73. Memorandum for the Record1
McGeorge Bundy’s 45-minute talk with Pakistan Finance Minister Shoaib was most cordial throughout. Shoaib explained that he was passing through from the Tokyo IMF/IB meeting and stopped off to talk financial matters with his old friends in Washington.2 He had just hit George Woods for a $25 million “balance of payments” loan. Since Pakistan had taken a deliberate laissez-faire tack and was liberalizing imports, it needed some more money to finance these.
He and Bundy exchanged thoughts on the differences between Pakistan and US views of Communist China and India. In effect, Shoaib admitted that the Pakistanis couldn’t quite understand why we felt as strongly as we did about Peiping. However, he continued, Americans seem unable to understand how strongly they feel about India. These differences were probably based more on emotion and geography than on reason, but they were realities nonetheless.
For example, Ayub and the Pak military simply didn’t think that the Indians would ever fight China. Delhi would soon reach an accommodation with Peiping; then, of course, the future weight of India’s defense buildup would be directed against Pakistan. Bundy refused to argue the merits of this Pakistan view, but he couldn’t understand why, if the Indians were too “cowardly” to fight the Chinese, the Paks were so scared of India.
Shoaib recalled his meeting with President Kennedy in 1963; he said that, just as he had assured the President then, Pakistan had made no serious moves toward China. They were just keeping on good terms so as to minimize any possible future difficulties. There was nothing in Pak/Chicom relations that was not in the newspapers. He described the circumstances surrounding the $60 million Chicom loan offer.
Komer thought that, even accepting Shoaib’s contention that nothing serious had happened, there was little question that Pakistan-US relations had soured noticeably in the months since the Shoaib/Kennedy interview. The combination of Pak needling and US defensive [Page 161] reactions was leading to a gradual shift in attitudes on both sides. Our fear was that Ayub might be boxing himself in—if he let Pakistan public opinion get so exercised that he would lose his freedom of action.
Bundy philosophized a bit about the US–Pak alliance. When originally laid on, it had seemed doubly useful to both countries. First, there was the real common interest which we had in strengthening a vulnerable flank. Second, it had political salability in both countries. Our politicians could justify it as a move against the Communists; Pak politicians could justify it as reinsurance against India. Historic circumstance, rather than any shift in our own intentions, had tended to change this situation. Now, politicians here found it hard to defend our Pak alliance because of Pak moves toward China, while Ayub’s political sense required him to complain about his US ally aiding India.
But the Paks must understand that we had not changed our position—we had never envisaged our relationship as aimed at India. We still wanted to be on the best of terms with Pakistan, unless the Paks themselves made this impossible.
Bundy probed on President Ayub’s own attitude. So long as we were satisfied that Ayub himself had a clear sense of the desirability of maintaining our relationship, we could both sustain a fair amount of political sniping. We wanted to be sure that Ayub was solid on the continued value of the tie. It rather bothered us when Ayub himself used the respected pages of Foreign Affairs to tell us we were foolishly naive about India (Shoaib said “misguided” was a better word) or when he called the President’s policy opportunistic in the Daily Mail.
Shoaib insisted that Ayub had no intention of switching away from the US. True, he had certain political requirements which as a politician he must meet. But he knew he needed the US. To clear the air, and to make sure that Johnson and Ayub got through clearly to each other, the two Presidents must get together at the summit as soon as possible and talk this matter over. This was the best, indeed the only, way to avoid misunderstanding. It couldn’t happen too soon. He had also mentioned this to Secretary Rusk. Bundy agreed that a summit would be useful; there was no one for whom President Johnson had more respect than Ayub. A meeting would rank high on our future agenda.
Bundy stressed, however, that neither Ayub nor any other Pakistani should be under any illusion that leaning on the US or making noises toward China would change our determination to help India against China. This was a major aspect of our foreign policy. The Paks might disagree with our judgment as to the reliability of India and whether the Indians would ever fight China. But this was not the issue. We regarded India as a very important place and were determined to avoid the critical vacuum which would be created by India’s collapse. This was also in Pakistan’s interest. Did Shoaib, for example, want to see [Page 162] India fall apart in 15 years or so? Shoaib asserted, “Not in 15 years, nor in 50.”
Nonetheless, he feared that India could fall apart if it bankrupted itself by such huge military expenditures. The Indian military budget was now up to $2 billion. India couldn’t afford this kind of military establishment. He, Shoaib, had firmly resisted this sort of thing in Pakistan. When the service chiefs had recently gone to Ayub and insisted that Pak foreign exchange be used for military purchases, Ayub had vetoed it on Shoaib’s plea. Ayub has told Musa and Asghar Khan that he knew they could put up a jolly good scrap without the additional hardware.
Yet we should understand that Musa and Ayub and many others were very unhappy about US military aid to India. Our decision last June to go ahead with a further program had had a bad effect, mainly because in the talks with General Taylor the previous December they had gotten the impression that they had convinced us there was no need for longer term MAP for India since the Chinese weren’t going to attack again. Moreover, they had expected us to offer some compensatory military aid to Pakistan to preserve the previous three-to-one military balance on which the Pak military counted so heavily. Now the balance seemed to be going heavily against them. When the Indians made their peace with China, Pakistan would face this whole new Indian military machine. We should do what we could to butter up the Pak military.
Komer interjected that we found the Pak military a bit too emotional and not coldly professional enough about our aid to India. Regardless of the comparable dollar value, we were sending a lot more fighting value to the Paks. As an example of how Pak emotionalism could work against its own interests, he recounted how we had considered suggesting to the Paks that a US offer of a few supersonics to India on condition that India not buy or build a much larger number of MIGs would actually serve Pak interests. But we concluded that the Paks just wouldn’t think this through.
Shoaib and Bundy fenced briefly on Kashmir. The former recounted how TTK had told him in Tokyo that Nehru wanted to settle Kashmir before his death. Shastri was an unknown quantity, and Shoaib was convinced that there was no likelihood of movement on Kashmir just now. Bundy assured him that we still thought a settlement essential, and would do what we could when the time was ripe.
At several points Shoaib made allusions to the problem with Bhutto and the MEA. He subsequently told Komer that he was aware we knew that Bhutto was at one extreme among Pak policy-makers. Ayub deliberately kept in the middle, and didn’t take all Bhutto’s advice. He repeated what he had told Phil Talbot, i.e. that he had inspired the [Page 163] RCD gambit3 as an alternative to Bhutto’s pressure for new gestures toward China.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Pakistan, Vol. II 6/64–11/64. Secret. A copy was sent to Talbot marked “Personal.”↩
- While in Washington Shoaib also met with Talbot, Harriman, Rusk, and McNamara. A record of Talbot’s September 21 conversation with Shoaib is in the National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964–66, POL PAK-US. Records of Shoaib’s meetings on September 21 with Harriman and on September 24 with Rusk are ibid., POL 7 PAK. A record of Shoaib’s meeting on September 21 with McNamara is in the Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OSD Files: FRC 69 A 7425, Pakistan 091.112.↩
- Reference is to a proposal Shoaib explained to Talbot on September 21 that he had made to Ayub for a regional grouping of Muslim states to include Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and possibly Afghanistan. Shoaib’s idea was to create a security arrangement among the non-Communist Muslim states of the area that would shore up Pakistan’s security position without requiring it to turn, as Bhutto preferred, to China for support.↩