US House committee came perilously close to rejecting sale of F-16s to Pakistan

Congress's approval for the military package including the sale of F-16s to Pakistan was supposed to have been a cakewalk for the Reagan Administration. It wasn't. It came alarmingly close to turning into an embarrassing foreign policy debacle for Reagan and Under Secretary of State James Buckley. It was a victory, yes. But it was the kind of win that could well have led Reagan to exclaim as did King Pyrrhus after his victory of Asculum: "Another such victory and we are lost."The House Foreign Relations Committee came perilously close to rejecting the sale of the warplanes to Pakistan. The vote was a tie at 13-13. The committee vote in the Senate in the administration's favour was 10 to seven, close enough for Republican Senator Mark Hatfield, who opposed the sale, to threaten a full scale showdown on the floor of the Senate. Having become exhausted after covering the great debate on the sale of Awacs planes to Saudi Arabia the American news media more or less ignored the manoeuvrings that resulted in the photo finish in the House of Representatives. But experts who followed the events attributed the Reagan Administration's close call to two factors: quiet, but persistent lobbying by Jewish interests who believe that a heavily armed Pakistan closely linked with Saudi Arabia will threaten Israel's security. And a carefully coordinated and brilliantly executed public relations campaign by India's Ambassador K.R. Narayanan and his Political Counsellor G. Parthasarthy that was aimed at congressional staff assistants, academics, and newspapers.As one observer put it: "Finally, the Indians are learning to play hard ball. No one really knows much or even cares about India in this country. Washington's a tough town. To get your way around here you have really got to hustle. And that's what the Indians did. They hustled. They didn't wait around passively expecting reason to prevail. They played politics with politics and they were aggressive."Narayanan: Hard hittingThe joke around the cocktail circuits in Washington is that "Indo-Jewish Lobby" almost helped defeat the F-16 sale to Pakistan. The Washington Post, quoting Western diplomats in New Delhi, reported that because of Mrs Gandhi's silence on General Zia's no-war pact offer, India has lost the public relations battle with Pakistan.But the recent record indicates just the opposite. While it is true that in the past "our loyal ally Pakistan" always had the edge over "Krishna Menon -oriented and Soviet-enamored India" in the hearts and minds of the American public, this time, it was Pakistan that took the creaming during the F-16 debate.Praising India: Even the proponents of the sale, including Buckley, backed down from any direct verbal attacks on India, particularly on India's position on Soviet troops in Afghanistan. In fact, Buckley went to the extraordinary length of praising India as the world's largest democracy thereby demonstrating a significant turn around in the administration's tone towards India. The same Buckley, a creator of what had started out to be an overtly anti-Indian administration, had made it clear several months ago that India's viewpoint was expendable in anything that the US chose to do in South Asia. If India went along with American initiatives, fine. If not, tough. Cajolery, flattering statements or reassurances were out of the question.Much of that has changed at least for the present because the administration discovered that when the Indians stiffened their sinews and summoned up the blood, they were capable of throwing surprising roadblocks in front of what had appeared to be an unstoppable American geopolitical juggernaut in South Asia. During the F-16 debate the invective was hurled mostly at Pakistan. Senator Hatfield: Opposing the saleThe ultimate to Indian lobbying came from a most unlikely source, Z.A. Suleri, Pakistan's official scribe who recently wrote in the Pakistan Times: "Whenever Americans heard about the F-16 they heard the dimmer yet persistent voice of India's brief-holders. In popular forums, Pakistan's point of view is conspicuous by its absence. Our support is confined to strictly official circles of pro-administration Congress echelons."According to an insider who works closely with the so-called Jewish lobby, pro-Israeli elements had a community of interests with India in the volatile Middle East. Those who voted against the F-16, he told India today, "also voted against the Islamic bomb. The Saudis are the principal funding agents for that bomb. With Awacs sales to the Saudis and the extended version of F-16 the Saudis would have a capability to deliver a nuclear bomb made in Pakistan."In addition, he pointed out, members of the House Foreign Relations Committee are now preparing a report based on an on-site visit to Pakistan, stating that the Pakistan army is giving heavy military training to the Saudis, the Libyans and the Iranians. "I'd like to know how on earth we can refer to Pakistan as an ally when this ally is training the soldiers of all the nations who consider America their arch enemy."Devastating Blow: Just as devastating a blow to the administration's position on Pakistan was delivered by diplomats in the Indian Embassy. They used not their own but Pakistani Foreign Minister Aga Shahi's words to devastate the Reagan Administration's logic of giving arms aid to Pakistan. The administration's justification for the sale of F-16s to Pakistan is that "with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan has found itself thrust into the unwelcome status of a frontline state subject to all the hazards that have been the common experience of other countries which find themselves in the same neighbourhood, with the Soviet Union