The idiom of nuclear diplomacy

The launching of the India edition of Strobe Talbott's book was almost as interesting as the book itself. The account of Indo-US relations by the former US deputy secretary of state was unveiled to the Indian audience in the presence of former deputy chairman, Planning Commission, and minister of external affairs (and defence, briefly), Jaswant Singh, on 26 September.

Followed by a round-table meeting the next day on relations between the world's two largest democracies. Although the book is wonderfully readable recent history, it could do with a companion volume on the Indian view of the trilateral discussions, and negotiations that took place in the Clinton years between India and the US and Pakistan and the US. Jaswant Singh is said to be writing a book himself on the subject that is not going to a riposte to the Talbott book, he says.

The nuclear tests and the Kargil war, punctuated by skirmishes, both military and diplomatic, marked the Clinton era in the US and the Vajpayee era in India.

Talbott, who had visited India two weeks after he was sworn in as deputy secretary of state in 1994, had met PV Narasimha Rao at around the time the BJP was on an ascending curve. On that occasion, because then the US was optimistically still trying to badger India on non-proliferation, he was greeted with placards that said "Talbott, go home !" (he records wryly that it seemed like just the thing to do).

However, it was after the BJP came to power and the US was confronted with an India""and Pakistan""that had become de facto nuclear powers, that the US began its really serious non-proliferation argument with India.

It was in this context that Talbott met Jaswant Singh, who has been acknowledged as the hero of his book. Talbott set out to achieve five objectives in the course of his engagement with the Indians.

These were: an end to the nuclear tests, stopping the production of fissile materials by India, a tighter nuclear export control regime, getting New Delhi to sign the CTBT, and making India talk to Pakistan.

Jaswant Singh (and in the case of the CTBT, the American Senate) prevented the US from achieving all but the last. Negotiations lasted 14 meetings in seven countries over three continents. In the end it was still nada from India.

But this was not the cautious-silence-is-the-best-policy policy adopted by the Narasimha Rao regime. Jaswant Singh and Talbott engaged in often acrimonious exchanges, during which awkward silences prevailed.

Singh, says Talbott, hinted that he was under enormous domestic political pressure on non-proliferation but let the Americans believe India was closer to signing than ever before.

This turned out to be a card-sharper's trick, revealed when the Americans tried to cross-question Home Minister L K Advani and the principal secretary to the PM, Brajesh Mishra, and met with a polite but stony silence on the matter.

Still, Jaswant Singh worked India's way around the problem that the US Senate resolved. The road that took Talbott and Singh through the maze revealed, Talbott records, many new truths.

The metaphor used by the two leaders in their conversations was a mythical Village""Jaswant Singh's village and Talbott's village. Singh's message to Talbott was "don't ask the way to my village if you don't intend visiting it".

Talbott wanted to take Jaswant Singh by the hand and guide him through his village. Between some major disasters (like Kargil) and some minor ones (like comic actor Chevy Chase reaching out to shake hands with President Clinton across a dinner table where Prime Minister Vajpayee was also seated, and spilling an untouched glass of wine all across Vajpayee's pristine jacket), Talbott discovered Jaswant Singh's village.

Talbott believes that the US must make a greater effort to understand the concept of Hindutva. Jaswant Singh's explanations appear to have whetted Talbott's appetite. This is no mean achievement of diplomacy.

It could be supposed that the US's great diplomatic success was how the 1999 Pakistani deployment of nuclear weapons was averted, the Kargil war ended and India forced to start a dialogue with Pakistan.

In the chapter about the US role in the end of the Kargil crisis ("From Kargil to Blair House"), Talbott says President Clinton had information that Pakistan was going to deploy nuclear weapons, having repositioned missiles.

Travel advisories and the like were apparently not considered. Talbott describes the mood that gripped the State Department as President Clinton was briefed for the crucial Blair House meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief, who boarded a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi (Washington's jumpiness was deepened by the fact that Sharief appeared to have been denied an Air Force aircraft).

The way he tells it, had Sharief not been invited to Blair House, Pakistan might just have used its nuclear weapon. But this we know does not square with the facts as we know them in New Delhi.

By the time Nawaz Sharief reached Blair House, India had already captured Tololing and was on the verge of taking Tiger Hill and jubilant captains and majors posted in Kargil were yelling "yeh dil maange more". So the only thing left for Pakistan to do was to seek an honourable exit from the war. Blair House was that route.

Talbott also records with honesty, his first impressions about then mere scientist A P J Abdul Kalam, whose English, he says sounded "as though it had been translated into words by a computer from some higher form of mathematics". Talbott was made to sit next to Kalam at the Rashtrapati Bhavan dinner in honour of President Bill Clinton during his India visit.

Kalam congratulated Talbott for achieving with Singh something called "impedance matching" ("the opposition in a circuit to the flow of alternating current, consisting of resistance and reactance", Talbott explains after looking it up). For this and more such gems, read the book.

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ENGAGING INDIA

Strobe Talbott
Penguin
Pages: 268, Price: Rs 395