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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.
- Paperback: 270 pages
- Publisher: Brookings Institution Press; Second edition (March 6, 2006)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0815783019
- ISBN-13: 978-0815783015
- Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
- Customer Reviews: 20 customer reviews
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#2,155,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #345 in Pakistan History
- #637 in Arms Control (Books)
- #1419 in International Business (Books)
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