Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXV, South Asia

196. Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson¹

Washington, September 9, 1965.

SUBJECT

• India and Pakistan

I

Events just down the road in the subcontinent can have the most complex and farreaching consequences for the United States. We don’t yet know how far the Chinese Communists will involve themselves. However, their strident “demands” on India yesterday (which give color to reports of a Pakistan-Chinese Communist understanding and Shoaib’s warning that Bhutto would play the Chinese Communist card) make it a clear contingency. This could convert the Pakistan-Indian war into a Free World-Communist confrontation.

In any event, Pakistani-Indian warfare bites deeply into American interests. U Thant’s mission offers a chance for the two countries to pull back from the abyss. Its success could get us back to the disagreeably bumpy, but relatively safe, verbal hassling over Kashmir with each country still seeking maximum United States support for its position. Otherwise, the prospect is grim. Fighting could exhaust one country or both, and subject the 50 million Moslems in India and upwards of 10 million Hindus in Pakistan to unbelievable blood baths. Collapse and communal chaos would call into question the future of the subcontinent itself and would certainly negate our effort to build there a viable counterweight to Communist China.

II

If Kashmir were the only issue, the U.S. could reasonably hope to stand aside. However, the whole Western power position in Asia may shortly be at stake.

So far, with an investment of nearly $12 billion, we have helped move the 600 million people of India and Pakistan along a line that has frustrated Communist ambitions. India along with Japan is the only power potential in Asia comparable to China. Were it now to go down the drain, we would face a new situation in many ways as serious as the loss of China. And as India goes, so eventually will Pakistan.

The effects would be directly felt all along the Asian rim:

• —The Shah, sympathizing with Ayub and pressed by him for help, sees this as a question of how in a pinch the United States meets its assurances. So to a degree does Turkey.
• —As Indonesia drifts toward greater hostility, and probably Communist domination, our position in Southeast Asia is directly affected, and South Asia becomes even more important.
• —Latent Japanese neutralist tendencies could bloom disturbingly in the wake of a major humiliation of India and of what would be seen as a Chinese Communist victory over the U.S.
• —Chinese Communist involvement would make South Asia and Vietnam actually two parts of the same basic problem: that of containing Peiping’s outward thrust, and thus reasonably add to our burdens.
• —Finally, if the Chicoms get involved or this conflict runs its present course, Pakistan will wind up deeply committed to the Chinese Communists while India, feeling let down by the West and its national prestige at stake, would almost certainly go for the nuclear bomb.

III

Against risks this great, the question is whether the U.S. can afford or even maintain non-involvement. There is a strong Congressional urge that we get out of South Asia. Should this succeed in tying your hand, there can be no crisis management but only crisis drift, since whether acting indirectly (through the U.N., the U.K., the Commonwealth or Pearson) or directly, only the U.S. has at its disposal the essential carrots and sticks to influence the situation in the long run.

IV

There are risks in crisis management but also opportunities. Ayub seems fearful of all-out war with India, as he has reason to be. Shastri should fear the Chinese factor as well as domestic disruption arising from communal explosions. Continuing warfare will bankrupt both. In this moment of truth, both may realize their need to be more responsive than heretofore. The shifting Soviet position holds possibilities of less interference than usual if we should bear down.

We might get both countries to stop hostilities if we were prepared to give full support to efforts towards a negotiation of their outstanding disputes, including Kashmir. Our involvement would also improve the chances of keeping both India and Pakistan reasonably linked to the West and reasonably firm against Chinese Communist encroachment into the subcontinent.

Pakistan-Indian bitterness makes it extraordinarily difficult to keep good relations with both. If at the end of the day we were forced to choose between them, India with its much larger population, industrial base, rudimentary democracy, and other potentials would probably be a better bet. However, we could never fully support policy goals of either India or Pakistan. The best protection of American interests rests in maintaining adequate, though probably not intimate, links with both.

Dean Rusk

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, India, Memos and Miscellaneous, 6/65–9/65. Secret. McGeorge Bundy sent this memorandum to the President on September 10 under cover of a note that reads: “Here is an important paper from the Secretary of State giving his current thinking on the South Asian crisis. He is clearly moving toward a position of heavier engagement—as I think we all are. But his thinking is not very concrete—and neither is anyone else’s yet.” (Ibid.)