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BILL CLINTON AND THE KARGIL CONFLICT:
FROM CRISIS MANAGEMENT TO COERCIVE DIPLOMACY
Submitted by
Ajay Bisaria
WWS 547: The Conduct of International Diplomacy
May 12, 2009
INTRODUCTION: WAKING UP TO SOUTH ASIA
As he presided over America’s unipolar moment from 1992, President Bill Clinton
did not need to pin any red flags on South Asia on his wall map through most of his
tenure. The region was off most radar screens in the US establishment and tended
not to produce surprises. Until it did. The first shock that came from India on May
11, 1998, was a seismic one: the CIA and the State Department learnt from CNN that
India had detonated nuclear devices1. Before long, Pakistan had exploded its own
nuclear devices and both countries had declared themselves nuclear powers. The US
responded with alarm and imposed a series of legally determined sanctions against
both countries. The sanctions were soon supplemented by some low‐key diplomacy.
The estranged sub‐continental neighbours, whom many in the US tended to
invariably view with a hyphen, seemed to be on their way to some kind of
reconciliation, with the visit of Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee to Lahore, Pakistan.
In February 1999, the two sides signed a promising ‘Lahore Declaration’, which
committed them to peaceful dialogue and cooperation. However, just as the US was
beginning to focus on the rest of the world, going to war to straighten out the
Balkans in 1999, news came in of a dangerous intrusion by Pakistan into Indian
territory in Kashmir, bringing the two nuclear neighbours into direct and serious
confrontation. South Asia was suddenly President Clinton’s most critical red flag.
The Clinton administration followed the conflict with growing consternation. The
biggest fear among experts on the region was that India would launch an onslaught
1 Strobe Talbott, Engaging India, Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb (Penguin,
2004), p. 3
1
of its own across the line of control that had served as the border in Kashmir since
1972. A disaster scenario that gave American planners nightmares was that while
mobilising for an all‐out war, Pakistan might seek support from China and various
Arab states, while India would perhaps turn to Russia or even its newest partner
Israel. The result could be an international free for all in which all the ‘wrong
outsiders’ might look for enhancing their own roles rather than pulling back the
combatants from the brink from what could become a nuclear cataclysm.2 To
prevent such a disaster, US diplomacy needed to be at its most nimble‐footed and
innovative best.
This case study starts by looking at the domestic state of play in India and Pakistan
and their relations with the US on the eve of the crisis. It examines Pakistan’s
complex motivations in wanting to challenge the status quo with its invasion in
Kargil and focuses on the dilemmas of US policy, which had to rapidly transition
from crisis management to coercive diplomacy with Pakistan.
PAKISTAN: IN DEEP TURBULENCE
Pakistan’s democracy, which had been marked by long periods of military
dictatorship, began its latest run in 1988, with the death of President Zia‐ul‐Haq. It
featured alternating spells of leadership between Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s
Party and Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League. In the latest episode, Nawaz Sharif was
elected as Prime Minister in February 1997 with a huge (but suspect) majority.
2 Ibid, p. 157
2
The Pakistan army tended to remain in charge even when civilian governments
were in place. It had steadily increased its power and influence since the first
military coup in 1958. The military exercised an unchallenged veto over most
critical decisions affecting both foreign and security policy and‐during the era of
General Zia in the 80s‐ deeply expanded its reach into several areas of domestic
politics as well, often pandering to religious zealots in social policy. While civilian
governments in Pakistan had some transient significance, the military, the higher
echelons of the civil service and the intelligence services were unshakably the
permanent features of the state.
A noted Pakistani commentator, Tariq Ali, has argued that Pakistan has suffered
from being on ‘the flight path of American power’ and its society is tortured by a
‘duel’: a yawning divide between the majority of people and their corrupt, uncaring
rulers. An important reason for popular hostility towards the US is not religion but
US support of military dictators.3
Pakistan had conducted nuclear tests in May 1998 in response to the tests by India,
partly as a result of the intense pressure exercised by the army on the civilian
leadership. In October 1998, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rattled the army’s cage.
He forced the military chief, Jehangir Karamat into early retirement, after Karamat
proposed the creation of a National Security Council as an institutional means of
providing more formal input from the armed forces into policy‐making for a nuclear
Pakistan.
