixon had pointed out that, considering its size and significance, China could not be ignored. And as someone with devout anticommunist credentials, he believed he could reach out to China without inviting criticism about being soft on communism. Pakistan, with an equally strong anticommunist reputation, could be a valuable partner in the venture.

Since 1955, in the absence of diplomatic relations, China and the United States had interacted through their ambassadors in Warsaw. They had effected little progress except an agreement over repatriation of citizens of the two countries who had been stranded as a result of the communist victory in China in 1949. That agreement was implemented with the help of the British Embassy assisting Americans in Beijing and the Indian Embassy helping the Chinese in Washington.

But the Warsaw Talks involved the State Department bureaucracy, whereas Nixon envisioned a bold approach, going directly to
China's top leaders. He had already sent private signals through US ambassadors in Warsaw and Paris, but these signals did not result in a major breakthrough. The Chinese could not publicly accept that they were doing business with the United States because even after the communist victory in China's mainland, the Americans still recognized the defeated nationalist Chinese government, limited to the island of Taiwan since 1949, as the legal representative of all of China. The communist Chinese wanted the United States to recognize their government's legitimacy before open negotiations took place. The Nixon administration had to be mindful of the powerful Taiwan lobby and the strong anticommunist sentiment in the United States.

During his round-the-world tour Nixon brought up China with Yahya as well as Romanian leader Nicolae Ceauşescu. Both dictators had access to China's premier, Zhou Enlai. If they could verbally convey Nixon's desire for normalizing ties with China, he could possibly put a deal in place before announcing it. A more public negotiating process, such as one involving the US State Department, could result in media leaks and the prospect of the anticommunist sentiment scuttling a deal before it was made. Nixon wanted to present Americans and the Taiwanese government with a fait accompli by announcing an agreement with China rather than opening debate over whether a bargain was desirable.

H. R. Haldeman, the US president's chief of staff at the time, recorded in his diary after Nixon's trip that Nixon saw Yahya as “a real leader—very intelligent—and with great insight into Russia-China relations.” According to Haldeman, Nixon thought that Yahya could be a “valuable channel to China” and even the Soviet Union.

Although Nixon and Kissinger had not yet charted in detail their course for a thaw with China, Nixon's suggestion that Pakistan could act as a bridge between the two superpowers pleased Yahya and other Pakistani officials. After Ayub's decision to end the lease of the Badaber intelligence base at Peshawar, which had been meant to show the Americans how much they needed Pakistan, Pakistan's usefulness had diminished in American eyes. Now, however, if Pakistan could be the channel through which the Americans reached China,
it would be important again. Acting as the United States' intermediary with China could compensate for the loss of influence Pakistan endured when it closed the US intelligence facilities.

Soon after Nixon's trip Yahya started preparing for his new role as facilitator of dialogue between China and the United States. But he did not realize the complexities of US domestic politics, which Nixon and Kissinger had hoped to circumvent. As a result of Yahya's indiscretion, an American diplomat in Pakistan informed the State Department that Yahya was “apparently debating” whether to communicate Nixon's desire for better relations through the communist Chinese ambassador “or whether to wait until he sees Zhou Enlai, probably some months hence.”
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Kissinger asked Harold “Hal” Saunders, a trusted member of his team, to ensure that the discussions over China were treated strictly as a White House matter; the State Department and normal channels of diplomacy were not to be involved. Saunders, a PhD from Yale University who had served on the National Security Council staff since the Johnson presidency, met with Hilaly, the Pakistani ambassador, telling him that Nixon “did not have in mind that passing this word was urgent or that it required any immediate or dramatic Pakistani effort.”
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The US president, Saunders explained, regarded reaching out to China “as important but not as something that needs to be done immediately.” Kissinger was to be the sole point of contact on this matter, and the State Department did not need to know, he conveyed. “What President Nixon had in mind,” Saunders told Hilaly, “was that President Yahya might at some natural and appropriate time convey this statement of the US position in a low-key factual way”
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Yahya was scheduled to travel to China at the beginning of 1970, and that would be the appropriate time to convey Nixon's message.

Once Kissinger conveyed the need for secrecy as well as the importance of dealing exclusively with the White House, Pakistani officials felt reassured that they had been charged with a major undertaking. Therefore, they immediately asked for some payoff for their country in economic and military assistance, renewing their
previous request for planes and tanks. Nixon wanted to help but could not do so without overcoming congressional skepticism.

After Pakistan's 1965 war with India, Congress had passed two amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act that forbade arming “underdeveloped countries” with “sophisticated weapons.” The Conte-Long Amendment (named after Congressmen Silvio Conte, a Republican, and Clarence D. Long, a Democrat, both from Maryland) also required reducing US economic aid to such countries by the amount that they used their own resources for such purchases. However, the president could waive this restriction if he determined that a military sale was “important to the national security of the U.S.”

Another amendment, sponsored by Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri and passed by Congress, directed the president to cut off US economic aid to any developing country that excessively diverted its resources to military expenditures. Congress, therefore, made it known that it did not want the United States arming either India or Pakistan. Consequently, if Nixon wanted to transfer any American weapons to Yahya as a favor, he would have to make a waiver for Pakistan that he would justify on grounds that US national security was at stake.

Nixon wanted to provide weapons to Pakistan as a reward for its help in reaching out to China, but he could hardly declare that publicly, especially as, at that stage, the entire China initiative was being kept secret from the American public. So Kissinger turned to Saunders to find a way out. Saunders, in turn, wrote a detailed memorandum on the options available to the administration, pointing out that America's “main interest is in the political and economic evolution of South Asia and not in the development of its military strength.”

According to Saunders, “the political and economic evolution of India and its ability to defend its Himalayan frontier” was the greater US priority. “Our concern with Pakistan is that its political and economic evolution in the near term be constructive enough not to disrupt India's,” he wrote. Saunders was suggesting that the principal US interest in helping Pakistan ought to be to prevent Pakistan from disrupting India—a goal that could not be achieved by enhancing
Pakistan's military capabilities. His analysis for the Nixon administration in 1969 differed little from “Blowtorch Bob” Komer's for Johnson in 1965. Similar assessments had also been provided to Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

But any evaluation that Pakistan was less important than India was anathema to Pakistani leaders. So Saunders did not examine the possibility of giving up on Pakistan altogether, though he did wonder whether “going back into full-scale military aid would sufficiently further US interests to outweigh the disadvantages” and warned that arming Pakistan again “could strengthen Indian sense of political reliance on the USSR.”
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He then proposed a way out: Pakistan could be given a one-time waiver for some planes and tanks while conditions should be imposed that assuaged India's concerns.

But these recommendations were not good enough for Kissinger. In a handwritten note he shot back: “Hal—The President wants action not study. When are the tanks moving? When will the lawyers decide? Please get me quick answers.”
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Once Yahya had conveyed Nixon's message to Zhou Enlai and the positive Chinese reply had been communicated back, there was even greater urgency to offer Pakistan some recompense. Not surprisingly, the State Department, not fully informed about the China initiative and Pakistan's role in it, fought back.

“We do not have overriding political or security interests in South Asia which require us to get back into the arms business,” observed acting Secretary of State Elliot Richardson in a memorandum to the president. Richardson, who resigned as attorney general a few years later rather than carry out Nixon's orders during the Watergate controversy, at the time was a rising star in the Nixon administration. And he saw no justification for supplying weapons to any country on the subcontinent. After all, both India and Pakistan had sufficiently strong militaries, the Indians were capable of withstanding a potential Chinese attack, and the prospects of Indo-Pakistan hostilities seemed remote.