Nixon on Mrs Gandhi: ‘We really slobbered over the old witch’
Right now we are courting India as a means to contain China or at least we were until India reads this.
See also: US and India sign 10-year defence agreement WASHINGTON: Defence ministers of the United States and India signed a 10-year agreement on Tuesday paving the way for joint weapons production, cooperation on missile defence and possible lifting of US export controls for sensitive military technologies.
“The United States and India have entered a new era,” a statement said after the signing by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Indian counterpart, Pranab Mukherjee, who is on a visit to Washington. “We are transforming our relationship to reflect our common principles and shared national interests,” it said of the so-called New framework for the US-India defence relationship” signed at the Pentagon.
Nixon on Mrs Gandhi: ‘We really slobbered over the old witch’
Right now we are courting India as a means to contain China or at least we were until India reads this.
-Am
ALLAN LAING June 30 2005
SHE was a respected world leader, the Iron Lady of India. But, to Richard Milhous Nixon, Indira Gandhi was less than graciously known as "the old witch". Newly declassified transcripts of White House conversations between the US president and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, confirm there was little love lost between them and the Indian prime minister. On November 5, 1971, months before the Watergate break-in that led to Nixon's impeachment and disgrace, he met Kissinger in the Oval Office to review a meeting they had had the previous day with Mrs Gandhi. "We really slobbered over the old witch," declared Nixon. "The Indians are bastards anyway," Kissinger told his boss, adding that the president had got the better of her during their conversation. "While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted too," the great diplomat said. "She will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception and therefore in despair she's got to go to war." The meeting between the world leaders took place at the height of the political crisis in the Indian sub-continent, the subsequent war between India and Pakistan and the eventual creation of Bangladesh. At a time when cold war paranoia was rife, Nixon and the US administration both disliked and distrusted Mrs Gandhi, fearing that she had sided her country towards the USSR. America, then, famously "tilted" towards Pakistan. These latest transcripts of White House tapes, released as part of the State Department's compilation of significant documents involving US foreign policy, amount to Nixon and Kissinger (with the president's chief of staff Bob Haldeman also present) speculating on Mrs Gandhi's motives and India's intentions in the looming conflict with neighbouring Pakistan. At one point, Nixon boasts to Haldeman about his performance. "You should have heard, Bob, the way we worked her round," he said. "I dropped stilettos all over her." The tapes also allude to a further meeting over dinner the president was scheduled to have with the Indian premier that evening. Presumably referring to the robust diplomatic style of LBJ, Nixon's predecessor, Kissinger says: "If you'd put on a Johnson performance, it would have been emotionally more satisfying but it would have hurt us. Because, I mean, if you had been rough with her .... " Nixon: "Yeah . . . ." Kissinger: ". . . Then she'd have been crying, going back crying to India. So I think even though she's a bitch, I'd be a shade cooler today." Ultimately, Mrs Gandhi's visit to Washington proved futile in terms of averting a conflict between the neighbouring states. Less than three weeks later India launched an offensive against East Pakistan. The Nixon administration cut off economic aid to India and the president himself decided to "tilt" towards Pakistan, supporting it in the UN and pressuring the Soviets to discourage India with hints that US-USSR detente would be damaged if Moscow did not comply. Nixon eventually ordered the US carrier Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal and instructed Kissinger to try to persuade China to offer military support to Pakistan. Briefly, there were fears of a nuclear conflict but, in the end, neither Russia nor China entered the war and, in December, 1971, Pakistan surrendered and accepted India's ceasefire terms which led to the creation of Bangladesh.
Conversation pieces Excerpts from conversation between Nixon, Kissinger, and Haldeman, November 5, 1971, 8.15-9am
Nixon: This is just the point when she is a bitch. Kissinger: Well, the Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there. It's – to them East Pakistan is no longer the issue. Now, I found it very interesting how she carried on to you yesterday about West Pakistan. Nixon: I think I'll make the meeting today a rather brief – cool. [unclear] I don't mean by that cool in terms of not trying to bring up [unclear] I'll talk to her a little about Vietnam, and.... Kissinger: I'd let her talk a little more, maybe today .... Nixon: Yeah? Kissinger: .... to be a little less forthcoming. But basically, Mr President .... Nixon: So I was trying to give her no excuses. Now I've talked to her, told her everything we're going to do. Now it's up to her. Kissinger: While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted too. You very subtly – I mean, she will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception and therefore, in despair, she's got to go to war. Nixon: Yeah. Kissinger: So her objective – she has a right to be a little sore because you thwarted her objective. She would rather have had you give her a cool reception .... Nixon: That's right. Kissinger: So that she could say that she was really put upon. Nixon: We really slobbered over the old witch. Kissinger: How you slobbered over her in things that did not matter, but in the things that did matter .... Nixon: Yeah. Kissinger: You didn't give her an inch. So that she's.... Nixon: She knows. Kissinger: She knows she isn't coming out of here with any – she can't go home and say, "The president promised to do the following for me," and then when you don't do it ....
