US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill spoke to Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in- chief, The Indian Express, on the security situation in the subcontinent and the rapid advancements in the Indo-US relations. Excerpts from the interview telecast on NDTV 24x7’s Walk the Talk:
Blackwill: I’m sorry about the weather...I couldn’t make it as sunny as I wish it were...We’ll probably get wet here.
Q.: Well anything that goes wrong
the Americans must be to blame. If there were floods, Americans must have
got something wrong, if we had a couple of years of drought, Americans
must have something to do with it.
A.: Well, who complains about the
monsoon in India? Nobody who is sensible...
Q.: Well it’s an auspicious note
on which we are beginning, on which you are taking up your new assignment.
You have been here for two years and haven’t seen a monsoon like this.
A.: No, in fact, last summer, of
course, we were busy doing other things, including trying to help prevent
a war in South Asia. And the monsoon never reached Delhi so far as I could
tell last year. So it’s great to see it this year and also to know what
effect it has on the Indian economy and ordinary lives of the Indians.
I’m delighted and we’ll put up with it the best we can.
Q.: We organised it just for you
because no understanding of India is complete without understanding the
monsoon. You talked about last monsoon and around this time we were quite
close to war in the sub- continent.
A.: We were. At the time there
was some controversy about that — were we close and was it right for the
US to be so concerned about it as we were. But, since then, it is now a
matter of record that both the PM of India and the President of Pakistan
have said in public we were close to a conflict, as well as several senior
Indian officials.
Q.: We’ve had the National Security
Advisor saying on this programme that last year twice we were very close
to war.
A.: In January and again in June
I think we did come close to war.
Q.: It was in June, I think, you
issued your famous travel advisory.
A.: End of May, made me the most
popular man in India. Right!
Q.: What exactly happened? There
were lots of questions.
A.: Here is what happened. As we
went on from mid-May it was clear to me that the tensions were rising and
as Brajesh Mishra told you, we were getting close to war. My responsibility,
in the first instance, as the American Ambassador to India is not the high
politics. My responsibility is the safety of the 60,000-70,000 Americans
who live in India. And you had a situation where there was rising tensions
between India and Pakistan. The possibility of a war...and it would have
been the first major war, in human history, between two nuclear weapon
states, which added a brand new dimension. And so I made the decision to
recommend to Washington this travel advisory. And I have to say I don’t
have second thoughts about it. That was my responsibility.
Q.: So this was a step only taken
to protect American citizens and not to build pressure here — look guys
if you go this way, you lose out on all this. You are now globalising economies...
A.: No, that had nothing to do
with it. When historians gather the records and see the messages that went
back and forth between myself and the top of the Bush administration, (they
will see) it had nothing to do with it whatsoever.
Q.: That will be 30 years from now?
A.: Probably on this subject sooner.
But let me tell you when I had my last meeting with the President, before
I came here, in the Oval Office, his last words to me were — ‘‘Take care
of the people there.’’ So that’s what I was doing.
Q.: He was that concerned?
A.: It shows his constitutional
obligation to protect the people and he was conveying it to me.
Q.: I heard Tom Friedman, New York
Times coloumnist, saying at the CII meet in Delhi that if you want to become
the back office of the world, you cannot think of nuclear war. He said,
in fact, that it dawned on policy- makers in the sub-continent that what
a war would cost the moment you issued that travel advisory. So it had
an impact.
A.: Well I wasn’t speaking about
whether it had an impact or not. I’ll give you my view. I don’t think that
the advisory had a major impact on the way the crisis came out. What prevented
the conflict, I think, and I think the two sides were headed for it, was
the assurance Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage brought from President
Musharraf that he was going to end cross-border terrorist infiltration
against India permanently. And when Armitage brought that here, that was
the crucial moment when India stepped back to see if that commitment was
going to be met.
Q.: Did you get a sense on some
days or maybe some moments or maybe in those two weeks that war was imminent?
That India had made up its mind.
A.: Well, no, not that India had
made up its mind. And, of course, it was really the Prime Minister making
up his mind. My experience is that politicians never decide today what
they can decide tomorrow, with more information. So, I don’t believe a
decision was ever made. But, I think, the Government of India was very
close to making a decision, and if the trendline kept going it was likely
that it would make such a decision. But, it didn’t make one because, as
I say, US diplomacy, and I’m very proud of this, helped both sides step
back.
