Strobe Talbott - Engaging India. Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb

00 8300-0 frontmatter 6/29/04 5:34 PM Page i engaging

I NDI a

00 8300-0 frontmatter 6/29/04 5:34 PM Page ii A l s o by S t r o b e Ta l b o t t

The Russia Hand

At the Highest Levels

(with Michael Beschloss)

The Master of the Game

Reagan and Gorbachev

(with Michael Mandelbaum)

Deadly Gambits

Reagan and the Russians

Endgame

The Age of Terror:

America and the World after September 11

(edited with Nayan Chanda)

e d i t e d a n d t r a n s l at e d

Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament

Khrushchev Remembers

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engaging

I NDI a

Diplom ac y, Democrac y,

and the bomb

s t r obe tal bo t t

brookings institution press

Washington, D.C.

00 8300-0 frontmatter 6/29/04 5:34 PM Page iv Copyright 2004

the brookings institution

1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

www.brookings.edu

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data

Talbott, Strobe.

Engaging India : diplomacy, democracy, and the bomb / Strobe Talbott.

p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8157-8300-0 (alk. paper)

1. United StatesForeign relationsIndia. 2. IndiaForeign relationsUnited States. 3. United StatesForeign relationsPakistan. 4. PakistanForeign relationsUnited States. 5. Atomic bombIndia. 6. Atomic bombPakistan.

7. IndiaMilitary policy. 8. PakistanMilitary policy. 9. Talbott, Strobe. I. Title.

E183.8.I4T35 2004

327.73054'09'049dc

222004012803

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

The paper used in this publication meets minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials: ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Typeset in Adobe Caslon

Composition by Cynthia Stock

Silver Spring, Maryland

Printed by Phoenix Color

Hagerstown, Maryland

00 8300-0 frontmatter 6/29/04 5:34 PM Page v F o r o n e f a m i ly a n d

t h r e e g e n e r at i o n s o f f r i e n d sAmarjit and Bhagwant Singh

Nayan Chanda and Geetanjali Singh

Amit and Ateesh Chanda

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00 8300-0 frontmatter 6/29/04 5:34 PM Page vii contents

one

The Lost Half Century

1

two

The Desert Rises

23

three

The Mountain Turns White

52

four

Jaswants Village

73

five

Stuck on the Tarmac

89

six

Soft Stonewalling

112

seven

The Avatar of Evil

132

eight

From Kargil to Blair House

154

nine

Sisyphus at India House

170

ten

A Guest in the Parliament

190

eleven

Unfinished Business

Acknowledgments

233

Notes

237

Index

257

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one

The Lost Half Century

When I arrived for work that damp, overcast morning of Monday, May 11, 1998, I was expecting a relatively normal week, at least by State Department standards. There was plenty to do at the office and plenty to worry about in the world, but nothing that quite qualified as a crisis.

Shortly after 8:00 a.m., I chaired the daily meeting of the departments senior staff. As deputy secretary, I was supposed to keep tabs on what was going on in the building and around the globe. Assembled at a mahogany table in the windowless conference room across from my office on the seventh floor were about twenty assistant secretaries. Their bureaus either covered various geographical regions or sought to advance such global objectives as the promotion of democracy and human rights, the protec-tion of the environment, the struggle against terrorism, and the effort to stop the proliferation of lethal armaments, materials, designs and technologies.

Each official reported briefly on what had happened over the weekend and reviewed what lay ahead. The British government and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, were looking for help in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. A team of American diplomats was in the Balkans trying to avert war over Kosovo. Iraqs deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was barnstorming through Europe, lobbying for an end to the U.S.-led campaign to isolate the Baghdad regime. The annual summit of the Group of Seven major industrial democracies, or G-7, was 1

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the lost half century

coming up later in the week in Birmingham, England. Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, would be attending for the first time as a full member of the group, making it the G-8. As the administrations point man on Russia, I planned to spend most of the coming days preparing for the private session that President Bill Clinton would have with Yeltsin in Birmingham.

When the senior staff meeting ended, I returned to my office and settled behind the desk to read the New York Times. I skimmed articles on the front page about the latest Arab-Israeli tensions and drug trafficking in the Caribbean but skipped a feature article about India. That country could hardly have been further from my mind. In government, it is often said, the urgent drives out the merely important. Indiathe worlds second most populous country, its largest democracy, and the most powerful country in a region that is home to nearly a quarter of humanityseemed permanently stuck in the latter category.

At that moment, Phyllis Oakley, the foreign service officer in charge of the departments bureau of intelligence and research, was returning to her own office from the senior staff meeting when her deputy intercepted her in the corridor with the news that India had set off a nuclear device several hours earlier. Phyllis was stunned. How had we learned? she asked. From CNN, she was told. She winced, then rushed back to my office to make sure I had gotten the word. I hadnt. After sitting motion-less for a moment with my eyes closed, I swiveled around in my chair and picked up the handset of the red switch phone behind my desk. The buttons on this clunky device, each labeled with bureaucratic initials, connected me by encrypted lines with my counterparts in other departments and agencies of the government. I punched the button that put me through to John Gordon, a four-star Air Force general who was deputy director of central intelligence at the CIAs headquarters in Langley, Virginia, nine miles up the Potomac River. I assumed John would be able to give me some details on what had happened overnight in India. We had been friends for about ten years, since the first Bush administration, when he had served on the staff of the National Security Council and I had been a Time magazine reporter covering foreign policy. John had just arrived at work, so instead of learning anything from him, I succeeded only in ruining his week just as it started. After hearing what I had to say, he, like me a few moments before, needed at first to absorb the