Thanks to the Americans’ habit of maintaining records of official business and transferring piles of papers and photographs to outgoing Presidents’ libraries, and allowing this record to be used (except for the more explosive or tell-tale papers that are still classified), we have learnt a great deal about what the rulers in the USA and Pakistan have been doing to the passive, voiceless and uninformed people of this country vide such publications as American Role in Pakistan, The State of Martial Rule, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy in the First Decade, and The American Papers besides the memoirs of diplomats.  Dennis Kux’s meticulously researched work, The United States of Pakistan, 1947-2000, Disenchanted Allies, is a valuable addition to this literature.

            The author appropriately begins by taking a brief view of the US attitude towards the Muslim League demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims.  While it favoured the end of colonial rule, it did not like the idea of the subcontinent’s partition on the ground that it would reduce the US role in promoting “peace and security.”  The Indian Muslims also thought the US was unfriendly, as the Quaid-i-Azam told an American diplomat on May 1, 1947.  When Pakistan came into being, it was an impoverished nation whose “future, even its survival, was far from secure.”  By then the US had become not only the world’s strongest and most prosperous country but also “the leader of the anti-communist bloc in the Cold War.”  It showed only modest interest in the new state, and “expected to have closer ties with the larger and more important India than with Pakistan.”

            A detailed analysis of the US-Pakistan relations during 1947-2000 is summed up in this paragraph: “Yet after New Delhi chose a neutralist path, Pakistan became attractive as a potential partner in security arrangements for containing Soviet expansion in the Middle East.  The US-Pakistan alliance partnership that followed in 1954-55, however, proved unstable.  It came apart in the 1960s during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, came together again with Nixon in the White House, but fractured once more with Jimmy Carter as president.  During the 1980s, the struggle against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan provided new glue to bind the two countries together.  Since the departure of the Red Army and the end of the Cold War, relations once more have been plagued by differences.”

            Looking for an explanation for this “roller-coaster” relationship, the author rejects both the Pakistani view, that the Americans are inconstant and the American assertion about Pakistan’s “wrong-headedness, particularly its fixation with India,” The reason, in his view, “lies in the fact that over the years U.S. and Pakistani interests and related security policies have been at odds almost as often as they have been in phase.”

            This, too, is perhaps an inadequate explanation, because it begs the question regarding the justification for the whole strategy of seeking security through militarisation of states and societies.  The entire humankind has paid a heavy price for the diversion of colossal resoures to cold war strategies of securing peace and security, and Pakistan has gravely undermined the promise of freedom by concluding that it can be secure only with borrowed weapons.

            The book makes it amply clear that the United States responded favourably to Pakistan’s endless begging for military aid only when this country could find a place in its global strategy and had no hesitation in turning its back on the most allied of allies the moment its priorities changed.  But no Pakistani has a justification to cavil at that because every country has the right to pursue what it perceives as its national interest.  On the other hand, the book offers abundant material to reflect upon the utter bankruptcy and lack of self-respect of Pakistan’s rulers in dealing with the United States.

              As early as 1947, it was clear that the US preferred India to Pakistan but every time Washington inclined towards India, we felt aggrieved.  We were extra keen on joining MEDO and SEATO even though the effectiveness of these alliances was not clear even to the US.  The way Pakistan solicited military aid is simply pathetic.  Liaquat Ali declined to send troops to Korea until the Kashmir issue was resolved and Nazimuddin rejected joining MEDO on the same plea.  But after that, no conditions were attached to following cold war policies.  Pakistani spokesmen took pride in telling the US, “Our army is your army.”

            There certainly were occasions when Pakistan had valid reason to complain of breach of trust – the US decision to give India military aid in violation of the undertaking of prior consultation with Pakistan, criticism of Pakistan’s approaches to China under the same logic of security that had pushed it towards the US, and patent discrimination against Pakistan in subjecting it to nuclear-related sanctions while India’s Pokhran I was ignored.

            One issue on which no Pakistan government spokesman could protest was its deviation from democratic rule.  It must be said in fairness to the US policy-makers that in their internal discussions they did not fail to stress their commitment to democracy.  However, when the time for decisions came, the plight of the Pakistani people under dictatorship could be ignored.  The indifferent attitude towards the dismissal of the Nazimuddin government could not be rationalised by sending a CIA man on a two-year mission to help Pakistan draw up its constitution.  When, during the Zia regime, Pakistan’s emissary requested the US Secretary of State not to fret about lack of democracy in his country, the reply he got was: what you do to your people is your internal affair.  General Zia was asked about revival of democracy during his last visit to the US and nobody shut him up when he boasted: “Ours is a constitutional government.  We are not a pack of clowns.”  It seems Pakistan has had to suffer more than its share of clowns.

            For instance, on the Kashmir issue.  By 1953, mediators had begun to rule out plebiscite and suggest a partition of Kashmir.  Nehru offered division along the ceasefire line with minor adjustments.  Pakistan presented a counter-proposal which none else than President Ayub described as “unrealistic” and “damned nonsense.”  A succession of Pakistani rulers agreed with Nehru, Macmillan and US authorities on this way out but would not take the Pakistanis or the Kashmiris into confidence.  Finally, after the Simla Accord the US had no difficulty in shifting from its 1948-49 position and leaving the matter to be sorted out bilaterally.  Mr. Kux also throws useful light on the circumstances in which the US rejected the idea of an independent Kashmir presented by Sheikh Abdullah in 1948 when he was a member of India’s delegation to the Security Council.

            For Pakistani readers, some impressions of unhappy events have been explained.  Yahya Khan’s belief that China was going to intervene in the Bengal crisis was grounded in Kissinger’s misinterpretation of what the Chinese had said to him during his secret mission.  Nixon’s tilt towards Pakistan in December 1971, though stated to be based on a misreading of the situation, was more real than imagined.  The author also explains what had happened when the expression ‘the party is over’ provoked Bhutto in 1977, what was meant by making an example of Pakistan if it continued with its nuclear programe, how President Ghulam Ishaq was taken aback by the abrupt departure of a US emissary when he was explaining his stand on the nuclear issue, and what were the conditions under which Benazir Bhutto was allowed to assume power in 1988.

             Perhaps the part of the book most relevant to Pakistan’s present crisis deals with Afghanistan.  The US objections to ISI delivering more arms to fundamentalist factions than the others, were ignored.  Also brushed aside were allegations of misappropriation of money and weapons delivered for the mujahideen.  But perhaps the most crucial excess was Gen. Zia’s decision to keep the heat on when the Soviets had already decided to pull out.  According to Kux, General Zia, who had no inhibition in declaring that he could continue to lie as he had done for ten years because a Muslim was allowed to lie for a good cause, had raised his ambitions.  Instead of ending the Afghan people’s suffering, Mr. Kux thinks he started thinking of acquiring “strategic depth” through a client state and of establishing a religious rule in Afghanistan, a mission he could not quite accomplish in Pakistan.  It was then that the strategy of imposing a Pakistan-friendly government on the Afghan people took shape, although at least Sahibzada Yaqub had the presence of mind to doubt that the set-up being created would remain friendly to Pakistan.

            No research into the past is free from subjective factors.  That is why the study by Mr. Kux, for all its value and richness of detail, is at best a possible version of truth.  But Pakistanis who wish to understand their descent into the present straits will find it extremely helpful.