Q.: I’m asked by several people
in the strategic circuit and particularly, in what is my alma mater and
partly yours as well, if I may claim that, the International Institute
of Strategic Studies. The question is, what spooked the Americans in the
last week of May that you suddenly had Rumsfeld coming and suddenly concerned
levels went up? I won’t say panic, but as in, you had to do something right
now...
A.: Well, as I say, Brajesh Mishra
answered the question when he told you that India was on the brink of war.
It wasn’t any one thing. It was just a sense on my part that we were building
towards that moment and it was becoming likely. Here’s another point that
is more logistical. If one is going to protect American citizens, then
you can’t wait for the war to start. Then airspace closes, how do they
leave? And so we had to move earlier than the probability of the date of
conflict.
Q.: Watching the sub-continent now
as an Ambassador and earlier as a scholar, would you say it has acquired
what I may call nuclear maturity?
A.: Well, some may call it nuclear
learning. I dont think there’s much nuclear learning between India and
Pakistan. On that subject, I think India and Pakistan are about where the
US and Soviet Union were in 1950s. And we worked extremely hard.
Q.: What was that famous book Scars
on our minds...written in the ’50s about suspicions the US and Soviet systems
had of each other?
A.: That was the case until Cuban
Missile crisis which frightened the American elite. We were on the edge
of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and it was after that that our intense
nuclear learning began. Because the two sides were frightened of what they
had gotten themselves into.
Q.: But two things...Firstly, those
things don’t seem to have started here as yet.
A.: You’re right. It’s just early
days. As a strategist I feel it is an extremely important objective for
India and Pakistan to talk seriously on nuclear weapons programs and to
have them be more transparent.
Q.: And they can’t wait for the
Kashmir issue to settle?
A.: I think not. This would be
one which has urgency and it has such potentially catastrophic consequences.
I think the chances are small but they are not zero that in a major conventional
conflict nuclear weapons would be used. But if they were used, it would
change the world and South Asia.
Q.: As a scholar you study the past,
as a policy-maker you chart the future. If you take the Cuban Missile crisis
and what happened here last year, would you put them on a scale of ten
as in how close the countries came to catastrophe?
A.: That’s a tough one. One the
Cuban Missile crisis, we were very close to giving the Soviet Union an
ultimatum of ’withdraw those missiles or we’ll attack’. However, I am not
in a position as I am not privy to the inner discussions of the principles
of the Indian Government. But it was a dangerous time, no doubt.
Q.: The second point that I was
making... there was certain looseness with which both sides talked of nuclear
weapons. But you never heard that in the US-Soviet Union context.
A.: You did. Before the Cuban Missile
crisis, it was typical for military leaders of both sides to ravel their
nuclear swords. Kennedy once said there was one in three chance for nuclear
war.
Q.: Do you see the same terror in
the minds of Indo-Pak leadership?
A.: I don’t know. You have to ask
them but signs of complacency here are very dangerous.
Q.: Do you see signs of complacency
or some signs of learning/ introspection?
A.: Not sure. There are some strategic
analysts in India and Pakistan who talk as if this is an impossible development.
It isn’t impossible. People who think so don’t take measures to be sure
that it never occurs.
Q.: There are also those in the
system here in India and in Pakistan who feel nukes are oversized Daisycutters.
It’s no big deal.
A.: Then we need to put them in
a padded room somewhere. It’s dangerous to talk like that. It’s not something
to fool around with.
Q.: In the brief tenure that you’ve
had here, what is it that which remains unfinished?
A.: The more pre-eminent, most
transforming Indo-US relationship. That’s what the President wanted to
do and that’s what he sent me here for. And there I am enormously gratified
with the progress we’ve made which is producing an interaction across the
board between US and Indian governments. This is absolutely unprecedented.
