Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, And the Bomb: Revised Edition [Paperback]

Strobe Talbott (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0815783019 | ISBN-13: 978-0815783015 | Publication Date: March 1, 2006 | Edition: Revised

In this revised edition of the highly praised Engaging India, Strobe Talbott updates his bestselling diplomatic account of America’s parallel negotiations with India and Pakistan over nuclear proliferation in the late 1990s. The update looks at recent nuclear dealings between India and the United States, including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s 2005 visit to America. Under the highly controversial agreement that emerged, the United States would give India access to U.S. nuclear technology and conventional weapons systems. In exchange, India would place its civilian nuclear program under international monitoring and continue the ban on nuclear testing.

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About the Author

Strobe Talbott is president of the Brookings Institution. He served as deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001. For twenty-one years before his government service, he was correspondent and columnist for Time magazine. He is the translator of Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs and the author of numerous books, including The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (Random House, 2002).

Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press; Revised edition (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815783019
• ISBN-13: 978-0815783015
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,473,453 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strobe and Jaswant's Excellent Adventure, July 3, 2005

By 

Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Hardcover)

Strobe Talbot's memoir begins in 1998 when the Vajpayee Government in India shocked the world by conducting the Pokran II nuclear tests. The State Department - Talbot's employer - learned about the tests from CNN, and the CIA learned about them from the State Department. (The CIA used to know things.) The foreign service officer in charge of the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research wryly remarked, " It looks like we're all having a bad government day."

Talbot was the Clinton's Administration's resident expert on Russian-affairs, but after the tests (Pakistan followed with nuclear tests two weeks later), he was immediately reassigned as the point person and crisis manager for South Asia. His assignment was to persuade India to limit the development and deployment of their nuclear weapons; this included the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Talbot and his Indian counterpart Jaswant Singh met fourteen times over the last two and half years of the Clinton administration. This extended dialog between Talbot and Singh ended with Talbot's failure to persuade India to accept any restraints on its nuclear weapons program - which came as no surprise to either Talbot or Singh. The dialog -the engagement of India - brought many unintended benefits.

Treaties such as the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the (CTBT) are, from an Indian perspective, discriminatory and condescending against everyone except the original five nuclear powers. The nuclear option was seen by the Vajpayee Government, and especially by the right-leaning nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party, as not only a realistic defense policy, but also a tool for achieving great power status. They never had any intention of signing the CTBT. Talbot, for his part, was dealing with a weak hand because the Republican senators in the US were aslo unwilling to endorse the treaty.

What became valuable was the engagement itself in that it altered the direction of US-Indian relations from one of mutual estrangement to one of trust and cooperation. This was illustrated during the 1999 invasion by Pakistan of the Kargil area of Kashmir. As President Clinton was holding talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan to halt the invasion, he was at the same time consulting Vajpayee and seeking his advice. This so impressed the Indian side that it paved the way for Clinton's historic visit in 2000.

One of the fascinating things about this book is the personality of Jaswant Singh. Singh hails from Rajasthan where his intimate experience with Islamic extremism pushed him toward's the BJP's staunch Hindu idealogy. He had presciently warned Talbot that America did not fully appreciate the dangers of radical Islam. And regarding Pakistan, Singh was opposed to the very idea of Pakistan; the partition that took place more than fifty years ago had been a huge mistake. He noted with characteristic flair that, "Kashmir should be understood as an objectification of Pakistan's predicament as a lost soul among nations, an ersatz country whose founders' only legacy was a permanent reminder of what a tragic mistake partition had been." In the end, Talbot's own views on Islamic extremism and Pakistan had come closer to Singh's.

"Engaging India" is a fascinating account of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy that led to the improvement of US-Indian relations after fifty years of mistust. With India's growing economic and military power the Bush Administration has wisely decided to shelve the nuclear dispute and opt for military and strategic cooperation. We can only hope that it continues to be an excellent adventure.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, fast read and an eye opener, September 23, 2004

By 

B. Shah (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Hardcover)

Anyone who has any doubts about Pakistan's involvement in world wide terrorism should read this book. This is not some curious author discovering the facts. This is a powerful ex-official in Clinton administration who has seen it all and describes how Pakistan is responsible for helping terrorists.

Also it throws light at the behind doors world of diplomacy and how it is played out between India and US.

I recommend this book to anyone interested on the subjects of Terrorism, US-India relations, Pakistan, Non-Proliferation and Nuclear bombs.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing, relatively speaking that is, October 17, 2004

By 

TK (Sunnyvale, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Hardcover)

Clearly Mr. Talbott has a favorable opinion of India and that alone is, I suspect, music to many an Indian's ears. Having said that, this book made me realize how little, in terms of appreciation for India and its core values, I have come to expect out of American leaders and diplomats past and present alike. While Mr.Talbott faithfully presents all the Indian arguments against the NPT, he fails to acknowledge, in spite of his relative security in retirement from public office, that those arguments make sense to ANY fair and balanced person, not necessarily Indian. Mr. Talbott, rather conveniently, switches to his I-was-just-a-state-department-peon hat to steer clear of commentary about the discriminatory and seriously flawed NPT. In the absence of that basic acknowledgement, I am unable to take to heart any of his criticisms, however justified, about India's social structure and body politic.

Mr.Talbott would have us believe that the "hyphenation" of India and Pakistan, that Jaswant Singh takes exception to, is a justifiable association rooted in common sense, while in fact, it is actually a result of a deliberate and successful cold war effort on the US State Department's part to equate the two countries.

Does Mr Talbott expect us to believe that only the purest and most innocent of assessments led to the prevalent notion in much of the western media that India and Pakistan are somehow "rivals", when in fact India is 7 times as populous as Pakistan, has an economy almost 10 times that of Pakistan, and has a system of governance that couldn't contrast any more sharply against Pakistan's?

In fact, so wildly successful has this disinformation campaign been, that any Indian suggestion to the contrary is dismissed as yet another indication of the free flowing cross-border vitriol.

To Mr. Talbott's credit he has made an honest and refreshing attempt to put into perspective the relative importance of India and Pakistan to the global world order. But I am afraid it's not enough. Not enough for the average American who needs a nuanced worldview more and more, and not enough for the average Indian who needs certificates from America less and less.