3 Tariq Ali, The Duel‐ Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Scribner,
2008) p. x
3
Karamat’s removal was to prove a major blunder. The new chief of the army, Pervez
Musharraf, had even less respect than his predecessor for what he thought were
weak civilian leaders such as Sharif. Musharraf was a mujahir, one of the millions
who were born in India and left during the partition in 1947. He had strong views on
Pakistan’s right to capture Kashmir, to the point of obsession. He also nurtured
extreme bitterness over the 1971 dismemberment of Pakistan in which India had
played a strong role. He reportedly yearned for the day he would be in a position to
launch a military campaign across the Line of Control. Musharraf was also a
commando trained in unconventional warfare; he was acutely aware that Pakistan’s
army had lost every conventional war and fared much better at guerrilla wars.4
INDIA: BETRAYED AGAIN
India had remained a complex and even unlikely democracy since its independence
in 1947. A coalition government of the National Democratic Alliance led by the
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was formed in 1998. Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee led the coalition and in keeping with the manifesto of the party,
ordered nuclear tests in 1998 making India’s covert status overt. These provoked
retaliatory tests by Pakistan.
India had been troubled by two decades of vicious terrorism in the northern states
of Punjab (in the 80s) and in Jammu & Kashmir (in the 90’s), which it attributed in
large measure to Pakistan’s covert sponsorship of cross‐border terrorism. But in a
move that surprised most observers, Prime Minister Vajpayee visited Lahore on the
4 J. N. Dixit, India’s Foreign Policy, 19472003 (Picus, 2003), p. 452
4
inaugural journey of a bus between the two countries. A ‘Lahore Declaration’ was
signed during the visit with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, that held the promise of
peaceful dialogue and cooperation.
The ruling NDA coalition lost a trust vote in Parliament by one vote in April 1999,
leading to political turmoil and the eventual declaration of fresh elections. The
government was reduced to a ‘caretaker’ status and India was gradually shifting to
election mode, when, in the popular perception, little gets done. In spite of this
political scenario, the government’s diplomatic and military reaction to the Kargil
crisis was mature, measured and sure‐footed.
USINDIA RELATIONS: ENGAGING SLOWLY
The world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy had a chequered
history of relations during the Cold War period given India’s professed non‐
alignment and tilt towards the Soviet Union which was countered by a distinct US
tilt towards Pakistan. Relations between the US and India took on a positive but
slow ‘collaborative’ trajectory with the end of the Cold War, when India entered a
pragmatic policy phase based on multiple engagements with the global community.
However, to India’s disappointment, US attention had wandered away from South
Asia in the 1990’s. With the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the
end of the Cold War, it was not just Afghanistan that the US took its eyes off, all of
South Asia slipped off its radar, even though India, and particularly Kashmir ‐was
suffering a terrible decade of terrorism and insurgency which ran from 1989. Not
without coincidence, the insurgency in Kashmir began the same month as the Soviet
5
troops left Afghanistan; it was almost as if the handlers of the jihadist fighters
transferred them seamlessly from the West of Pakistan to its East. The US continued
to look at India through the prism of ‘hyphenated’ relations with Pakistan.5 From
most accounts, US intelligence was well aware that Al Qaeda and the Taliban had
taken over the training of Kashmiri militants in Afghanistan after 1997 and were
promoting the jihad in Kashmir as part of the global jihad.6 This apparent
indifference on the part of the US made India deeply suspicious of US sincerity in
resolving any regional problems.
India’s nuclear explosions of May 1998 caught the Clinton administration by
surprise, coming as they did, much after the almost forgotten ‘peaceful’ nuclear tests
of 1974 and after decades of technology denial. In a knee‐jerk reaction, the US chose
to react with sanctions against India and an attempt to “cap, roll back and eliminate”
the nuclear program.
The unlikely re‐engagement with India started through an extended dialogue
initiated in 1998 between the NDA regime in India, which had ordered the tests, on
the one hand, and the Clinton administration, on the other. Strobe Talbott, then
Deputy Secretary of State, represented the US and Jaswant Singh, who was later
India’s Foreign Minister and Finance Minister, represented India; they had just
begun their protracted conversation (dubbed by the newsmagazine ‘India Today’ as
5 Jaswant Singh, A Call to HonourIn Service of Emergent India, (Rupa, 2006), p. 283
6 Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The US and the disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
and Central Asia (Penguin 2009) p. 277
6
the ‘longest fore‐play in Indo‐US history’7) and met a couple of times before the
Kargil Crisis began. The dialogue promoted a better understanding of the strategic
rationale of India’s nuclear program, as also the strong sense of nuclear restraint
and responsibility of its successive civilian governments. The telephonic exchanges
between Singh and Talbott were an important additional channel of communication
during the Kargil crisis.8
USPAKISTAN RELATIONS: BITTER ALLIES
Pakistan became the ‘most allied ally’ of the US during the Cold War and received
substantial economic and military assistance. But relations deteriorated in the
1960’s when the US backed India during the Indo‐ Chinese conflict of 1962, while
Pakistan looked to China for assistance. The US strategic interest in Pakistan
suddenly shot up after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 when Pakistan
became an eager partner in the proxy war in Afghanistan.
