India's Ad Hoc Arsenal - Publications - SIPRI

14 INDIA'S AD HOC ARSENALand Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) were drawn.12 In September 1955Pakistan joined CENTO and by the end of the same year it had also joinedSEATO.US President Eisenhower went to considerable pains during 1955 to justifyto India the wider rationale for the military aid to Pakistan, but his overture fellon deaf ears. Nehru and key opinion shapers in New Delhi saw the aid as adirect and aggressive move designed to compromise India's foreign policybased upon non-alignment. This resulted in conciliatory statements from the USPresident and a marked rise in US economic aid to India, again to little effect.Between 1954 and 1964 Pakistan received some $1.5 billion of military assistancefrom the USA. India received $95 million in military aid, but far greatereconomic assistance;13 however, no amount of economic aid could offset thestrident remarks from Secretary of State Dulles, who in 1954 considered theIndian policy of non-alignment to be 'an immoral conception'.14 Nor did policymakers in New Delhi ignore the view held by Vice President Richard Nixonduring the same period that a defence alliance with Pakistan would provide 'acounter-blast to the confirmed neutralism of Nehru's India'.15 Add to thisIndia's extreme reluctance to accept food aid from the USA under Public LawPL480, and the foundations for a mistrustful and awkward relationship werefirmly in place by the 1950s.More to the point, perhaps, US military aid to Pakistan significantly affectedthe regional military balance. In a sense, a continuing Indian military superioritymight have been more successful in preserving whatever regional securityexisted at the time, if unfairly. All three services in Pakistan benefited substantiallyfrom the military aid package, particularly the Air Force. For example,the Army received 460 M-47 and M-48 Patton battle tanks between 1955 and1965; the Navy received coastal mine-sweepers, two 'CH' class destroyers and,of great importance at the time, a Tench-class submarine in 1964; although itwas on loan it was the first acquisition of its kind by a South Asian country;and Air Force strength was increased significantly with the acquisition of 120F-86F fighters between 1956 and 1958,26 Martin B-57B Canberra long-rangebombers and later, in 1962, the Lockheed F-104 equipped with Sidewinder airto-airmissiles.I6Third, the military alliance between Pakistan and the USA, however cosmetic,mutually opportunist and, for the USA intended primarily to deter theexpansionist aims of the USSR, pushed India's security problems into anotherdimension. Henceforth any attempt to steer clear of or rise above the ebb andflow of cold war politics was impossible for India. Conflict and war betweenl2 CENTO, founded in 1955, at this period consisted of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and the UK. Iraqwithdrew in 1959. SEATO was founded in 1954 and at this period consisted of Australia, France, NewZealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the UK and the USA.l3 George, T., Litwak, R. and Chubin, S., 'The place of India in US foreign policy', in InternationalInstitute for Strategic Studies, India and the Great Powers (Gower/IISS: Aldershot, 1984), p. 168.l4 SIPRI, The Arms Trade with the Third World (Almqvist & Wiksell: Stockholm, 1971), p. 493.SIPRI (note 14), p. 493.l6 SIPRI (note 14). p. 836-37.