Overthrowing Tashkent: the Demise of the Soviet-American

OVERTHROWING TASHKENT: THE DEMISE OF THE SOVIET-AMERICAN CONSENSUS OVER THE ASIAN SUBCONTINENT FOLLOWING THE SECOND KASHMIR WAR by KAINIEN CHUANG MOREL (Under the Direction of John H. Morrow, Jr.) ABSTRACT The partition of India of 1947 brought British imperial rule of the subcontinent to an end, creating two new states, the republics of India and Pakistan. Simultaneously, the United States and the Soviet Union, the preeminent military, political and economic powers of the postwar world, continued to expand their influence into the postcolonial nations of Asia and Africa. This thesis examines the efforts to incorporate India and Pakistan into the rival power blocs of the United States and Soviet Union, and the consequences those efforts had following the Second Kashmir War of 1965. Its findings demonstrate the complex power relationship that existed between the nuclear powers and the postcolonial nations moving into the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, in which both the United States and Soviet Union abandoned their previous position of mediation between India and Pakistan, instead tacitly endorsing the third Indo- Pakistani War. INDEX WORDS: India, Pakistan, United States, Soviet Union, Kashmir, Bangladesh, Cold War OVERTHROWING TASHKENT: THE DEMISE OF THE SOVIET-AMERICAN CONSENSUS OVER THE ASIAN SUBCONTINENT FOLLOWING THE SECOND KASHMIR WAR by KAINIEN CHUANG MOREL A. B., the University of Georgia, 2009 A. B. J., the University of Georgia, 2009 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA 2012 © 2012 Kainien Chuang Morel All Rights Reserved OVERTHROWING TASHKENT: THE DEMISE OF THE SOVIET-AMERICAN CONSENSUS OVER THE ASIAN SUBCONTINENT FOLLOWING THE SECOND KASHMIR WAR by KAINIEN CHUANG MOREL Major Professor: John H. Morrow, Jr. Committee: William H. Stueck Shane Hamilton Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Sita Raman, who was of great help in suggesting research avenues for the postwar Asian subcontinent. I would also like to acknowledge my committee members and the department faculty, whose patience and assistance made this possible. Finally, I'd like to thank the body of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi historians and academics, who observed the events in question and preserved them for future audiences more than forty years later. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iv CHAPTERS 1 THE BREAKDOWN OF CONSENSUS ......................................................................1 2 THE ROAD TO THE PARTITION ............................................................................23 3 RETURNING TO KASHMIR .....................................................................................38 4 CHANGING FRONTS ................................................................................................73 5 LOSING THE EAST ...................................................................................................99 6 CONCLUSION: FROM TASHKENT TO DHAKA ................................................126 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................134 v CHAPTER 1 THE BREAKDOWN OF CONSENSUS The question posed here—"What factors led to the transformation of Soviet and American positions in the Indo-Pakistani conflicts of 1965 and 1971?"—carries with it issues not limited to those two nations. The histories of India and Pakistan, born of the same Indian Empire under the British Raj, remain closely intertwined amidst irredentist conflicts like Kashmir or the secession of East Pakistan. In the middle of the Cold War, their ongoing conflict was only briefly paused by the diplomatic settlement at Tashkent, following the Second Kashmir War of 1965. Encouraged by the international community, India and Pakistan spent the next six years seeking diplomatic, rather than military, solutions to numerous contentious issues. When they resorted to conflict in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, the international community had also changed. This political shift has its roots in a worldwide interest in the future of the postcolonial India—commonly labeled part of the "third world" though here referred to more specifically as the Asian subcontinent and defined as the postcolonial states that rose from the ashes of British colonial Asia following the Second World War. The lion's share of this territory went to the new states of India and Pakistan, which themselves were immediately characterized by certain geographic and cultural circumstances that would come to define their politics. Outside that region, four nations in particular became involved in the region. In the most general sense, these were the United Kingdom, whose overseas empire had collapsed to form the independent states in question; the United States, the most powerful postwar economy that positioned itself as an 1 informal successor to the past British Empire in the region; the Soviet Union, a rising superpower that had limited influence in the subcontinent in the course of Second World War; and the People's Republic of China which, like the Soviet Union, saw itself as a revolutionary champion of the postcolonial world but had expanded its economic and political ties with the subcontinent after impendence. These four nations shared certain issues in common, particularly the need to reevaluate the state of India and Pakistan in the wake of the transformation of their independence. The Tashkent Declaration, as a political settlement, represented this new approach—proposed by one nation, endorsed by two others and ignored by a fourth. The issues that the Tashkent Declaration sought to address could be thought of geographically, divided between three tiers. In local geography, the treaty sought to create a stable situation where irredentist conflicts, like those in the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, could be ended and hopefully avoided in the future. In regional geography, the treaty indirectly addressed a grander problem: the nature of India's separation of the two regions of Pakistan, east and west, and the hope to foster neighborly conduct between their governments. Should that be successful, the constant suspicion resulting from India dividing Pakistan by thousands of kilometers of its own territory might be addressed. Finally, in world geography, the treaty represented the influence of foreign powers. It was presented by the Soviet Union, whose southernmost borders came within tens of kilometers of both Pakistan and the disputed Kashmir territory, yet had a comparatively weak level of influence in subcontinent politics, especially compared to its Cold War rival. From distant North America, the United States had consistently shaped subcontinent politics by both its military strength and its economic superiority. Even outside the context of the Cold War, it is possible to 2 understand the undesirability among Soviet leadership of remaining at such a disadvantage so close to home. The diplomatic summit takes its name from the city of Tashkent, itself a demonstration of industrialization and, after the violent 1966 earthquake, a symbol of Soviet cosmopolitan culture and living. In a matter to be elaborated on further, they were able to coax the stalwart leaders of Pakistan and India to the city and convince them to come to an agreement on a permanent end to the fighting in Kashmir. But the Tashkent Declaration was not intended just to answer the Kashmiri question, nor was the region the only point of contention between India and Pakistan. It was naturally thought that the public promise to rely on diplomacy rather than military incursions to resolve disputed territories, while respecting sovereignty over internal affairs, could bring about an end to all Indo-Pakistani conflict eventually. With the abrupt rise of the crisis of East Pakistan—an internal issue that rapidly became an external one through the associated refugee crisis—Tashkent was intended to address both aspects, and brought it to the attention of all the powers that had participated. Studying the change in international relations in the subcontinent, historians have mentioned the United States and the Soviet Union as being traditionally in opposition to one another, as part of the Cold War narrative. The conflicts between the new postcolonial states of Pakistan and India are often framed against this, both as a longstanding regional conflict and another theater of the global Soviet-American rivalry. The disparate foreign objectives of the Soviet and United States governments are more easily distinguished, even during the period of détente, which was characterized by a greater agreement between Moscow and Washington on many matters in the world. 3 With the emergence of India and Pakistan as independent nations after 1947, the Asian continent had a source of repeated armed conflict for a number of decades. Particularly before the end of the 20th century, periodic warfare was interrupted by peacetime that itself carried the expectation of resumed hostilities. Between the middle of 1965 and the end of 1971, the diplomatic aspirations of the United States and the Soviet Union, as leaders of their own international alliances, strongly modified

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