Examine Pakistan as a factor in Indo-American relations during the Cold War. (2001)
Dennis Kux called India and the United States “estranged democracies” (1992): states with shared political values and opposed strategic alignments for four decades. Pakistan was the most visible reason. To examine the claim is to ask whether Pakistan caused the estrangement or was the channel through which a deeper divergence, containment versus non-alignment, was expressed.
The case for Pakistan as the decisive factor
- 1954 was the turning point. The Mutual Defence Assistance Agreement (May 1954), then SEATO (1954) and the Baghdad Pact (1955, renamed CENTO in 1959), made Pakistan a treaty ally; it styled itself America’s “most allied ally” in Asia.
- Arms proved fungible. Dwight D. Eisenhower assured Jawaharlal Nehru in February 1954 that the aid was not aimed at India, yet American Patton tanks and Sabre jets were used against India in 1965.
- Kashmir was internationalised. Washington backed the UN plebiscite route and, after the 1962 arms airlift, pressed India into six rounds of Swaran Singh–Zulfikar Ali Bhutto talks (1962–63).
- 1971 was the nadir. Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger “tilted” towards Pakistan because Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan was their secret channel to Beijing, and sent Task Force 74, led by the USS Enterprise, into the Bay of Bengal. Srinath Raghavan (1971, 2013) shows that this global calculus, not South Asian merits, drove the tilt.
- The 1980s repeated the pattern. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan made Pakistan a frontline state, with a $3.2 billion package (1981) and F-16s. The Pressler Amendment (1985) required yearly certification that Pakistan had no nuclear device, and Washington certified until 1989 while the programme advanced.
Testing the claim: the limits of the Pakistan explanation
- The structural root lay elsewhere. Robert J. McMahon (The Cold War on the Periphery, 1994) shows that Pakistan was armed for Middle East defence and global containment, not for South Asia. John Foster Dulles called neutrality “immoral” (1956), and Nehru would not trade alignment for aid; India’s Soviet ties (Bhilai, rupee-paid arms, the Soviet veto on Kashmir) had their own logic.
- Washington did not always choose Pakistan. It airlifted arms to India in 1962, embargoed both sides in 1965, helped finance the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) through the World Bank and fed India through PL-480.
- Pakistan’s value tracked the global contest. Once Soviet troops left Afghanistan, Washington invoked Pressler in October 1990 and cut aid.
- India had agency. The Indo-Soviet Treaty (August 1971) and India’s muted response to the Afghan invasion confirmed the American image of India as a Soviet client.
| Lens | Reading of the Pakistan factor |
|---|---|
| Structural realism (Kenneth N. Waltz) | Under bipolarity, Pakistan mattered as a containment asset |
| Constructivism (Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds, 2000) | Mutual images hardened into identity and outlived events |
| Indian view | American “hyphenation” denied India’s primacy in its own region |
Conclusion
Pakistan was the intervening variable, not the root cause: bipolarity set the two democracies apart, and Pakistan turned difference into hostility through arms, Kashmir and the hyphenation of India with a smaller neighbour. The test is what followed: Washington de-hyphenated India in the 2000s. Yet the factor revives whenever Pakistan regains global utility. In 2025 Donald J. Trump claimed credit for the India–Pakistan ceasefire, offered Kashmir mediation and hosted Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, and in April 2026 Pakistan brokered the US–Iran ceasefire. India’s flat rejection of mediation shows it learnt the Cold War lesson.