JFK to the rescue

Sandeep Unnithan 

October 21, 2015

US President John F. Kennedy with Jawaharlal Nehru at the White House in 1961. 

India's border war with China was overlooked by the rest of the world for one very important reason in October 1962-it overlapped with the Cuban missile crisis, the closest the world has been to a nuclear Armageddon.

Bruce Riedel's book outlines the subterfuge and the frenetic diplomacy that accompanied the Himalayan struggle between India and China that month. How President John F. Kennedy's administration-already waging a covert war against China-leaned on its Pakistani allies not to attack India while arming India to resist the invasion. The ferocity of the Chinese assault startled Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru into a frantic plea for substantial military assistance-fighter jets, bombers and radars. The panic was understandable. Less than a decade ago, even the US army had recoiled under the weight of the Chinese army's assault on the Korean peninsula.

The US-Soviet standoff in the Carribean is now consigned to Cold War lore. The legacy of India's border war with China, however, still lingers over the subcontinent over a half-century after the last bullet was fired. The two nuclear-armed neighbours share the world's longest-disputed border, an unresolved legacy of the border war, even as the US, now India's largest arms supplier, tries to re-engage India as a democratic counterweight against.

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Excerpts

Ayu, Pakistan, and Kennedy

For (then US ambassador to India J.K.) Galbraith "the nightmare of a combined attack by Pakistan and China, with the possibility of defeat, collapse and even anarchy in India, was much on my mind. My concern was about equally divided between helping the Indians against the Chinese and keeping peace between the Indians and the Pakistanis". The ambassador was right to be concerned. From the beginning of hostilities (Pakistan's President) Ayub Khan began pressing for some kind of Indian "compensation" in Kashmir in exchange for Pakistani neutrality. As the United States began to back India publicly on the McMahon Line and then to send it arms, Ayub Khan felt betrayed by Kennedy. The promise he had gotten in July 1961 that Washington would not arm India, even if China attacked, without Pakistan's agreement seemed to be a dead letter: The "most allied ally" was being forsaken to help its bigger neighbor.

Washington sided immediately with Galbraith on Kashmir, but thought it would be useful for (US Ambassador to Pakistan Walter P.) McConaughy to be able to tell Ayub Khan that Nehru would welcome reassurances of Pakistani neutrality. Galbraith that evening saw the prime minister and wrote later in his diary, "Nehru was frail, brittle, and seemed small and old. He was obviously desperately tired". When asked if the United States could tell Ayub Khan that Nehru would welcome a Pakistani assurance of neutrality, the prime minister said he would not object. Galbraith then "moved in very hard saying this would not be sufficient, that we must be able to say that Nehru would warmly accept such assurances. He looked a little stunned". Nehru relented and agreed that such a letter would be helpful. Galbraith pressed further and asked Nehru to promise that he would positively respond to a Pakistani assurance. Nehru said "on some appropriate occasion he would". Galbraith pressed hard again and said, "This was a time for generosity and he should be immediately forthcoming. Again Nehru agreed." Thus Galbraith was increasingly becoming a key policy counselor to the Indian prime minister behind the scenes.

The next day, on October 29, Nehru formally asked Kennedy via Galbraith to supply arms to India. Kennedy had just sent a letter to Ayub Khan describing the Chinese attack on India as an act of aggression and informing him that the United States would provide support to India. Kennedy asked for Pakistan to reassure India that it would not take advantage of the Chinese attack to pressure India. Kennedy's message was, in essence, that the Chinese communists were now threatening a neighbor and that Pakistan, as a member of two alliances built to fight communism, needed to be on the right side. This was why the Pakistanis and Americans were treaty allies: to fight communism.

Nehru did write to Ayub Khan on October 29 to explain the situation as Galbraith had suggested and Ayub wrote back. Nonetheless, throughout late October and November Ayub Khan and his aides publicly criticised U.S. and British military aid to India. After all, Pakistan was an ally of the United States, whereas India was a neutral nonaligned state.

The U.S. State Department assured the ambassador that the rules for this equipment's use would be same as those for the U.S. weapons received by Pakistan: The military equipment was to be used against communist aggression, not India's neighbor.

