What, in your option, is the objective of the US policy in South Asia-status quo or peaceful change? Examine the strategies adopted by Washington in this regard. (1995)
E. H. Carr (The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1939) held that order survives only through peaceful change, adjusting the status quo to shifts in power without war; Hans J. Morgenthau (Politics Among Nations, 1948) defined a policy of the status quo as one that preserves the existing distribution of power. In my view, American policy in South Asia in the mid-1990s was status quo in security and peaceful change in economics. The administration of William J. Clinton, alarmed by the 1990 India–Pakistan crisis, wanted to freeze the strategic map while encouraging reform that suited American interests.
The objective: a managed status quo
- Security: no new nuclear weapon states, no war over Kashmir and no unilateral change to the Line of Control. Washington acted as an offshore stabiliser.
- Economics and governance: change. India’s 1991 liberalisation made it a market, and Washington wanted reform, democracy and human rights to deepen.
- The two goals pulled apart. Freezing the balance kept India “hyphenated” with Pakistan, while the market pulled Washington towards India.
Strategies adopted by Washington
1. Non-proliferation: “cap, reduce, eliminate”
- The stated sequence was to cap both programmes, then reduce and eliminate them, pushing both towards the NPT (extended indefinitely in May 1995) and a CTBT (negotiated from January 1994).
- It proposed multilateral regional talks with the great powers; India refused because China was cast as a guarantor, not a threat.
- MTCR sanctions on ISRO and Glavkosmos (May 1992) led Russia to withhold cryogenic engine technology, and Washington pressed India over the Prithvi and the Agni.
2. Incentives to Pakistan
- After the Pressler cut-off (October 1990), Washington proposed in March 1994 to release 38 F-16s in return for a verifiable cap on Pakistan’s fissile-material production; Islamabad would not accept the cap. The Brown Amendment, passed by the Senate in September 1995, released some equipment already paid for, which India read as an easing of sanctions.
3. Kashmir as “disputed”
- Assistant Secretary Robin Raphel questioned the finality of Kashmir’s accession in October 1993, and Washington raised human rights in the Valley, which India saw as a retreat from the Simla Agreement (1972).
4. Engagement through markets and militaries
- The Kicklighter proposals (1991), the first Malabar exercise (1992) and the Agreed Minute on Defence Relations (January 1995) built military contacts. Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown’s January 1995 trade mission listed India among the “Big Emerging Markets”.
Assessment
The policy was status-quoist at its core. Jaswant Singh’s “Against Nuclear Apartheid” (Foreign Affairs, 1998) captured the Indian charge that it froze a hierarchy leaving China armed and India constrained. Liberal institutionalists answered that the NPT and CTBT were universal regimes, not anti-Indian ones. In Carr’s terms, Washington offered change without any transfer of power: it wanted India’s market but not India’s strength.
Conclusion
In 1995 the objective was a status quo with peaceful economic change. Strategic change came only after Pokhran II, through the Strobe Talbott–Jaswant Singh dialogue and the 2005–08 civil nuclear deal that accepted India’s nuclear status; C. Raja Mohan (Crossing the Rubicon, 2003) shows how India’s own post-1991 recalibration made that possible. The managerial instinct still returns: in May 2025 Donald J. Trump claimed to have brokered the India–Pakistan ceasefire and offered Kashmir mediation, which India rejected.