The US relationship with Pakistan suffered with the end of the Cold War. In 1990,
sanctions associated with the Pressler Amendment kicked in when the US President
refused to certify that Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons. In May 1998,
following the nuclear tests, more sanctions kicked in (triggered by the Glenn
Amendment and the Symington Amendment), mirroring the ones imposed on India.
INDIAPAK CONFLICTS: THE GENERAL’S KASHMIR DREAM
7 India Today, January 4, 1999
8 Talbott, p. 158
7
The India Pakistan war in the Kargil sector was the fourth large‐scale conflict
between the two countries. Full‐scale hostile military operations had earlier erupted
in 1948, 1965 (in Kutch, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir) and in 1971, during the
East Pakistan crisis.
Analysts have pointed out that the significant and recurrent characteristics of these
military confrontations have been that each time, Pakistan has initiated the
confrontation covertly, whether in Kashmir, in Kutch or in the former East Pakistan.
When the moves met with resistance, Pakistan deployed regular troops, which, in
turn, invited full‐scale military responses from India.9
The Kargil infiltration plan was rooted in Pakistan’s calculations based on the
experience of the failure of other efforts in Kashmir, particularly in the 1990’s.
Three arguments appear to drive Pakistan’s Kashmir agenda. Firstly, Pakistan saw
Kashmir as an unfinished agenda of partition – since Jammu & Kashmir was a
Muslim majority state and contiguous with West Pakistan, it should be part of
Pakistan. Secondly, the people of Jammu & Kashmir had a right to self‐determination
since they were promised a plebiscite way back in 1948 by a UN resolution. Thirdly,
Pakistan saw India as violating human rights in Jammu and Kashmir. It was
therefore the obligation of Pakistan, as an Islamic country, to liberate Jammu &
Kashmir from the Indian yoke. Since neither the people of Jammu & Kashmir nor the
international community was particularly impressed by these arguments, Pakistan
updated its reasoning to suggest that since both India and Pakistan had declared
9 Dixit, p. 445
8
nuclear weapons capacity since 1998, if India was not asked by the international
community to negotiate giving up Jammu & Kashmir to Pakistan, the world must
face the prospect of nuclear war between the two countries on the Kashmir issue.10
In the context of the disputed areas of Kashmir, it is also useful to note the
background of the Line of Control, a key factor in the conflict. The line was
delineated from the ceasefire lines drawn up after the 1948 and 1965 wars with
Pakistan. The present LOC was drawn up on the basis of stipulations of the Shimla
agreement of July 1972 between then Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto. The LOC was drawn on the basis of mutual consent between senior army
commanders of India and Pakistan, duly counter‐signed by them. The LOC was not a
ceasefire line (which, by definition is more temporary), but a line of control that was
respected by both sides from 1972 to 1999.
Pakistan’s motivation for changing the status quo was manifold. One, some effort
was needed to refocus international attention on Kashmir. Two, strategic planners
in Pakistan believe that the international community was becoming supportive of a
settlement of the Jammu & Kashmir issue on the basis of some kind of line of
control; so there was a case to change the delineation of the LOC to a more
advantageous position in favour of Pakistan. Shifting the LOC eastwards would
enable Pakistan to continue its efforts to capture Jammu & Kashmir from a stronger
position. Three, this shift in the LOC could be consolidated in the Kargil sector and
10 Ibid, p.446
9
would have weakened India’s capacity to safeguard the neighbouring regions of
Ladakh to the east and the Kashmir Valley to the west.11
Kargil was located in the Siachen sector, near the glacier of that name, which had in
1984 become the highest battleground in the India Pakistan contest. The border
along the glacier had not been clearly demarcated by the Shimla Agreement of 1972,
nor did any military forces occupy it before 1984. Pakistan attempted to take
advantage of this cartographic ambiguity and planned to capture the Siachen
heights in the early 1980’s. However, Indian intelligence got wind of these plans and
sent in its troops, occupying the commanding heights. Pakistan soon sent troops of
its own into the glacier region, but India already had the high ground. Since then,
troops from both countries have remained on the freezing heights, deployed as high
as 21,000 feet. When Pakistan made the move above Kargil in 1999, it was seen in
some measure as an attempted reply to the Siachen contest of 1984.12
The planning and execution of the Kargil adventure was attributed largely to
General Musharraf, who firmly believe that the sustained campaign of subversion
Kashmir. Musharraf’s formative experiences in the army explained his mind‐set. The
first significant assignment carried out by him was a charge of training mercenaries
recruited from various Muslim countries for fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan. In
1987, Musharraf had been made brigade commander of the newly raised Special
11 Ibid p. 457
12 Ibid
10
Services Group in the Siachen glacier region, created to push back Indian forces
from their perch. His forces had been decisively defeated in an action in 1987.