or its proxies". The US must provide a whole range of armaments to that country, the argument continues, in order to resist the "direct military and diplomatic pressure to counter Soviet designs in that region."Buckley (left) and Shahi: ManoeuvringMonths ago, during the early stages of the administration's pitch to Congress about the sale of F-16s to Pakistan, Buckley, who had paid a recent visit to Rawalpindi, assured Capitol Hill that Zia had given him a commitment that Pakistan would not build or explode a nuclear device. But Shahi recently undercut both the administration's regional reasons for arming Pakistan as well as Buckley's nuclear reassurances. The Indians pounced on Shahi's words and stuffed them down the throats of administration spokesmen and Congressional staffers.It was a bizarre diplomatic game. The Indians did not mount a hand-wringing offensive against the arms sales but played an aggressive defence by cashing in on blunders or mistakes made by the other side. Agha Shahi and his views would never have surfaced during the debate had the Indians not been alert and taken the initiative on the issue. On June 30, 1981, Shahi made a speech before the council of Pakistani newspaper editors. In it he pointed out that he believed Soviet assurances that the USSR would not attack Pakistan. "Fear in your mind about the danger of an attack by the Soviet Union should be allayed.'' he assured his audience. "And the Soviet Union is not worried about the acquisition of F-16 aircraft or tanks or other equipment by Pakistan."Pakistan is in a hurry to get all the arms it can from the US because "the powerful Zionist lobby... is in full cry against Pakistan." Pakistan has given "no undertaking to Buckley about (nuclear) explosion."Verbatim Text: The verbatim text of the Shahi speech was transmitted by an alert diplomat in Islamabad to India's Washington Embassy. The Indians made sure that the Shahi statements, which completely contradicted every reason advanced by the State Department for rearming Pakistan and made Buckley look like a fool or a liar, reached key-legislators and opinion-makers in this country. In many cases, the Shahi statement with the significant portions neatly highlighted were delivered in person by Indian diplomats to the powers that be. The Indians did not have to say it. Shahi was making it perfectly clear that the F-16s and related arms were not intended for use against any Soviet threat. They were clearly designed to serve in a war against India.Senator Mark Hatfield, in a stirring letter to members of the Foreign Relations Committee, referred to the Shahi speech and criticised America for becoming "the world's most compulsive gambler. With so much talk of renewed commitment to our real friends, we now move to bestow allied status' on a regime that so recently displayed disregard for this nation and which has always displayed disregard for our ideals. This (F-16) sale represents a desperate substitute for the genius and courage which the increasingly dangerous global situation requires of the US -this sale is intended to signal strength and resolve to the Soviets. It in fact signals confused purpose and hollow commitment. We are becoming the national image of the gambler who disregards his family's welfare, blinds himself to the future, and blanks out the past in a feverish effort to achieve immediate and total security... while I am disturbed over India's pro-Soviet leanings, I do not believe that the facts in any way suggest that she has become a hopelessly pro-Soviet surrogate. But there are now disconcerting indicators that the pro-Soviet factions in India, once on the defensive over Afghanistan, are being rejuvenated".Military Dictatorship: Senator Claiborne Pell described Pakistan as a "military dictatorship, despised by its own people and with an uncertain future. The F-16 is inappropriate to Pakistan's defensive needs and, given the history of India-Pakistan conflict, is more likely to be used against India than the Soviet Union".Staunch anti-nuclear proliferationist Senator Alan Cranston castigated the administration, particularly Buckley, for withholding information about Pakistan's nuclear intentions from Congress. He revealed intelligence information that the Pakistanis have been fabricating some of their own fresh fuel for use in their 137-megawatt Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (kanupp). The International Atomic Energy Agency can no longer verify whether Canadian-supplied, or Pakistani-fabricated nuclear fuel has been diverted after use in KANUPP for plutonium extraction in Pakistan's clandestine reprocessing facility which is not open to international inspection.The Pakistani position drew even less comfort from the academics and experts who were asked to testify before Congress. Their impact was so profound that even House Foreign Affairs Committe Chairman Clement Zablocki on whom the administration had counted to whip votes in favour of its position began to weaken. At one point Zablocki even suggested a compromise whereby Pakistan would receive a handful of F-16s with the rest of the complement being made up of F-5s, a far less threatening airplane from India's standpoint.Author Selig Harrison's devastating critique of the administration's "New Beginning" with Pakistan has already been widely reported. Harrison's attack on the sale of the F- 16s was bolstered by the views of another powerful academic voice, that of Dr William Richter, director of the South Asia Center at Kansas State University. He told Congress bluntly that: "American military support to Pakistan from 1954 onward helped to strengthen unrepresentative institutions-the military and the bureaucracy-vis-a-vis political parties."He noted that there is the widespread popular assumption in Pakistan