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Indo-US strategic ties: Nuclear brinkmanship in the Himalayas
Global Village Space |
Saleem Akhtar Malik |
Pakistanis keep complaining about America’s totally indifferent stance towards Pakistan during the ’65 and ’71 wars. Pakistan joined the US sponsored Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955. Pakistan’s membership of the American-sponsored military pacts is well known. That India was also aligned during the Cold War period is generally ignored.
Indo- US strategic cooperation started in 1956 (before China formally annexed Tibet in 1959) when the CIA established a base camp at Kalimpong, near India’s border with Tibet, to recruit Tibetan guerrillas to fight Chinese troops. Soon thereafter the CIA trained militias in the eastern Kham region started fighting the Chinese. Similarly, after the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, when Non-Aligned India was caught in the no man’s land, the United States and Britain provided India $120 million worth of military aid. The program included a variety of military equipment, but its central feature was the raising of six Indian mountain divisions (Bhutto, 1969).
In October 1965, with logistics support from India’s Intelligence Bureau, planted a nuclear powered remote sensing device atop the 25,645-foot mountain feature Nanda Devi, located in India’s Uttarakhand state.
The 1962 Sino-Indian War provided the United States an opportunity to increase American influence over India without coercing the latter into a formal and declared pact. The United States was not supporting India because of any moral reason.
Read more: NSG membership: Will Russia “convince” China to vote in India’s favor?
After WW2 the United States, a novice in the great game, needed new enemies, even as it needed new friends. It rightly perceived the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to its interests though the magnitude of the threat was gradually blown out of proportion. Initially, the United States wanted Nationalist China and India as its policemen in Asia and the Pacific.
When China was “lost” to the communists, the United States pinned its hopes on India, but India under Nehru was intent on enjoying the best of both the worlds by sitting on the fence under the anachronistic concept of non-alignment. In fact, non-alignment was the bogey the Soviet Union used throughout the Cold War to counter the United States. Hence the US sponsored military pacts which were aimed at encircling the Soviet Union and China. Speaking in New Delhi in January 1962, Henry Kissinger remarked that the United States conjured up these pacts because “at that time America was suffering from a disease called ‘Pactitis’ (Bhutto, 1969).
It is worthwhile to mention here that in October 1965, a few days after the cease-fire between India and Pakistan, the CIA, with logistics support from India’s Intelligence Bureau, planted a nuclear powered remote sensing device atop the 25,645-foot mountain feature Nanda Devi, located in India’s Uttarakhand state. Soon thereafter, another device was planted by the Americans on Nanda Kot, a nearby feature. Both the devices lie abandoned in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal Himalayas and keep ticking, each with its deadly stock of plutonium about half the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Bag,2015). Such was the extent of the US-India strategic relationship during the period Pakistan had been mentioned as America’s “most allied ally”.
Read more: Why is China keeping India from joining the NSG?
Intruding the mountains
According to Beckhausen (2013), after China exploded its first nuclear device in 1964, the Pentagon and CIA were worried about how to monitor Chinese missile tests which were being conducted at a top secret facility a few hundred kilometers north of the Himalayan mountains. They desperately needed to find out the performance parameters of the Chinese missiles and compatibility with nuclear warheads. The mountain range blocked ground-based sensors which could have picked up the missiles’ radio telemetry signals. Worse, Pakistan had just kicked out America’s spy planes and, back in the 1960s, precision satellite imagery was still primitive.
In 1963, USAF General Curtis LeMay, along with a small team of Sherpa guides, had led an expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. The General was tasked by the CIA to head the second expedition in October 1965, this time in a clandestine operation to carry a plutonium-powered generator — known as a SNAP Unit— and a sensor device to a Himalayan peak high enough to secure a direct line of sight to the Chinese missile test site. Once at a suitable summit, the team would assemble the device and aim it towards China.
