360. Telegram From the Ambassador to India (Bowles) to the President’s Special Assistant and Chief of Staff (Moyers)1
5618. I have just sent an Exdis cable2 to the President and Secretary Rusk pointing out the profoundly adverse impact that U.S. Mission in India believes a resumption of U.S. supplies of lethal military equipment to Pakistan will have on our position in India at this critical stage.
In this private message to you I would like to add that I have a deep personal involvement in this issue which I cannot wish out of existence.
In 1952 when it was first proposed that we arm Pakistan in the face of clear evidence that Pakistan wanted the equipment for use against India rather than the Russians or Chinese, I was able (in my first assignment as Ambassador here) to persuade President Truman to veto the idea.
When Secretary Dulles picked up the plan in the fall of 1953, I wrote him stressing that if arms we gave Pakistan were ever used in combat, it would not be against China or Russia but only against India, and that even if they were never used, their effect would be to upset the power balance in South Asia, to cloud our relations with India which is potentially the most important non-Communist power in Asia, and to open the door to a much closer Soviet relationship with India. Unhappily these concerns have been fully justified by events.
In the intervening years, President Eisenhower, Ambassadors Bunker, Galbraith and myself assured India over and over again that this U.S. equipment would never be used against her. Yet when the attack came last August and September, it was clear that there was no way that we would prevent their use.
As a result we were faced with a very strong public reaction here in India growing out of deep resentment that young Indians were being killed by the equipment we had given the Paks. In an effort to contain these feelings, I told the Indian government, public and press on several occasions that I could not imagine my government resuming a policy [Page 704] which had proven so costly for everyone concerned unless the Pakistanis could be persuaded to join India and the U.S. in opposing the Chinese.
My objective is not to add to the concerns of the President at this difficult time but rather to relieve him of problems wherever I possibly can. However, past events have given me a personal involvement on this issue which I thought you should know about.
Warm regards.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Pakistan, Vol. VI, Cables, 1/66–9/66. Secret. No time of transmission is on the telegram. An attachment indicates that the telegram was sent [text not declassified].↩
- Telegram 1307 from New Delhi, July 25. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964–66, DEF 19–8 US–INDIA) Bowles was responding to a personal message sent to him by Rusk on July 24 to tell him that a consensus was building in Washington in favor of altering policy on military assistance to allow sales of lethal spare parts to India and Pakistan. Bowles was invited to comment. (Telegram 14123 to New Delhi, July 24; ibid.)↩