Galbraith was very worried now that (Chinese leader) Mao Zedong, had more dangerous and expansive ambitions. Galbraith was especially concerned about the narrow neck connecting all of north-eastern India to the nation's core. The Siliguri Corridor was India's great vulnerability. U.S. intelligence in New Delhi reported that the PLA was massing forces north of Sikkim and Bhutan, and Galbraith worried that "a drive down here would cut off all of eastern India-North East Frontier Agency, Assam, Tripura, and Manipur". Galbraith told Kennedy that the Indians "have consistently underestimated Chinese intentions".

Finally Galbraith told Kennedy that "we do have a serious problem next door and this has been much on my mind": Ayub Khan wanted Kashmir. Galbraith acknowledged that the United States had not consulted with the field marshal before implementing the airlift of military aid, "an action not too gracefully cleared with the Pakistanis". He had pressed Nehru to write "a long and friendly letter to Ayub on the situation", and Nehru had followed this counsel. Galbraith wrote the president that "McConaughy has been doing noble work in Karachi to calm the Pakistanis and make them see the threat" from China. Once the crisis had passed it would be time to "propose meaningful negotiations on Kashmir", but not under the threat of Chinese-Pakistani collusion.

A Pakistani attack in Kashmir in the fall of 1962 would have stretched India's military to the breaking point.

The Americans thus played a decisive role in forestalling a Pakistani attack on India. Kennedy's messages to Ayub Khan, reinforced by similar messages from (Brititsh) Prime Minister (Harold) Macmillan, left little doubt that the United States and the United Kingdom would view a Pakistani move against India as a hostile and aggressive action inconsistent with the SEATO and CENTO treaties. The Americans told Pakistan that the Chinese attack was the most dangerous move made by Mao since Korea in 1950 and that they intended to respond decisively. They asked for his assurance of neutrality. To have acted militarily would have left Pakistan isolated from its treaty allies and totally dependent on China-and Pakistan was unsure about China's military intentions. Any Pakistani attack on India in the west would need to be based on the assumption that China would keep up the pressure in the east and in Kashmir. Ayub had no concrete reason to believe that would be the case. Like everyone else he did not know what Mao planned to do next.

Nehru's appeal to Kennedy

At the peak of the crisis on November 19, Nehru wrote two letters to Kennedy. They were delivered immediately by the Indian embassy in Washington to the White House and also to Galbraith in India. The existence of these two letters, especially of the second one, was not made public at the time. In his diary Galbraith makes only a cursory mention of them, writing that "not one but two pleas for help are coming to us, the second one of them still highly confidential". For years afterward, successive Indian governments denied that the letters existed. Nehru's successor Lal Bahadur Shastri said he had conducted a thorough review of the prime minister's secretariat and the Ministry of External Affairs, but found no evidence of them.

For its part, the U.S. Department of State archives acknowledged that two letters had been received by JFK from Nehru, but kept the contents secret. For years, copies of the letters held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum were heavily redacted, allegedly in part at the request of the government of India. Then in 2010 the library made available the original letters in full, giving scholars the opportunity to analyze the exact text.

The first, "EYES ONLY", letter begins with an expression of Nehru's gratitude for what Kennedy had already done since the attack began in October. "We are extremely grateful to you and the Government and people of the USA for the practical support given to us," Nehru wrote, and "we particularly appreciate the speed with which the urgently needed small arms and ammunition were rushed to India". Nehru then told the president that during the lull in fighting in early November, the Chinese had "made full preparations" for a second attack. Two Indian divisions were now "fighting difficult rear guard actions" in NEFA and might not last much longer.

Nehru described the grim battlefield situation: "The Chinese are, by and large, in possession of the greater part of the North East Frontier Agency and are poised to over run Chushul in Ladakh" in the Kashmir. "There is nothing to stop them till they reach Leh, the headquarters of the Ladakh Province of Kashmir. We are facing a grim situation in our struggle for survival... against an unscrupulous and powerful aggressor."

Then Nehru came to the point of the letter: India needed "air transport and jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression. A lot more effort, both from us and from our friends will be required to roll back this aggressive tide". Nehru then made his pitch, writing, "I hope we will continue to have the support and assistance of your great country in the gigantic efforts that have to be made." The prime minister closed by telling the president he was also writing a similar message to British prime minister Macmillan.

