Analyse the developments in the Indo-US relations since the end of the Gulf War. Give the reasons for changes, if any, in the South Asia policy of USA.

Analyse the developments in the Indo-US relations since the end of the Gulf War. Give the reasons for changes, if any, in the South Asia policy of USA. (1992)

The Gulf War (January–February 1991) coincided with the end of the Cold War and opened the most fluid phase in India–US relations since 1947. In January 1991 the Chandra Shekhar government let American military aircraft refuel in India, then withdrew permission in February after a domestic outcry: real movement, held back by caution. The developments since show a thaw in economics and defence alongside friction over non-proliferation and trade, while the South Asia policy of George H. W. Bush changed its priorities more than its assumptions.

Developments since 1991

Convergence

  • Economic opening. India’s balance-of-payments crisis and the July 1991 reforms of P. V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh won American support at the IMF and made India commercially interesting to US firms.
  • Defence contact before political warmth. The Kicklighter proposals (1991), from Lieutenant General Claude M. Kicklighter of US Army Pacific, set up service-to-service steering groups; the first Malabar naval exercise followed in May 1992.
  • Diplomatic signals. India voted in December 1991 to revoke the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, established full relations with Israel (January 1992), and Rao attended the first Security Council summit that month.

Friction

  • Non-proliferation. Washington backed Pakistan’s June 1991 call for five-power talks on a nuclear-free South Asia; India refused because China figured as a guarantor, not as a nuclear neighbour. MTCR sanctions on ISRO and Glavkosmos (May 1992) targeted the cryogenic engine deal.
  • Trade. India was named a Special 301 priority foreign country (1991) over patents, and in April 1992 Washington suspended about $60 million of its GSP duty-free benefits.
  • Kashmir. With the insurgency under way since 1989, American criticism of human rights in the Valley grew louder.

Reasons for changes in US South Asia policy

  1. End of bipolarity. Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (1989) and the Soviet collapse (December 1991) ended Pakistan’s frontline role; the Pressler Amendment was invoked in October 1990, cutting aid to Islamabad. Structural realism predicts this: alliances lapse when their threat disappears.
  2. Non-proliferation as the new priority. The war exposed Iraq’s secret weapons programme, and the 1990 Kashmir crisis, which prompted Robert M. Gates’s mission, made South Asia the likeliest nuclear flashpoint.
  3. The “new world order”. Bush’s September 1990 address and what Charles Krauthammer called the “unipolar moment” put markets and democracy at the centre; a reforming India of some 850 million fitted that agenda better than a sanctioned Pakistan.
  4. Terrorism. Pakistani support for militancy in Kashmir and Punjab led Washington in 1992 to warn Islamabad that it could be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Continuities

The change was partial. Washington still treated Kashmir as a dispute, pressed India on the NPT and saw the region through India–Pakistan hyphenation. C. Raja Mohan (Crossing the Rubicon, 2003) dates India’s own foreign-policy reorientation to these years, but the estrangement had ended without yet creating a partnership.

Conclusion

The post-Gulf War years replaced Cold War alignment with an issue-based relationship: markets and military contact in, non-proliferation, patents and Kashmir as the dividing issues. US policy moved from containment-driven partisanship to even-handed management. The defence-first route begun with Kicklighter matured into the ten-year framework renewed at Kuala Lumpur on 31 October 2025, signed while 50% US tariffs on India were in force: as in 1991–92, the security track outlasted trade friction.