that the US is the motive force behind every major political change in Pakistan, including Zia's overthrow of Bhutto. Zia's regime, he said, is shaky, and American support for Zia's authoritarian rule will be a feature of whatever civilian regime follows military rule.In addition to the back-door lobbying, the Indians mounted a rare frontal attack to counter what one diplomat claimed was "disinformation" being spread by the administration about India's armed strength. The embassy gave low-key but wide circulation to a "fact sheet' attacking Buckley's assertion that "India possesses a very large, well-equipped, well trained military establishment that provides it with decisive superiority over Pakistan in the air as well as on the ground. Given the large number of advanced aircraft which the Indians have or will receive from the Soviet Union and Great Britain, it will emerge with an even greater edge over the Pakistanis."The source cited by the Indians to discredit Buckley was not the India Defence Ministry but a study conducted by the US Library of Congress's own research service. This study showed that:There is rough parity in infantry divisions between India and Pakistan in regard to troops facing each other;India's extra 10 mountain divisions are deployed on her eastern borders with China and cannot logistically function on the Indo-Pakistan border;India's edge of two independent armoured brigades is neutralised by Pakistan's possession of six battalions of anti-tank missiles equipped with the latest tow weapons as well as a larger number of armoured personnel carriers; Of India's 35 combat squadrons, 18 are primarily interceptor aircraft and they are deployed on airfields all across the country. Since India has no plans to acquire aircraft comparable to the F-16, Pakistan would have an offensive capability to attack targets deep within Indian territory.As the final vote came to a head Parthasarthy wrote a letter to Senate staffer Peter Galbraith stating that the American decision to sell F-16s to Pakistan "has necessitated our government having to consider the purchase of technologically sophisticated weapons, including the Mirage-2000 aircraft." Senator Pell immediately introduced the letter into the congressional record. Four other influential senators joined him in expressing the view that the sale of the F-16 would introduce not only a debilitating arms race into the subcontinent but would also boost Pakistan's ability to hit Indian targets.Senator Hatfield decided to take the matter up before the entire Senate and force a floor-flight. The Reagan Administration was so aghast at this prospect that it sent a bevy of State Department Officials scurrying to Hatfield's door seeking a compromise. Hatfield agreed to hold off-not back off- following "strong assurances" from Secretary of State Alexander Haig that the US would continue to pressure Pakistan against using American arms against India, on restoring democracy and to discontinue its nuclear ambitions. Haig gave these assurances to the senator in a private letter.Invading India: "Did the secretary of state, in his bizarre behaviour of sending you a letter about public policy," Senator Pat Moynihan asked Hatfield, "state that the administration had made any effort to obtain a commitment from the Pakistani Government that these weapons would not be used against India? There have been two Indo-Pakistani wars in this generation. In both cases Pakistanis invaded India with American weapons that they had been given to fight Russians. They have never yet fought a Russian. They keep fighting the Indians. And they keep getting whipped."Hatfield responded that he had raised with the secretary of state the issue "that two-thirds of the Pakistani army today is not on the Afghanistan border but on the Indian border.""The Pakistanis are establishing a nuclear weapons force with Saudi money," continued Moynihan. "The pretorian guard in Jidda is Pakistani. That Government of 2.000 cousins certainly would not want itself protected by its own country. We are giving the Saudis and the Pakistanis together a nuclear weapons system and I'm sorry to tell you that before it is consummated the Indians will go to war. We will have a nuclear war on the subcontinent."While the initial sale of F-16s to Pakistan will go through with Saudi financing, it is clear that all may not be smooth sailing for the rest of the program. Congress clearly demonstrated to the Reagan Administration that it does not have an unfetterd hand in dealing with Pakistan without seriously taking into account the importance of India in that region. For India it was a symbolic victory in that an anti-Indian administration, used to rough-riding its way through Congress on all legislative matters, was almost stymied in its Pakistan initiative.In the past, but for a few activist ambassadors, Washington diplomats have been mostly pen-pushers and perk-amassers. But the bunch that handled the recent crisis has been scrappy and feisty without being overbearing and preachy. Because of the example set by its political wing, the embassy is learning how to work with different components of the American system that from afar looks monolithic but is really a conglomeration of committees and subcommittees. The big question is, with the rapid turnover in the embassy staff here, can the momentum be maintained?Published By: AtMigration Published On: Oct 22, 2013 15:26 IST--- ENDS ---

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US House committee came perilously close to rejecting sale of F-16s to Pakistan

Congress's approval for the military package including the sale of F-16s to Pakistan was supposed to have been a cakewalk for the Reagan Administration. It wasn't.

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