Musharraf valued his identity as a commando well‐versed in guerrilla tactics. The
culmination of his field assignments came when he was appointed as Force
Commander, Northern Areas, which made him in charge of all military and
subversive operations against Jammu & Kashmir. 13
Pakistan’s political and strategic calculations in launching the Kargil operations
have been summed up as follows:
that the nuclear deterrent had worked in its favour from the mid‐1980s.
(This was a reasonable assumption but only in case of a short‐duration
conflict)
• The international community would prevent the expansion of a conflict by
intervening through bilateral mechanisms or through the UN. If Pakistan
consolidated its gains across the LOC, the international community would
accept the new situation, bettering Pakistan’s negotiating position. (The US
demonstrated that this was an erroneous premise.)
• China would be supportive of Pakistan’s military operations.
• A week and unstable government in India would be incapable of firm
response and would not expand the conflict into Pakistan across the
13 Ibid p. 450
11
international border. (Pakistan was surprised by the firmness of the Indian
response.)
• The Indian army itself may not be able to respond effectively because of its
counterinsurgency commitments in Jammu & Kashmir.
• The Indian army did not have troops sufficiently trained in high altitude
warfare and would not be able to deploy adequate forces to counter a pre‐
successful, would disrupt the return of normalcy in the valley.
The plan to launch an attack on Kargil was finalised during Musharraf’s visit to the
area of Kargil in October 1998. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was reportedly briefed
about the plan at the general headquarters of the Pakistan army in Rawalpindi in
January 1999, a month before he met Prime Minister Vajpayee at Lahore on 22
February 1999. However details of the plan were kept fuzzy.14
KARGIL: UNWELCOME GUESTS
In early May of 1999, a shepherd in Kashmir reported movement of some strangers
in the deserted mountainous expanse of Batalik, a little village within the Line of
Control on the Indian side. An Indian patrol sent out to investigate the problem was
ambushed on 5 May, killing four of its soldiers and injuring as many. Thus were fired
the first shots of the Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan, which was to
continue for the next 70 days. India started artillery shelling to dislodge the
infiltrators from the heights. Pakistan responded in kind. On 8 May, Pervez
14 Ibid p. 453
12
Musharraf, then Pakistan army chief, made an unannounced visit to the forward
areas opposite Kargil. A day later, an ammunition dump was blown up in Kargil by
Pakistani artillery shelling, destroying about 5000 tonnes of ammunition.15
Pakistan tried to maintain the fiction that the infiltrators were not Pakistani troops
but ‘freedom fighters’ for Kashmir’s independence, who had slipped passed the Line
of Control, unbeknownst to the Pakistan army. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee, put
in a phone call to his counterpart, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, emphasising that
India was aware that the intrusion in Kargil involved the use of regular troops from
the Pakistan army. He said this was totally unacceptable and would compel India to
take all necessary steps. India mobilised its army and also mounted a diplomatic
offensive. The Indian Permanent Representative at the United Nations mobilised
international opinion. Indian embassies were activated, particularly in Washington,
and the Ambassador undertook extensive briefings on Capitol Hill and to the
media.16
Kargil made for a tempting target for the Pakistan military. It was strategically
invaluable, located on the only road between the Kashmiri summer capital of
Srinagar and the town of Leh in the far north‐east, near the Chinese border. Since
1997, the sparse terrain had seen a pattern of relatively minor Pakistani incursions
in the Kargil area that had triggered bursts of sniper fire and occasional artillery
exchanges.
15 Singh, p. 202
16 Dixit, p. 450
13
By a gentlemanly agreement, every year Indian and Pakistani forces withdrew from
the heights in the winter harshness and returned to man the posts in spring. The
two sides had refrained from major attempts to alter the status quo during this ebb
and flow of seasonal deployments. This was true of Siachen as also the Kargil sector.
Pakistan had now violated this agreement.
The total area of Pakistan’s ingress was between 130 and 200 square kilometres.
India responded with Operation Vijay, a mobilisation of 200,000 Indian troops.
However because of the nature of the terrain, the fighting was mostly at the
regimental and battalion level.
The US condemned Pakistan’s infiltration of armed intruders and went public with
the information that most of the 700 men who crossed the line of control were
attached to the Pakistani army’s 10th Corps.17
By the end of May, the initial skirmishes had blown up into a full‐fledged border
attacks on ground positions by helicopter gunships. By mid‐June, the fighting
intensified between military units in the Kargil area. The Indian army was paying a
heavy price and suffering losses as they tried to dislodge the Pakistani fighters from
strategically advantageous and well dug ‐in positions in the mountain heights.