Foreign Minister Sinha called it the best relations ever, which I think,
is accurate on the diplomatic/military/intelligence-sharing/law enforcement/science
etc. Of course it was accelerated by 9/11 and then what happened later
on in 2001 in India. My big disappointment, I have only two, one much bigger
than the other. First is terrorism. The fact there was terror emanating
from Pak the day I arrived and I’ll be leaving two yrs to the day, and
it seems there’ll be terror emanating the day I leave. That is a great
regret of mine. The other is the US-India business relationship which is
mostly unrealised. We have more trade with Ireland than with India. This
is ridiculous.
Q.: On the question of terrorism,
would you then agree with Indian disappointment that promises that were
conveyed to us through Armitage were not kept?
A.: What I would say is that promises
made to the President of US ought to be kept.
Q.: But they haven’t been kept yet?
A.: Well, what I would say is that
the problem persists. Still terrorists are coming across the LoC, and commitments
to the US President ought to be kept.
Q.: And if they’re not kept, there
are consequences?
A.: Of course, there are consequences
if they are not kept, that’s what we’ve been working hard...to make that
point.
Q.: In India, as in Pakistan, there’s
a great deal of skepticism about US and US intentions. A lot of people
say US never wanted to really make a difference. They only wanted to avoid
the war at that time and carry on. And now this thing will drift. And they
will lose interest.
A.: There is no sign of that. Three
weeks back, President Musharraf was with the US President. And the issue
of terrorism against India was subject of discussion. So we’re not letting
up on this. The Secretary of State is working on this every week. The war
against terrorism cannot be won until terrorism against India ends permanently.
And one reason for that is that there cannot be sanctuaries of terrorists
anywhere.
Q.: And today’s terrorist cannot
be geographically confined if it draws upon pan-national ideologies.
A.: That’s right. You see it coming
up everywhere, including in Buffalo, NY and Chicago, Illinois. We are working
hard on finding those people. I said yesterday in a speech I gave here
that we’re working hard to get the bad guys because we have to get them
before they get us. Not just us but they want to destroy our lives, our
religion, our freedom.
Q.: And when you say ‘our’ you include
India as well?
A.: Of course. And again these
are people who hate us not for what we do but for who we are. We are people
who believe in liberty and freedom and the rule of law and choice of religion.
They hate us for for who we are. And so it’s fundamental in that regard.
Q.: And once again when you say
‘us’, you mean India as well?
A.: Of course, if you look at who
are the major targets, what countries are the major targets of these terrorists,
United States and India head the list. This was unrecognised substantially
in the US before Sept 11. Now it’s true that the entire American elite
and most of American people understand the terrorist problem that Indian
is struggling to deal with and has been for well over a decade and how
similar it is really in ideological motivation...
Q.: The old cynical distinction
that Kashmir is an indigenous freedom movement etc etc is no longer made
now?
A.: Well you don’t hear any American
agree that there are freedom fighters who are blowing up innocents in J-K.
They are called terrorists. And the President of the United States has
said — a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. So there is no confusion
on our part about who those people are.
Q.: Coming back to the Kashmir issue,
India’s point of view is that if terrorism ends with finality, we are willing
to discuss Kashmir with Pakistan. Several leaders on both sides, including
the DPM, have talked of give and take. Do you think that now, more than
ever, a genuine give and take can take place? If so, what is possible?
A.: The PM’s Srinagar speech was
an act of great statesmanship. He was trying for the third time to break
out of the mould of a frozen character between India and Pak. He has given
political space for some normalisation which has occurred. I can’t tell
you whether it will eventuate in major progress, but it has improved the
atmosphere.
Q.: What are the five dos and don’ts
that you will suggest for your successor and second what is it that you
will keep telling people in Washington about India.
A.: Well the five dos and don’ts,
maybe, I will write that out for my successor but I don’t think I will
convey it to him or her through a TV interview. But with respect to Washington,
there are three things that I would say to my friends and colleagues back
there and the President. First there is enormous opportunity here for US-India
strategic cooperation over the long term because of our shared democratic
values, because of the strategic interests we share and because of the
people to people contact through the Indian-American community. The second
is what a country this is... I had some chance to experience this 5,000-
year-old civilisation and it is beyond imagination. How many lifetimes
will it take to experience all of that. The third is the personal point
about the extraordinary generosity of the people of India have shown to
me as I tried to do my job here. I go back with wonderful memories.