Trump's seduction of Asim Munir won't get him cheap labour to uphold American Peace

The Print

6 hours ago

The gushing reception President Donald Trump gave to Field Marshal Munir—making him the first Pakistan Army chief not holding political office to visit the White House—has caused no small anxiety in India. For the first time since 26/11, the United States seems to be tilting toward Islamabad, with Trump insisting on playing peacemaker on Kashmir.
And yet, the effort can add up to little. Look at the old film of the imperial reception granted to Field Marshal Ayub Khan as he travelled through the United States in 1961. In the following decade, he lost a war and was rejected by his people and forced out of office by his brother officers.
To seduce Pakistani generals is a perilous project. Field Marshal Asim Munir was content with goat cheese gateau and caramelised onions over his rack of lamb. Field Marshal Ayub Khan, one account assures us , was present at a party where 19-year-old showgirl Christine Keeler wasn't wearing any clothes. There is the story —take it for what it is worth—that General Yahya Khan snubbed his key ally, the Shah of Iran, Muhammad Raza Pehlavi, as he was busy in the bedroom.
Trump's gargantuan vanity gives the impression that he's just after a Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, he seeks to resolve a fracture that has confronted American policy since the birth of India and Pakistan, one that defeated figures like General Dwight Eisenhower and Robert F Kennedy. The stakes are far higher than containing jihadists in Afghanistan: They go to the heart of America's projection of power in the Middle East.
Endless wars, Trump is discovering, will continue to be fought whether or not America continues to maintain the imperial presence that has upheld the global order across the Middle East. Iran is just one of many conflicts that might erupt across the region. To fight these wars of the future, Trump needs allies and partners—the cheaper, the better.
The eastern guard
Following the lessons of the war in Korea, the US persuaded itself it needed partners to secure its access to oil—to the great fields in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran. In February 1951, a meeting of US ambassadors in the Middle East marked out Pakistan as one possible source of troops. Later that month, historian Robert McMahon has written, State Department officials based in South Asia concluded that Pakistan would be willing to commit forces to the Middle East, 'provided the Kashmir question is settled'.
Through 1951, gushing commentary on Pakistan's military size, its martial traditions, and its pro-Western leanings spread rapidly through the US establishment. Later that year, newly appointed as Pakistan's military chief, Ayub reached out to Washington, asking for discussions on his country's role in the Middle East.
America's strategic establishment was keen to take the bait. 'With Pakistan, the Middle East could be defended,' George McGhee, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African affairs, told a meeting at the Pentagon that summer. 'Without Pakistan, I don't see any way to defend the Middle East.' General Omar Bradley, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concurred, suggesting that the US should find means to arm both Pakistan and Turkey.
From America's point of view, Pakistani troops were desperately needed to stabilise a volatile region.
'Currently, the danger in this area to the security of the free world arises not so much from the threat of direct Soviet military attack as from acute instability, anti-western nationalism and Arab-Israeli antagonism,' read a paper from the National Security Council, approved by President Harry Truman in April 1952.
These concerns were adroitly manipulated by Pakistan. In a meeting that July, Ayub's Special Advisor on Defence, Mir Laik, requested $200 million worth of supplies for Pakistan's air force and army, as well as a substantial line of credit. The weapons, he told American Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, were needed for use not against India, but against communist aggression.
Even though diplomats responsible for engaging India were less than enthusiastic, the proposal to arm Pakistan soon had overwhelming political momentum. Following a visit to Karachi, Vice President Richard Nixon told the National Security Council that Pakistan was 'a country [he] would like to do everything for'.
'The people have less complexes than the Indians. The Pakistanis are completely frank, even when it hurts. It will be disastrous if the Pakistan aid does not go through,' he added.
For its part, Pakistan had no interest in getting drawn into wars in the Middle East. It had manipulated American anxieties to secure its position against its principal regional rival.
Also read: To be or not to be? Trump's next call on Iran-Israel conflict will reshape West Asia
Fallout in Kashmir
The government of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru responded by hardening its position on Kashmir in response to these pressures, historian Paul McGarr observes. Talks between Nehru and Pakistan's Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra in 1953, as well as with Ayub Khan in 1959, led nowhere. Later, six desultory rounds of dialogue took place between 27 December 1962 and 16 May 1963. India declined concessions beyond minor adjustments on the ceasefire line. For its part, Pakistan demanded that only the Hindu-majority parts of Jammu stay with India.
Frustration mounted in Islamabad over the Kashmir deadlock, with dramatic consequences. From the mid-1950s, American aid to Pakistan had played a dramatic role in modernising its infrastructure and enabling industrialisation. The country's annual GDP growth, between 4 per cent and 6 per cent, had earned Ayub extravagant praise from economists like Samuel Huntington.
To pressure the US, Ayub Khan reached out to China, organising an eight-day red-carpet visit for Premier Zhou Enlai in February 1964. From the colonial colonnades of Karachi's Frere Hall Garden, Zhou spoke of China's ancient trading relationship with the Indus plains and condemned the influence of colonialism. Newly elected US President Lyndon Johnson cancelled an invitation to Ayub Khan to visit the country after the Field Marshal publicly criticised the war in Vietnam.
From 1964, tensions began to build up over Kashmir, too. The disappearance of the Hazratbal relic in December 1963 led to anti-Hindu riots in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Kolkata's Hindus responded with an anti-Muslim pogrom, which led to hundreds of deaths. The Hazratbal crisis also led Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to extend provisions of the Indian Constitution, which allowed New Delhi to exercise direct rule in Kashmir.
Led by Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Field Marshal Ayub Khan allowed himself to be persuaded that a limited war in Kashmir would compel the US and the United Kingdom to intervene again. The Indian Army, weakened by the war against China, would be in no position to widen the war, the argument went.
National Security Council staff member Robert Komer warned his bosses of what was coming. In a 22 October 1963 memorandum, he noted that the Pakistanis appeared to be deliberately building up tensions over Kashmir.
'I wonder if we aren't doing ourselves a disservice by our continued pressure on Kashmir,' Komer wrote.
Also read: Pakistan's coldness to Iran shows idea of Ummah is poetic illusion
Partners in crime
Islamabad's defeat in the 1965 war marked the coming of a long period of disengagement between the two allies. Though President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, facilitated arms supplies from third countries like Iran in the 1971 war, the United States proved unwilling to directly intervene, documents show. Following the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan proved critical in facilitating flows of jihadists and weapons to fight the Soviet Union. Aid diminished again after 1989, though, with the Soviet withdrawal.
Like the Afghan war had been for General Zia, 9/11 would prove a gift for another military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf. In 2011, though, President Barack Obama's government sharply reduced aid after the killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden. Trump further slashed funds after 2017, compelling Pakistan to turn ever-closer to China for support.
Islamabad emerged as a gun-for-hire to fight American regional conflicts, but not the partner for peacekeeping that the US had imagined it would become in 1951.
This is the relationship Trump hopes he will be able to resuscitate. America is today the largest oil producer in the world, and no longer needs the enormous system of Middle East bases it set up after 1947 to secure its energy.
'Keeping the region's shipping lanes, including the Strait of Hormuz, open to tanker traffic costs the Pentagon, on average, $50 billion a year—a service that earns us the undying enmity of populations in that region,' wrote scholar Arthur Herman in a superb 2014 analysis.
Like his predecessors, Trump is holding out the prospect of a deal on Kashmir, with some lashings of aid, to persuade Field Marshal Munir to take on the job. Will Trump succeed where his predecessors failed? Free lunches—especially third-rate racks of lamb, lacking the least hint of garam masala, ginger, garlic, and exotic women—are likely to get you only so far.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)