Almost at the same time as the White House received this first letter, Galbraith sent an urgent telegram classified TOP SECRET EYES ONLY FOR PRESIDENT, SECRETARY AND SECRETARY DEFENSE. It began, "I have just learned under conditions of the greatest confidence that another" letter from Nehru is "in preparation." Having been briefed on the second letter by Finance Minister Morarji Desai in great secrecy, Galbraith wrote that it reflected the "new disasters and further large Chinese advances today and will ask for some form of back up support to the Indian Air Force by USAF amounting to joint Air Defenses to deter attacks on cities and lines of communication while the Indians commit IAF to tactical operations and attacks on Chinese communications which they believe is now the only chance of stopping Chinese and preventing cutoff of eastern India or more." The Indian leadership had decided that India could only stop the Chinese advance and prevent the loss of all of northeastern India by launching air strikes on the PLA's lines of supply and communications back to Tibet. To ensure the defense of India's own cities and supply lines, Nehru was asking the president to send American pilots and aircraft to back up the Indian Air Force by flying defensive missions over India.

Nehru was thus asking Kennedy to join the war against China by partnering in an air war to defeat the PLA. It was a momentous request that the Indian prime minister was making. Just a decade after American forces had reached a cease-fire with the Chinese Communist Forces in Korea, India was asking JFK to join a new war against Communist China. Galbraith sent the telegram in advance of the letter because he knew he had to buy some time for the president to consider the huge commitment India was seeking.

India's ambassador in Washington, Braj Kumar Nehru, delivered the second letter late in the evening of November 19. It began with a dire assessment of the situation facing India: "Within a few hours of dispatching my earlier message of today, the situation in the NEFA command has deteriorated still further." Nehru wrote that "the entire Brahmaputra Valley is seriously threatened and unless something is done immediately to stem the tide the whole of Assam, Tripura, Manipur and Nagaland would also pass into Chinese hands". Even worse, Nehru warned that the Chinese had "massive forces" north of Sikkim and Bhutan, and "another invasion from that direction appears imminent". He repeated his concerns about Kashmir and feared "increasing air activity by the Chinese air force in Tibet". The letter's assessment of the crisis concluded, "The situation is really desperate. We have to have more comprehensive assistance if the Chinese are to be prevented from taking over the whole of Eastern India." Without American airpower Nehru believed India faced "a catastrophe for our country". India's only hope was to counter China's gains on the ground with the use of airpower, but India lacked "air and radar equipment to defend against retaliatory action by the Chinese". Nehru made his request specific: "A minimum of 12 squadrons of supersonic all weather fighters are essential. We have no modern radar cover in the country. The United States Air Force personnel will have to man these fighters and radar installations while our personnel are being trained." The Indian prime minister spelled out the implications of his request, writing that "U.S. fighters and transport planes manned by U.S. personnel will be used for the present to protect our cities and installations" from the Chinese. Moreover, American pilots and fighters would "assist the Indian Air Force in air battles with the Chinese air force over Indian areas", while Indian aircraft attacked Chinese PLA troops and supply lines on the ground. Air attacks inside Tibet would be undertaken by the Indian Air Force alone.

In addition to the fighters and radar installations manned by Americans, Nehru also requested "two squadrons of B-47 Bombers" to strike in Tibet. India would "like to send immediately our pilots and technicians for training in the United States" to operate these sophisticated long-range jet bombers. The prime minister assured JFK that the equipment would not be used against Pakistan, but only for "resistance against the Chinese." The stakes were "not merely the survival of India," Nehru told Kennedy, "but the survival of free and independent Governments in the whole of this subcontinent or in Asia." India was ready to "spare no effort until the threat posed by Chinese expansionist and aggressive militarism to freedom and independence is completely eliminated."

In this second letter Nehru was, in fact, asking Kennedy for some 350 combat aircraft and crews: twelve squadrons of fighter aircraft with twenty-four jets in each and two bomber squadrons. At least 10,000 personnel would be needed to staff and operate the jets, provide radar support, and conduct logistical support for the operation. If the RAF shared the task the American numbers would be lower, but it still would be a substantial force, large enough to make it a numbered air force in the American order of battle.

Ambassador B. K. Nehru was so stunned by the contents of the messages from Prime Minister Nehru that he did not show them to any of his staff and kept the only copies in his own desk. Many years later he told an American historian that Nehru must have been exhausted and psychologically devastated by the news of India's defeats when he sent the two letters. The British prime minister received similar letters that Harold Macmillan referred to briefly in his memoirs as "agitated."