Since India achieved independence in 1947, political relations between India and the United States have never been close, and today a number of formidable obstacles hinder progress along the pathway toward closer ties between these two populous democracies.

To understand why such obstacles remain, one needs to reviewmamong other matters--the more recent history of India's close ties with the former Soviet Union, even as she proclaimed a policy of nonalignment. To understand why both governments feel there is hope for improved relations today, one should examine the entire history, beginning with the World War II and postwar years during which the United States supported Indian independence from Great Britain, America's closest wartime ally.

Although several books describing elements of this history have been written by Indian and American scholars, no American specialist had undertaken the complete story until Ambassador Dennis Kux decided to analyze the entire five-decade relationship. In this volume, he describes the major issues, events, and personalities that have influenced India-US relations from the Roosevelt administration through the Bush administration. Although the book is arranged by the sequence of US administrations, it clearly addresses audiences in both nations.

Ambassador Kux wrote this book while a Visiting Fellow at the National Defense University. It was his feeling--and one we wholeheartedly supportmthat only by understanding the ebb and flow of relations over the entire half century may both governments intelligently address the remaining impediments to friendlier relations.

PAUL G. CERJAN
Lieutenant General, US Army
President, National Defense University

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By DENNIS KUX
Introduction by Senator Daniel E Moynihan.
NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1992.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dennis Kux has spent more than a dozen years living in South Asia or working on South Asia at the US State Department. A Foreign Service Officer since 1955, Ambassador Kux had assignments in both India and Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s and was in charge of Indian affairs in the 1970s. From 1986 through 1989, he served as US Ambassador to the Ivory Coast. Other State Department positions included tours as Director for the Center for the Study of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence Coordination, Deputy Director for Management Operations, and overseas assignments m Turkey and Germany. He researched and wrote Estranged Democracies as a visiting Fellow at the National Defense University.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE:

In 1957, when I was ready to head overseas for my first assignment as a young American Foreign Service Officer, India's struggle to develop under the democratic system caught my imagination and I asked to be sent there. The vagaries of the State Department personnel process assigned me next door, as a third secretary and economic officer at the US Embassy in Karachi. During two years in Pakistan and a follow-on tour in India, I learned much about the problems of the subcontinent and the emotion-laden tensions between the two countries. I also came to admire and respect the ancient cultures of South Asia-- a part of the world vastly different in tradition, history, and outlook on life from the United States.

At the time, whether the democratic West could do a better job than the Communist East in addressing the "revolution of rising expectations" in India and elsewhere in the developing world was a question high on the US foreign policy agenda. Now, with the Cold War happily history, India has slid down the ladder of US priorities, although its continuing effort to develop as a democracy does remain significant. One can hardly make support for democracy a guiding principle of American foreign policy yet ignore what happens to democracy in a country where today 860 million people live--one out of every six human beings on earth.

For the better part of twenty years, from late 1957 until mid-1977, my Foreign Service work mainly concerned South Asia, four years on Pakistan and seven on India. During this period, one of the things that most puzzled and frustrated me was the uneven pattern of US-India relations, the swings between periods of cooperation and antagonism, and the often emotional character of the relationship. Why was it that these democracies seemed to have so much trouble in getting along? What caused these two countries to have such volatile relations, occasionally friendly, sometimes hostile, more often than not estranged?

In the decade after 1977, Foreign Service duties sent me far afield from South Asia--an assignment in Turkey, responsibilities for inteliigence and management matters in the State Department, and then three years as US Ambassador to the Ivory Coast in West Africa. But the subcontinent was never far from my thoughts. When offered a chance to become a Senior Fellow at the National Defense University, I decided to use the opportunity to write a book exploring the puzzling character of USIndia relations.

Once into the research, I found my own knowledge spotty. Some periods I knew well from personal observation or previous study. Others were largely blanks. Trying to fill in the empty spaces, I realized, somewhat to my surprise, that in recent years no American had prepared a comprehensive historical account of the relationship, although numerous Indians had. Since knowing "what" happened before considering "why" seemed logical, I shifted course, deciding to tackle the task of telling the story of India-US diplomatic relations rather than trying to explain what lay behind the many ups anddowns.

1941, the eve of the US entry into World War II, seemed the appropriate starting point for the book. That pivotal year 1941 was when New Delhi and Washington established direct diplomatic relations, despite India's membership in the British Empire.

It was also the year when the United States first became seriously engaged in the subcontinent. The history closes fifty years later, in mid-1991, with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the end of the Cold War. Since this global struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the reaction to it of the three generations of Nehrus--Jawaharlal, Indira, and Rajivmwho led India for 39 of its 45 years as an independent nation, was a defining factor in India-US relations, the termination of the USSoviet contest and the passing of the Nehru dynasty seemed a fitting point to conclude the book.