By mid‐June, India also began firing on targets on the Pakistani side of the line of
control. US military experts were worried that India might break out of its restraint
17 Bruce Riedel, American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,
Policy paper series, Center for Advanced Studies of India. p. 4
14
and cross the line of control since the restraint was costing it additional casualties
around Kargil. Two Indian MIG aircraft were shot down near the border and the
Pakistan army moved its regular Army troops into the Kargil area to construct
bunkers on the Indian side of the line.
The conflict was initially characterised as a skirmish or a border incident. However,
it was later judged to be a war launched by Pakistan with definite and clear
strategic, territorial and political motives, with premeditated planning and detailed
preparation. The US confirmed the assessment that the thrust by Pakistan was a
preplanned probe mounted by the Pakistani military and intended to create a “new”
line of control more favourable to Pakistan.18
US DIPLOMACY: LOOKING TO MEDIATE
While the first US instinct was to bring both parties to the table and to offer
mediation, this was no easy task. Pakistan was steadfastly insisting that the
intrusions were caused by Kashmiri freedom fighters; India, on the other hand, was
suspicious of any mediation, its primary goal was to reverse the occupation of its
territory by Pakistan. India was apprehensive that the US would also fall into the
trap of careful neutrality adopted by some other international players. Major
powers of the world as well as the United Nations tended to take the view that while
Pakistan’s violation the LOC was wrong, the intrusion occurred because India and
Pakistan did not have a substantive and meaningful dialogue going on the Kashmir
issue.
18 Talbott, p. 157
15
The US was trying to brandish all its sticks. The administration pointed out that if
Prime Minister Sharif did not order a pullback, the US would hold up the $ 100
million International Monetary Fund loan that Pakistan needed. Nawaz Sharif
meanwhile visited Beijing hoping for comfort from Pakistan’s “all‐weather” friend
but got none. The US embassy reported that he came home desperate.19
The US was unsure whether Sharif had personally ordered the infiltration above
Kargil, reluctantly acquiesced in it or had not even known about it until after it
happened. But there was no question that he realised it had been a colossal blunder,
Pakistan was universally seen to have precipitated the crisis, ruining the promising
peace process that had begun in Lahore and inviting an Indian counteroffensive.
By the end of May, when the situation seemed somewhat stable, the US saw an
opportunity to offer its “good offices” to look for a diplomatic solution. State
Department officials Rick Inderfurth and Tom Pickering began a regular dialogue
with the Indian and Pakistani ambassadors in Washington while Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright made phone calls to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Jaswant Singh
and the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. The central message was to blame
Pakistan for instigating the crisis, while urging India to exercise restraint and not
broaden the conflict.
President Clinton became fully involved from early June, even as the Kosovo crisis
was being resolved with Milosevic acceding to NATO demands. In a turning point in
US diplomacy, Clinton went beyond the stance of studied neutrality of the ‘primary
19 Talbott, p. 159
16
mediator’ and leaned on Pakistan. In letters to both Prime Ministers, Clinton made
Pakistan’s withdrawal a precondition for a settlement and the price it must pay for
the US diplomatic involvement that it was seeking. Clinton also made phone calls to
the two leaders in mid‐June to emphasise this point. The private diplomacy soon
became public and the US was reinforcing the same twin message (asking for
Pakistani withdrawal and Indian restraint) through the media. For India, Kargil was
the first ‘TV War’, coming live as an emotional and patriotic drama to homes across
the country; the ‘fair and just’ US stand was playing well with public opinion in
India.
In late June, President Clinton called Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to stress that the
US saw Pakistan is an aggressor and rejected the fiction that the fighters were
separatist guerrillas. He sent a special envoy, General Zinni, who was in charge of
the US Central command, to reinforce the message in person to Musharraf and
Nawaz Sharif. Zinni warned Musharraf that India would cross the line of control
itself if Pakistan did not pull back. Musharraf appeared unimpressed.
