Magnificent Delusions (33 page)

The United States had originally scheduled a state visit for Bhutto in July, the first such visit for Pakistan's leader after the country's bifurcation. But that summer was particularly eventful in Pakistan. Torrential monsoon rain had caused massive floods in most of Pakistan, affecting millions of people. Bhutto postponed his US trip to engage in the relief effort.

Then, on August 14, 1973—the twenty-sixth anniversary of the founding of Pakistan—the country's new constitution went into effect. Bhutto had managed to get consensus in Parliament from all parties on the new charter. The constitution was based on the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy, albeit with extraordinary powers vested in the office of prime minister. Bhutto thus vacated the ceremonial office of president for one of his loyalists and moved to the more powerful position. On the US side, a similar change occurred as Kissinger moved from the office of national security adviser to become secretary of state.

As prime minister, Bhutto was no longer head of state and, therefore, not eligible for the pomp and ceremony of a state visit. When he arrived in Washington on September 17, the State Department's Office of Protocol designated his trip as an “Official Visit.” The next day Bhutto was welcomed formally with military honors at the North Portico of the White House. Then, because of rain, the president and the prime minister moved to the East Room for formal speeches.

Nixon spoke of the “friendship that has bound our two countries together for over a generation.” He recalled his visits to Pakistan and declared, “The independence and the integrity of Pakistan is a cornerstone of American foreign policy.” Bhutto spoke about the “ease of communication and of understanding” between Pakistanis and Americans. “We share a host of common affinities despite the diversities and the distances that separate us,” he affirmed.

But when private discussions began, the Nixon administration's unwillingness to provide their military with advanced weapons disappointed the Pakistanis. Kissinger said that the United States had “encouraged China to give military supplies to Pakistan” and had also had “extensive talks with the Shah” of Iran so that his own military deployment helps Pakistan. But the United States simply could not supply weapons to Pakistan itself.

Bhutto brought up the coup in Afghanistan, which had resulted in deposing the country's monarchy and replacing it with a republic under a nationalist cousin of the king. Kissinger said he had discussed the matter with the Soviet ambassador. “I told him that if the recent coup in Afghanistan remained an internal Afghan affair, that would be one matter,” he said. “But if it resurrected the Pashtunistan dispute, the US would be engaged. This is the basic policy of the President.”

Nixon explained that his stance against India had cost him politically at home. “We have a number of people in the US who are enthusiastic supporters of India,” he remarked. He said that “At the time of the India-Pakistan war in 1971, no one could understand why we did not back India.” Nixon found it ironic that “great newspapers like the
New York Times
and our columnists” argued that the United States should back India simply because it was bigger. “The world will not be safe for anybody but the very big and very strong if we adopt that as a principle of our foreign policy,” he said.

Bhutto tried to make an argument similar to the one Liaquat and Ayub had made in the fifties, namely that the problems of the Middle East were interconnected with those in South Asia, and American interests were at stake in the Persian Gulf. Pakistan, rather than India, could protect those interests better. “Pakistan is situated at the mouth of the Persian Gulf,” Bhutto said. “Any state that has access
to the Karachi coast can dominate the Gulf. That is why the Soviet Union is so interested in that coast.”

Bhutto disparaged India before proceeding to give a telescoped version of the history of US-Pakistan relations. “There are many contradictions in India and we feel sorry for the Indian people and the economic privations they suffer,” he said, adding that India was disillusioned with its own lack of progress. “India has burned its fingers in the furnace of Bengal,” Bhutto continued. He made the case that India was more likely to break into pieces than was Pakistan. “Over the years we have had Sikhs, Nagas, Mizos approach us for help against India,” he said. “They wanted our support in their fight for autonomy within India. We did not give them our support.” Implicit in the statement was the suggestion that India had played dirty in Bangladesh; if Pakistan did the same, it too could succeed in causing India's fragmentation.

According to Bhutto, Pakistan was not the only neighbor of India that had suffered at its hands; Nepal, Sikkim, Burma, and China had all suffered similarly. Pakistan, however, had been “committed to Western civilization. We have been committed to the U.S.,” Bhutto declared. He recounted the relationship, almost year by year, suggesting that the Americans had let Pakistan down by helping India during its war with China in 1962. “India needs U.S. economic assistance,” he said. “The U.S. does not need India. There is no reason why the euphoria toward India should continue.”

Bhutto's line of reasoning echoed Jinnah's belief that the United States needed Pakistan more than Pakistan needed the United States. The generally pro-Pakistan Nixon made no attempt to question Bhutto's fundamental assumptions, stating only that “The tragedy of the early days was in not settling the Kashmir question right at the outset.” But Bhutto had just demonstrated that Pakistanis considered India an existential threat. Kashmir was the manifestation, not the cause, of the conflict. The State Department had told Nixon in his talking points for the meeting that Pakistan's security problems were “primarily political/psychological and economic.”
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The Pakistani prime minister told his US hosts that Pakistan was “going to have a problem with the Afghans” because “they lay claim
to two Pakistani provinces.” According to him, it was not Afghanistan that wanted to revive its claim from the past. “We believe that the USSR is interested in reviving this problem. Afghanistan by itself is no problem for Pakistan,” he declared.

Bhutto reported that the Soviet Union had its eyes glued to the coast. “Afghanistan alone would not fulfill Soviet ambitions; India alone would not fulfill Soviet ambitions.” The Soviet objective, he said, was to get Pakistan to join the Asian Collective Security Pact that Brezhnev had proposed. Bhutto did not think that Afghanistan's new president, Mohammad Daoud, was rooted in the coup that brought him to power. “The majors and colonels under him trained in the USSR,” he said. “Those young boys are difficult to predict. They will not rest until we get harpooned and lassoed.”