Read full article:
Indo-US strategic ties: Nuclear brinkmanship in the Himalayas
Global Village Space |
Saleem Akhtar Malik |
Pakistanis keep complaining about America’s totally indifferent stance towards Pakistan during the ’65 and ’71 wars. Pakistan joined the US sponsored Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955. Pakistan’s membership of the American-sponsored military pacts is well known. That India was also aligned during the Cold War period is generally ignored.
Indo- US strategic cooperation started in 1956 (before China formally annexed Tibet in 1959) when the CIA established a base camp at Kalimpong, near India’s border with Tibet, to recruit Tibetan guerrillas to fight Chinese troops. Soon thereafter the CIA trained militias in the eastern Kham region started fighting the Chinese. Similarly, after the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, when Non-Aligned India was caught in the no man’s land, the United States and Britain provided India $120 million worth of military aid. The program included a variety of military equipment, but its central feature was the raising of six Indian mountain divisions (Bhutto, 1969).
In October 1965, with logistics support from India’s Intelligence Bureau, planted a nuclear powered remote sensing device atop the 25,645-foot mountain feature Nanda Devi, located in India’s Uttarakhand state.
The 1962 Sino-Indian War provided the United States an opportunity to increase American influence over India without coercing the latter into a formal and declared pact. The United States was not supporting India because of any moral reason.
Read more: NSG membership: Will Russia “convince” China to vote in India’s favor?
After WW2 the United States, a novice in the great game, needed new enemies, even as it needed new friends. It rightly perceived the Soviet Union as the greatest threat to its interests though the magnitude of the threat was gradually blown out of proportion. Initially, the United States wanted Nationalist China and India as its policemen in Asia and the Pacific.
When China was “lost” to the communists, the United States pinned its hopes on India, but India under Nehru was intent on enjoying the best of both the worlds by sitting on the fence under the anachronistic concept of non-alignment. In fact, non-alignment was the bogey the Soviet Union used throughout the Cold War to counter the United States. Hence the US sponsored military pacts which were aimed at encircling the Soviet Union and China. Speaking in New Delhi in January 1962, Henry Kissinger remarked that the United States conjured up these pacts because “at that time America was suffering from a disease called ‘Pactitis’ (Bhutto, 1969).
It is worthwhile to mention here that in October 1965, a few days after the cease-fire between India and Pakistan, the CIA, with logistics support from India’s Intelligence Bureau, planted a nuclear powered remote sensing device atop the 25,645-foot mountain feature Nanda Devi, located in India’s Uttarakhand state. Soon thereafter, another device was planted by the Americans on Nanda Kot, a nearby feature. Both the devices lie abandoned in Uttarakhand’s Garhwal Himalayas and keep ticking, each with its deadly stock of plutonium about half the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Bag,2015). Such was the extent of the US-India strategic relationship during the period Pakistan had been mentioned as America’s “most allied ally”.
Read more: Why is China keeping India from joining the NSG?
Intruding the mountains
According to Beckhausen (2013), after China exploded its first nuclear device in 1964, the Pentagon and CIA were worried about how to monitor Chinese missile tests which were being conducted at a top secret facility a few hundred kilometers north of the Himalayan mountains. They desperately needed to find out the performance parameters of the Chinese missiles and compatibility with nuclear warheads. The mountain range blocked ground-based sensors which could have picked up the missiles’ radio telemetry signals. Worse, Pakistan had just kicked out America’s spy planes and, back in the 1960s, precision satellite imagery was still primitive.
In 1963, USAF General Curtis LeMay, along with a small team of Sherpa guides, had led an expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. The General was tasked by the CIA to head the second expedition in October 1965, this time in a clandestine operation to carry a plutonium-powered generator — known as a SNAP Unit— and a sensor device to a Himalayan peak high enough to secure a direct line of sight to the Chinese missile test site. Once at a suitable summit, the team would assemble the device and aim it towards China.
Read full article:
Indo-US strategic ties: Nuclear brinkmanship in the Himalayas