Clearly, the US attempt at crisis management through private and public diplomacy
was not gaining much traction with either side. The US had aligned itself with India’s
position but Pakistan was unwilling to change the status quo unconditionally. The
opportunity for replacing the strategy with coercive diplomacy came in late June,
when through the US Ambassador in Islamabad, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
17
‘begged Clinton to come to his rescue’ with a plan that would stop the fighting and
set the stage for a US brokered solution to Kashmir.20
On July 2, Prime Minister Sharif phoned President Clinton and pleaded for his
personal intervention in South Asia. Clinton recalls in his autobiography that he
agreed with two conditions: “first, he had to agree to withdraw his troops back
across the Line of Control; and second, I would not agree to intervene in the
Pakistan's wrongful incursion.”21 Clinton then telephoned the Indian Prime Minister
to report on Sharif’s request and his own reply. India expressed anxiety that Sharif
would deceive, or worse, co‐opt Clinton. Strobe Talbott called Jaswant Singh to
reinforce Clinton’s assurance that under no circumstances would the US associate
itself with any outcome that rewarded Pakistan for its violation of the line of
control; National Security Advisor Sandy Berger did the same with his counterpart
Brajesh Misra.22
MEDIATION OR COERCION: DIPLOMATIC OPTIONS FOR THE US
In early July, President Clinton’s team was looking at diminishing options in an
escalating crisis. The crisis management strategy implemented so far‐ of asking
Pakistan to revert to the status quo and pleading with India not to escalate the
conflict – had not had much traction. Pakistan was pleading with the US to get
involved in mediating the crisis and brokering a cease‐fire, consistent with its
20 Talbott, p. 159
21 Bill Clinton, My Life (Random House, 2004) p. 864
22 Talbott, p. 160
18
objective of ‘internationalising’ the Kashmir issue. For precisely that reason, India
was allergic to any kind of mediation and wanted a Pakistani withdrawal from the
LOC to precede any dialogue. President Clinton’s ‘principle mediator’ role had
worked well in the Arab‐Israeli conflict and the Irish peace process and could be
replicated here only if India could be persuaded to join the trilateral table. Should
the US push for a trilateral summit or a trilateral dialogue and jump into a
mediatory role? Should it continue its vigorous public and private diplomacy,
offering its ‘good offices’ and sending across envoys in a situation where India’s
patience was running thin and the conflict could rapidly spiral out of control? Or
should it attempt to use its leverage with Pakistan to try a policy of ‘coercive
diplomacy’, getting Pakistan to climb down?
RIPE FOR COERCIVE DIPLOMACY: STATE OF PLAY BEFORE NEGOTIATIONS
When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called President Clinton and announced he
would come to Washington the next day, Clinton took a snap decision to receive
him, knowing instinctively that this would be an opportunity to push for a
Washington for a face‐to‐face meeting with Sharif, but the Indian Prime Minister
politely declined, ostensibly in view of the prevailing security situation.23 This
effectively foreclosed the mediation option and obliged the US to try a bout of
coercive diplomacy. An additional layer of complexity that was added was that while
the US was exercising coercion on Pakistan, the other key player in the game, India,
23 Singh, p. 226
19
was off the table. The US hope, bolstered by continuous multi‐channel
communication with India, was that since the primary objective of both India and
the US coincided (unconditional Pakistani withdrawal), the outcome would be
acceptable to India.
National security Advisor Sandy Berger told President Clinton that he was heading
into what probably would be the most important and most delicate meeting with a
foreign leader of his entire presidency. The overriding objective was to induce
Pakistan’s withdrawal from the line of control. But another goal was to increase the
chances of Sharif’s political survival. If Sharif lost his job while he was in the US, he
would be unable to keep his end of the bargain in Islamabad. The US objective was
to find a way to provide Sharif ‘just enough cover to go home and give the necessary
orders to Musharraf and the military.’24
India’s objectives were also clear and had been spelt out to the Pakistan Foreign
Minister during his visit to New Delhi in mid June25:
1. Immediate vacation of the aggression
2. Reaffirmation of the validity of the line of control
3. Abandoning of cross‐border terrorism
4. Dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan‐occupied Kashmir
5. Reaffirmation of the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration
24 Talbott, p. 162
25 Singh, p. 226
20
Strobe Talbott, who as Deputy Secretary of State, was the point man for India,
added a caution that even though Clinton would be meeting the Prime Minister of
Pakistan in the most intense, high‐stakes circumstances imaginable, he must keep
his Indian audience in mind. ‘The US was finally making headway with India in
allaying their doubts, accumulated over 50 years, about whether the US would take
their security interests properly into account, especially when push came to shove
with Pakistan.’
The Kargil crisis had probably shattered India’s willingness to deal with Sharif in
Pakistan. But it had also ‘created an opportunity for the US to show that they could
conduct their own dealings with the Pakistanis in a way that protected, and even
advanced, India’s interests.’ Therefore it was crucial that President Clinton avoid
confirming India’s suspicions about US motives. India ‘would scrutinise every word
that came out of Blair House for evidence that the US had fallen into to trap the
Pakistanis had set for them – or worse that we were colluding with the Pakistanis to
forcing them into negotiating on Kashmir under duress. Providing Sharif with
political cover was fine, as long as what the US was covering was Pakistan’s retreat
from the mountain tops.’26
Clearly, despite these nuances, the key US and Indian objectives coincided.
