Tell-all book by Larry Pressler recounts failed push against Pakistan
INDIA ABROAD October 13, 2017 7 OPINION
INDIAABROAD.COM
arry Pressler, the for-
mer United States sena-
tor whose long service
in Congress was domi-
nated by his untiring
efforts to curb a nuclear
arms race in South Asia, looks
back in anger and disillusion-
ment in a new book describing in
rich detail how successive
administrations in Washington
failed to fend off an army of cor-
porate and military lobbyists.
While he has been a steadfast
friend of India for decades and a
persistent critic of Pakistan,
which he calls a “dishonest and
dangerous” state that does not
share American values and
should be listed among supporters of terrorism, Pressler also
questions a few Indian policies.
The book, “Neighbors in
Arms: An American Senator’s
Quest for Disarmament in a
Nuclear Subcontinent,” arrives
at a time of renewed concerns
about the global threats from
Kim Jong Un in North Korea and
the uncertainties of Iran’s ultimate nuclear intentions, both
situations made more volatile by
President Donald
Trump.
The Pressler
Amendment,
passed in
Congress in 1985
to sanction
Pakistan if it con-
tinued with a
nuclear weapons
program, ulti-
mately fell apart
during the Bill
Clinton adminis-
tration. The long,
tangled story of
the legislation’s
relatively short
life is at the core
of this book. Pressler faults the
power of pressures from what
President Dwight Eisenhower
called in a famous 1961 farewell
Pressler analyzes how new
players and methods have
changed and sometimes hidden
the true interests of lobbies in
both the U.S. and South Asia. He
finds the rise of political action
committees (PACs) and donor-
driven think tanks in the U.S.
“increasingly worrisome.” In
Narendra Modi’s India, Pressler
writes, a shift toward aggressive
public relations started in 2009
with the APCO international
firm’s work in Gujarat. “APCO
clearly helped elevate Modi’s
stature in India and the United
States,” Pressler
concludes.
Numerous action
groups and energy
companies were
involved in lobbying
in the lead-up to the
2005 Civil Nuclear
Agreement between
the administrations
of President George
W. Bush and Prime
Minister Manmohan
Singh. Pressler criti-
cizes Indian politi-
cians who have
allowed the deal to
stall over the Indian
2010 Civil Liabilities Act, which
sets no limit on investor liability.
“U.S. corporations eager to
invest in India for this deal are
scared off by the potential liabili-
ty,” Pressler writes.
On the personal side, Pressler,
now 75, reveals how as a boy in
the Great Plains state of South
Dakota (which he notes is about
the same size as Gujarat) he
lived in a farmhouse with no
indoor plumbing or electricity.
Years later, in his first visit to
India in 1965, he was struck by
the similar conditions in poor
Indian villages and hoped that
people there could one day be
able to experience the boyhood
excitement he remembers when
the lights came on.
In his new book, he argues
that deliberately undercutting
the promise of the Civil Nuclear
Agreement with a liability act is
not helping India develop better
living conditions for the several
hundred million people living in
what he calls the Dark Ages –
“pun intended.”
A complicated politician, usu-
ally described as a traditional
conservative, Pressler took some
liberal stands on social issues in
the Senate, where he co-spon-
sored an equal rights bill for
women. Most recently, he sup-
ported Hillary Clinton for presi-
dent in 2016.
Pressler values the close
South Asian friendships that he
formed as Rhodes Scholar at
Oxford University on both sides
of the India-Pakistan border.
Foremost among them have
been lifelong connections to
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, later to
become India’s deputy planning
commissioner, and Wasim Sajjad
of Pakistan, later president of
the Pakistani Senate.
Pressler’s book is a deeply
detailed, assiduously researched
American political story as much
as it is a survey of U.S.-South
Asian relations. After two tours
of duty in the U.S. Army in
Vietnam and three years in the
State Department, Pressler was
elected to the House of
Representatives in 1974 and then
the Senate in 1988, where he
achieved in 1985 his goal of con-
fronting Pakistan with his
amendment. Attached to a for-
eign assistance act, it that
required regular certifications
that the Pakistanis were not
developing nuclear weapons in
order to continue receiving
American military aid.
This moment of success, how-
ever, occurred not only barely a
decade after Indian nuclear tests
in 1974, which provoked a
Pakistani surge in nuclear activi-
ty, but also at a time when
Pakistan was an ally in the bur-
geoning U.S. covert war against
the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan. Sanctions on
Pakistan were a hard sell in
Washington, and there was little
enthusiasm for implementing
the Pressler Amendment. It died
in 1997, overtaken by a counter
amendment that allowed
Pakistan to reap a largesse.