Bhutto then asked the rhetorical question: “Is something wrong with the basic concept of Pakistan?” Then he answered it himself, saying, “I don't think this can be. Two million people have given their lives for the idea of Pakistan. But people keep calling it into question.” He cited the two million dead as a reference to Muslims killed during the riots over partition, which was a consequence of the idea of Pakistan rather than preplanned sacrifice for it. Bhutto had effectively proved Nehru and Indira Gandhi's assertion that the need to justify their nationhood troubled Pakistanis most. Neither Kissinger nor Nixon knew that Bhutto's analysis was uncannily similar to the conversation Ayub had with Eisenhower in Karachi in 1959. On that occasion the Pakistani military dictator had spoken of Afghanistan with contempt and had pointed to what he described as the potential for India's disintegration. Pakistan was only twelve years old at the time, but its military ruler thought it had superior standing as a nation and a state than did neighboring countries that had existed in some form or other for much longer. Now Bhutto, an elected prime minister, was confirming that Pakistan's sense of self and its view of the “other” had not changed after democracy supplanted dictatorship. Ayub and Yahya would have said similar things, though possibly less eloquently.

Although Nixon had been very warm toward him, in the meeting Bhutto failed to get what he wanted most from the United States.
“In the military area, our hands are tied,” the US president said. Nonetheless, he advised Bhutto to address Pakistan's “public relations problem” in the United States. In his opinion Bhutto's “credibility with the liberal establishment” would develop more support in Congress for the United States helping Pakistan. The US administration had returned to a policy limited to providing military spare parts, and Nixon wanted to wait for the right political climate before moving forward further.
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Bhutto had a second go at getting Nixon's support for the military supply relationship in their next meeting, which was on the second day of his official visit. He told Nixon, who was already feeling the brunt of the mounting Watergate scandal, that he felt “embarrassed to complicate a problem for a friend.” He would not have raised the question at all “if Pakistan were not so badly menaced.” In addition to asking for US weapons, Bhutto said, “We want a port in Baluchistan.”

Apparently the Iranians were building a port at Chah Bahar, so Pakistan needed one on its coast. “The Soviets are deeply interested in this coast and they have offered to help us with oil exploration, geological survey and that kind of thing,” Bhutto said to arouse Nixon's interest. “We would rather have a U.S. presence.” He showed Nixon and Kissinger a map of Balochistan so they could see the location of Ormara, on the Makran coast, where the port was to be built. Bhutto promised that if the United States were interested, “there could even be a U.S. presence there.”

This was a major turnabout for Bhutto. For years he had argued that maintaining equal distance and equal friendship with all major powers better served Pakistan's interests. In fact, soon after leaving Ayub's cabinet he had published a book titled
The Myth of Independence
, in which he argued for strict bilateralism. He had written that military alliance with the United States had compromised Pakistan's independence of action in relation to India, the country's main adversary. Now, however, he was offering not only bases to the Americans but also agreeing to a US military presence. But times had changed. The United States no longer saw bases in Pakistan as strategically important.

Kissinger repeated the proposition of routing weapons through Iran. He wondered how Pakistan could get equipment without India not immediately learning about it. “The Indians will make a storm in a teacup whenever they learn about the slightest little bit of equipment coming into Pakistan,” Bhutto quipped. “India spends some $2 billion on arms while its people are starving,” he said, adding that if India were to reduce its military budget, Pakistan could do the same.

There was one problem, however, with channeling military assistance through Iran. “It is very well for Iran to say that Iran will come to Pakistan's aid,” Bhutto said, but this “creates a bad reaction in Pakistan. Our people are a strong people, and they respond by asking why Pakistan needs Iran's aid.” Kissinger could tell Iran's Shah that for him to talk about aiding Pakistan “suggests that Pakistan is going to disintegrate tomorrow and Iran will bail us out. “The Shah should support Pakistan but not talk about it, as his pronouncements created “a feeling of inferiority” among Pakistanis.
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The Pakistani prime minister also asked for “500,000 tons or 600,000 tons” of wheat and 100,000 tons of edible oil under PL-480, the US law that allowed poor countries to pay for food in their own currencies. Kissinger explained that the US situation with wheat was tight but promised to look into the request. Bhutto also asked for help in attracting American private investment. Nixon remarked that “I think it is a good place to invest. If I had some money I would put it there.” But he cited investors' concerns about the uncertainties of South Asia.”
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Nixon did not comment on Bhutto's policy of nationalizing major industries, banks, and insurance companies. Although foreign investment had not been nationalized, the confidence of Pakistan's business community had been shattered, which in turn discouraged foreign investors. Americans understood the need to address economic disparities, but they did not see socialism as the solution. Treasury Secretary John Connally had discussed with Bhutto and his finance minister the potential impact of expanding the public sector on the economy soon after Pakistan's first wave of nationalization.
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After that, American officials avoided ideological debates about economics with Bhutto or his officials.

The American media welcomed the Nixon administration's policy of engaging Pakistan without offering military assistance. The
Los Angeles Times
labeled it a policy of “Assistance without Arms.” It was wise policy, the paper said, to maintain the ban on selling lethal arms to Pakistan.
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The
Washington Post
pointed out that Nixon had been as positive about Pakistan and Bhutto as he had been during his “tilt” during the Bangladesh war, and it chided Bhutto for going about Washington “appealing publicly for more arms” and grumbling that the US government had not heeded his appeals for military supplies.

According to the
Post
there was “no region in the world where the US has come to more grief over the provision of arms” than South Asia. The paper appreciated Bhutto for doing “a superb job in restoring his country's spirit and sense of progress” and admired his great skill in starting dialogue with India and Bangladesh. However, it called upon the administration to formulate US policy toward the subcontinent “guided by the new realities of the subcontinent.”
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These new realities had made India more powerful in the region than it was before.