Pakistan’s objectives at the July meeting were far more complex. Sharif’s brief from
the army was to try to aim for a best‐case outcome of a cease‐fire to be followed by
negotiations with India on a broad range of issues under American auspices. A
26 Talbott, p. 163
21
fallback position would be to make Pakistani withdrawal conditional to India
agreeing to direct negotiations sponsored or even mediated by the US. In either
case, Pakistan could claim that the incursion had forced India, under American
pressure, to accept Pakistan’s terms. Neither of these options matched the
objectives set out by the US. The additional complication, which perhaps made the
US negotiators’ job easier, was that Sharif was fighting for his own political and
physical survival, he had arrived in the US with his family, unsure of his ability to
return home should he fail. Sharif therefore represented his own interest in the
talks, which would not always coincide with that of the army, or even with
Pakistan’s national interest.27
The Clinton team decided to confront Sharif at the end of the talks with a ‘good’ and
a ‘bad’ press statement, a carrot and a stick: the good statement would hail him for
withdrawing‐or restoring the sanctity of the LOC‐ and the bad one would blame
Pakistan for starting the crisis and the escalation sure to follow Sharif’s ‘failed
mission to Washington.’28 The US negotiation strategy in fact followed several
First, the coercing power was clearly “highly motivated to achieve its stated
demands”. Second, it was making “clear demands” of the opponent. Third, the threat
of the ‘bad statement’ was both “credible and sufficiently potent” in its implications.
Fourth, the carrots and sticks were well laid out. And fifth, the “sense of urgency”
was clear: Sharif needed to make a decision at the end of the meeting.
27 Talbott, p. 161
28 Riedel, p. 7
29 Alexander George et al., Force and Statecraft, (OUP, 2007), p. 200
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Also, a negotiated settlement was crucial for both sides. In Roger Fisher’s
framework30, the best alternative to a negotiated settlement (BATNA) in both cases
was similar. For the US, it was an escalation to the conflict in the sub‐continent. For
Prime Minister Sharif, it was also escalation of the conflict, but accompanied by
personal ignominy and political loss. In essence, neither side had an acceptable
BATNA. In Pakistan’s case, the larger strategic objective of the Kargil adventure had
been to negotiate from a better BATNA, i.e a hold on territory across the LOC in
Kashmir. But the US threat would make that version of the BATNA much costlier.
COERCIVE DIPLOMACY: THE NEGOTIATIONS31
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif kicked off the meeting from his brief to
internationalise the Kashmir issue; he pleaded with Clinton to devote more
attention to it. He said that if Clinton would devote just one percent of the time and
energy he had put into the Middle East in South Asia, there would be no crisis. He
argued that India was to blame for the crisis, since it had carried out an incursion of
its own 15 years earlier, in Siachen.
Clinton rejected Sharif’s depiction of India as an instigator of the crisis. He pointed
out that the Indian Prime Minister had been more than flexible in going to Lahore –
he had taken a “risk for peace” (a phrase that Clinton had used to describe Yitzhak
Rabin of Israel).
30 Roger Fisher, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In, (Penguin,
1983)
31 This section relies on the excellent blow‐by‐blow accounts of the meeting by
Talbott and Riedel.
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Clinton laid his cards on the table early: “If you want me to be able to do anything
with the Indians, I’ve got to have some leverage. Only withdrawal will bring this
crisis to an end.” He also said that a Pakistani military pullback across the line had to
be without any links to American diplomatic intervention in the Kashmir dispute: “I
can’t publicly or privately pretend you’re withdrawing in return for my agreeing to
be an intermediary. The result will be war. Plus, I’ll have sanctioned you having
crossed the line of control. I can’t let it appear that you held a gun to our head by
moving across the line.”
Sharif responded from his brief: “I’m prepared to help resolve the current crisis in
Kargil, that India must commit to resolve the larger issue in a specific timeframe”
that is, negotiate a settlement on Kashmir under the pressure of a Pakistani
imposed, US‐ sanctioned deadline.
Clinton was furious: “if I were the Indian Prime Minister, I’d never do that. I’d be
crazy to do it. It would be nuclear blackmail. If you proceed with this line, I’ll have no
leverage with them… I’ll be stripped of all influence with the Indians. I’m not – and
the Indians are not – going to let you get away with blackmail, and I’ll not permit any
characterisation of this meeting that suggests I’m giving in to blackmail.”