WASHINGTON: From the moment they took office, President George Bush and his administration were keen to do everything they could to counter the expanding Chinese military, one way being to develop a relationship with India, according to a veteran observer and commentator of South Asian affairs.
Steven R Weisman, the chief diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, who was the newspaper’s bureau chief in New Delhi during the 1980s made this and several other observations in an interview with Bernard Gwertzman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Weisman said, “This is something that the administration has been loath to acknowledge publicly, but it’s clearly underneath the surface.” In the last couple of years, the Pentagon has become much more alarmed over Chinese military intentions, and the Chinese acquisition of high technology that has given it an upper hand in the Taiwan Strait. The administration also felt alarmed over Europe’s selling of high-tech equipment to China.
Asked about the current India-Pakistan dialogue, Weisman said relations between the two countries have been “calmer than they have been in some time,” but “it would be foolish to think this state of affairs is permanent. Elaborating, he added, “Things are going well now, but when I talk to Indians and Pakistanis, they recognise that it would only take one bus bomb in Kashmir or New Delhi to get things off track. And the Indians, although they’re improving relations with Pakistan, adamantly insist that Pakistan has done nothing to stop the infiltration of militants or extremists - whatever you want to call them - into Kashmir to provoke militant opposition to Indian sovereignty there. So, it’s a very touchy situation that is only temporarily in a good place. Naturally, the administration is taking some credit for the peaceful state of affairs, saying they are the first administration in history that has tried to have good relations with both India and Pakistan. Well, with all due respect, it would not be possible if India and Pakistan were not themselves trying hard to have good relations.”
Asked if there was a paradox in the situation, considering that Washington sees India as a way to offset China, but India has been trying to improve its own relations with China, Weisman answered, “India is playing Kissinger-like games of making up with the longtime enemy. India and China fought a war in the early 1960s … and they still have a boundary dispute left over from that war. India accelerated a policy of improving relations with China, and when you talk to Indian officials, they are adamant, and resentful, frankly, that they are being seen in Washington as a kind of a pawn here to beat up on China among the China-bashers. So, for both India and the Americans, you don’t hear very much (public) talk about, ‘Let’s build up India as a counterweight to China,’ even though everybody knows that’s part of what’s happening.” As to how it would work strategically, since India is not interested in any confrontation with China, Weisman replied that India has its own ambitions, such as a blue water navy. India’s navy is a presence in a part of the world where China also wants a presence, which could make it a “stabilising force” in the region from Pentagon’s perspective.
About the Bush decision to sell nuclear supplies to India for non-military use, the NYT correspondent said the decision would no doubt be seen, by its critics, as just another case of the administration seeking to dismantle an international arrangement. While US law forbids such a deal, national security exemptions enable the President to override bans on selling equipment on national security grounds, as is currently the case with Pakistan. The law will have to be changed before the administration can implement the deal with India. He said it could be argued that what the administration has decided to do is just to “recognise the reality and try to make it as effective as possible for its objectives.” He also felt that while India had agreed to the separation of its military and civilian nuclear programme and place the latter open to inspection, “that’s going to take a long time, and it’s going to be very complicated, and hard to do that-and to make sure that it is being done.”
Asked if Pakistan is going to want the same deal, Weisman replied, “The Pakistanis, as of today, haven’t made clear what deal they want. But, this spring, they already got their biggest priority, and that was the F-16s that the United States agreed to sell them … I don’t know that Pakistan now wants the kind of thing that India has been given, which is help on its civilian nuclear programme. They do have reactors, and frankly, I don’t know what plans Pakistan has in the civilian sphere or what kind of outside aid it wants. But chances are if the India deal goes through, Pakistan will line up and ask for the same deal after they have a bit of a better record on non-proliferation.”
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