My purpose was not to explain the tangled nature of the relationship, but as the story unfolds over the five decades, the major reasons for the mutual estrangement become apparent.

India and the United States were not at odds because, as some assert, there was too little dialogue, or a lack of mutual understanding, or were serious misperceptions, or because Indians and Americans have trouble getting along with each other. On the contrary, I believe that Washington and New Delhi fell out because they disagreed on national security issues of fundamental importance to each. In the late 1940s, India decided to pursue a neutralist foreign policy, staying apart from the two power blocs then emerging; then, after 1954, the US decided to arm India's enemy Pakistan as part of a global policy of containing communism through a system of military alliances; finally, in the late 1960s and especially after the 1971 Treaty of Friendship, India decided to establish a close political-security relationship with the Soviet Union. India was thus lined up with America's principal foe while, at the same time, Washington was itself aligned with India's major enemy. Not a recipe for amicable relations.

The narrative focuses on the diplomatic interaction between the Indian and American governments and tries to let the story largely tell itself without much attempt at theorizing. Other facets of the bilateral relationship--economic assistance, trade and commerce, and cultural, for example--are discussed mainly as they impact on the political-security ties. Although I have tried to present the Indian, as well as the American, perspective of the story, after three decades as a US diplomat, my understanding of how the United States conducted its diplomacy toward India inevitably is greater than my ability to elaborate the Indian viewpoint.

The fact that declassified US official records are far more available reinforced this tendency. (US documents are largely declassified through the 1960s). On the Indian side--even though New Delhi supposedly follows a 30- year rule in releasing documents--little has, in fact, been made available after 1948, except for Prime Minister Nehru's letters to state chief ministers. Originally sent every two weeks, these are of great help for the first decade of independence, but unfortunately become much less frequent in the late 1950s. One hopes India will follow the US lead in opening up its archives so that both sides of the relationship can be better understood. In keeping with the chronological nature of the study, I have organized the history around the terms of US presidents, with a chapter for each president from Roosevelt to Bush--and two for the busy Eisenhower years.

The first six chapters, through the Johnson presidency, are based on declassified official documents, mainly American, as supplemented by memoirs, biographies, academic studies of various periods or facets of the relationship, and interviews. The final five chapters, from Nixon through the first two years of the Bush presidency, draw more on interviews, my own personal recollections, press accounts, and other secondary sources. Relatively few US documents have been declassified from this period. Although these chapters are necessarily more anecdotal, I hope they are not less accurate in relating the history of relations.

I am indebted to many, many people for their help and encouragement during the two years I spent researching and
writing this book. Dr. Fred Kiley, the Director of the National Defense University Press, was an ever wise and cheery source of editorial advice. I am equally appreciative, for her friendly help and counsel, to Dr. Dora Alves, my patient editor at the NDU Press. Mr. Bruce Martin and his colleagues were unfailingly pleasant and efficient in helping me tap the valuable materials at the Library of Congress.

To Professors Thomas Thornton of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Stephen Cohen of the University of Illinois, I am enormously indebted for their generous review of the chapter drafts and their willingness to draw on their own profound knowledge of US relations with South Asia to suggest ways to improve the manuscript. I am similarly appreciative for the many helpful suggestions from Walter Andersen, William Barnds, Peter Galbraith, John Shultz, George Sherman, Sidney Sober, Ambassador Howard Schaffer, Ambassador Jagat Mehta, Ambasador Eric Gonsalves, and Professors Joseph Goldberg, Garry Hess, and Raju G. C. Thomas, who were kind enough to review all or parts of the manuscript.

I am especially thankful to Warren Unna, retired Washington Post and Statesman correspondent, not only for reviewing the manuscript but for making available his newspaper files dating back to the 1960s. I owe the phrase "estranged democracies" to Dr. Gary Hess, Professor of History at Bowling Green University, who employed this in a paper prepared for a January 1991 conference on Indo-US Relations in New Delhi, and kindly agreed to my using it in the title of the book. Naturally, I am also deeply grateful to the more than fifty Indians and Americans who agreed to share their remembrances and perceptions with me, almost invariably on the record. Their names are listed at the end of the book and their remarks appropriately footnoted in the text.

Finally, I want to thank my wife Marie and my children, Leslie, Sally, and Brian, who provided so much help and encouragement, especially during the inevitable periods of discouragement.

Without their support, I am not sure I would have stayed the long course involved in preparing this history, which I dedicate to them with much love and affection. The opinions expressed are, of course, my own and do not reflect the views of the Department of State or the US government.

Washington, DC • November 1992

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