Clinton quoted from John Keegan’s The First World War, which he was reading. He
said that European generals and politicians had stumbled into world war once
military plans went into autopilot and the diplomats couldn’t do anything about it. It
was important not to get into a position in which India felt that because of what
24
Pakistan had done, it had to cross the line of control itself. “That would be very
dangerous. I genuinely believe you could get into a nuclear war by accident.”
Clinton said that he had just a year and a half left in office and he was committed to
working with India and Pakistan. “If you announce you’re withdrawing in response
to my agreeing to mediate, India will escalate before you even get home, and we will
be a step closer to nuclear war. If you hold out for a date certain for the resolution of
the Kashmir dispute, you would have made a terrible mistake in coming here…What
I’m prepared to support, however is a resumption and intensification of the Lahore
process and a commitment on the part of the US to work hard on this.”
Sharif repeated that he was trying to work out a deal with India that would feature
the trade‐off between Pakistani withdrawal and a timetable for resolution of
Kashmir. It was clear that Sharif needed a face‐saver to show back home that he had
achieved something beyond an unconditional surrender over Kargil.
When Clinton asked Sharif if he understood how far along his military was in
preparing nuclear‐armed missiles for possible use in a war against India, Sharif
seemed genuinely surprised. Clinton invoked the Cuban missile crisis, which had
been a formative experience for him (he was 16 at the time). Now India and
Pakistan were similarly on the edge of a precipice. It would be catastrophic if even
one bomb were to be used.
At this point, President Clinton returned to the offensive. ‘He said that they were
getting nowhere. Fearing that result, he had a statement ready to release to the
press in time for the evening news shows that would lay all the blame for the crisis
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on Pakistan. He said that having listened to Sharif’s complaints against the US, he
had a list of his own, and it started with terrorism. Pakistan was the principal
sponsor of the Taliban, which in turn had allowed Osama Bin Laden to run his
worldwide network out of Afghanistan. Clinton had asked Sharif repeatedly to
cooperate in bringing Osama to justice. The statement the US would make to the
press would mention Pakistan’s role in supporting terrorism in Afghanistan – and,
through its backing of Kashmiri militants, in India as well.’
Clinton was by now deep in the throes of coercive diplomacy: with ‘his face flushed,
eyes narrowed, lips pursed, cheek muscles pulsing, fists clenched,’ he said it was
‘crazy enough for Sharif to have let his military violate the Line of Control, start a
border war with India, and now prepare nuclear forces for action. On top of that he
had put Clinton in the middle of the mess and set him up for diplomatic failure.’
Sharif seemed beaten. He denied he had given any orders with regard to nuclear
weaponry and said he was worried for his life.
After the break in negotiations, Clinton briefed Prime Minister Vajpayee. Now that
the US had made the maximum use of the ‘bad statement’ they had prepared in
advance‐the stick, it was time to deploy the good one, to dangle the carrots.
Clinton’s team cobbled together a new version of the good statement incorporating
some of the Pakistani language from the paper that Sharif claimed was in play
bilaterally between India and Pakistan. But the key sentence in the new document
was added by the US and it focused on the primary objective of the US from the
talks: “the Prime Minister has agreed to take concrete and immediate steps for the
26
restoration of the line of control.” The paper called for a ceasefire but only after the
Pakistanis were back on their side of the line. It also reaffirmed President Clinton’s
long‐standing plan to visit South Asia. To this draft, Sharif and the Pakistan team
requested just one addition: a promise that Clinton would take a personal interest in
encouraging an expeditious resumption and intensification of the bilateral efforts
(that is, the Lahore process) once the sanctity of the line of control had been fully
restored. This was acceptable to the US and the meeting came to a happy end.
CONCLUSION: THE AFTERMATH
The negotiations at Blair House represented successful deployment of coercive
diplomacy by the US, both in terms of process and outcomes. The coercive
diplomacy phase followed a crisis diplomacy period, which wisely refrained from
usurping a mediatory role. The US succeeded in achieving its objectives vis‐à‐vis
Pakistan and also had the collateral advantage of winning India’s trust.
It was not clear whether Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would win the ‘two level
game’ with his constituents back home and be able to implement his end of the deal.
As it happened, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan and succeeded in
ordering the withdrawal of troops from the LOC. It was also not clear if the
withdrawal was not caused by the continued action of Indian troops, which made
retreat tactically necessary. Also, the aftermath of the crisis brought Sharif
increasingly in confrontation with the army and caused his ultimate displacement in
a coup in October 1999. India moved towards elections and the NDA coalition
returned to power, bolstered by its handling of the Kargil crisis. The role of the US in
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the Kargil crisis became a turning point in US‐India relations, which acquired a
positive trajectory since then.
XXX
MAP: KARGIL IN JAMMU & KASHMIR
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