Larry Pressler strikes again

• Visible bias

On 25th October 2017, a book launch event of Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator’s Quest for Disarmament on Nuclear Subcontinent written by Larry Pressler, former US Senator, was organised at Hudson Institute, Washington DC. The event was moderated by a former Pakistani ambassador to USA and the speaker of the event was the author Larry Pressler himself.

Readers may recall that as chairman of the US Senate’s Arms Control Subcommittee, Larry Pressler advocated the infamous Pressler Amendment, enforced in 1990. Aid and military sales to Pakistan were blocked, including a consignment of F-16 fighter aircraft, changing forever the tenor of the United States relationships with Pakistan and India, and making Pressler a temporary hero throughout India and a devil in Pakistan.

This scribe is a personal victim of the Pressler Amendment. Having topped the Staff College qualifying examination as well as securing grade A+ in the Staff College, I was selected to undergo a Master’s degree program at the Armed Forces Institute of Technology (AFIT) at Ohio, USA. Clearing various hurdles and waiting for departure along with my family for the two years degree course, my hopes were dashed when the Pressler Amendment was enforced, stopping all military courses to USA.

This article is not about settling scores with Senator Larry Pressler but finding a rationale for his targeted assault on Pakistan’s nuclear program, the timing of the release of this book and Pressler’s love of India and his demonstration of why India is a crucial partner for the US.

Pressler has long been in Indian caucus and has personally and materially benefited from it. It is therefore no surprise that he has written a book praising India and condemning its arch rival Pakistan who Pressler had got sanctioned for the same reason that he is now advocating for India

Pressler has long been in Indian caucus and has personally and materially benefited from it. It is therefore no surprise that he has written a book praising India and condemning its arch rival Pakistan who Pressler had got sanctioned for the same reason that he is now advocating for India i.e. nuclear power. Senator Pressler was a member of the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange until the NASDAQ purchased it. From 2000 to 2006, Senator Pressler was a member of the Board of Directors of Infosys Technologies, LTD in Bangalore, India. Infosys was a NASDAQ – listed company. Pressler helped Infosys get listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

This book reveals what went on behind the scenes in the years when the Pressler Amendment was in force, through a cast of characters that include presidents, prime ministers, senators and generals in the US, India and Pakistan. It exposes the enormous power wielded by the military industrial complex (MIC), which the author terms “Octopus”, and how it controls significant aspects of the American presence in the Indian subcontinent.

Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator’s Quest for Disarmament on Nuclear Subcontinent is a history of the India-Pakistan nuclear arms build-up, and the efforts of Senator Pressler, via the congressional act known as the “Pressler Amendment” to prevent an “unstable Pakistan” from obtaining nuclear weapons, an effort that ultimately failed. The book details the “constant lies told by Pakistan to the US to cover up the secret development of its nuclear bombs.” He glosses over the fact that subsequent US presidents kept certifying every year that Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons. If Pakistan was not certified, the United States would not provide foreign aid to the country curtailing its usefulness in the Afgan War to stop the USSR invasion. The US invoked the Pressler Amendment as soon as the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan and Pakistan’s services were no longer required.

Larry Pressler fails to mention why he did not oppose the US waivers to Pakistan for five long years. After all he himself was a powerful U.S. Senator. He does describe the massive, unstoppable coalition of selfish interests in the U.S. among lobbyists, the defense industry and the Pentagon that controls the U.S. national security agenda but fails to admit that he himself was a tentacle of “the Octopus”.

It was David Dwight Eisenhower, (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) an American army five-star general and statesman who served as the 34^th president of the United States, who in his farewell address as US president warned against the emergence of the MIC. On January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower warned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Alas subsequent US presidents and so called honest politicians like Larry Pressler failed to check the rise.President Eisenhower himself had double standards. In 1953, he threatened the use of nuclear weapons until China agreed to terms regarding POWs in the Korean War. An armistice ended the stalemated conflict. His New Look policy of nuclear deterrence prioritised inexpensive nuclear weapons while reducing funding for expensive army divisions. He continued Harry S. Truman’s policy of recognising the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China, and he won congressional approval of the Formosa Resolution. His administration provided major aid to help the French fight off Vietnamese Communists in the First Indochina War and laid the foundations for US involvement and sink into the quagmire of the Vietnam conflict. He supported local military coups against governments in Iran and Guatemala.

Coming back to Larry Pressler, he finds no problem with the fact that the United States spending is more (in absolute numbers) on its military than the next 13 nations combined.

At the book launching ceremony, Larry Pressler recommended that the US should declare Pakistan a state sponsoring terrorism. He deemed Pakistan to be a more dangerous country than North Korea. His argument was that Pakistan does not have a clear nuclear chain of command. He went on to float an absurd fictional idea that Pakistani nuclear weapons can be bought for few million dollars.

Senator Larry Pressler keeps maligning Pakistan on alleged nuclear proliferation and weak ambiguous chain of command, whereas, his own country i.e. US (so called world’s most conscientious nuclear power) had been proliferating nuclear technology. He can live with Israel’s nuclear program which was acquired clandestinely through US support.

Senator Pressler may also like to focus on US arms sales to India. His book is a project of Penguin Random House India and has been purchased by them. Theme and other propaganda material were likely provided by the Indians to Larry Pressler. There is a possibility of RAW financing the book.

The “informed” scholar chooses to remain oblivious to the fact that U.S. and IAEA officials have at number of occasions acknowledged effective command and control mechanism enforced by Pakistan. Definitely the National Command Authority (NCA) of Pakistan has an excellent command and control function and is deemed superior and more transparent than India’s.

Pakistan has substantially strengthened its nuclear security in the past two decades, a fact to which President Obama and the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have repeatedly expressed confidence in the nuclear security arrangements managed by Pakistan.

It is relevant to mention that Pakistan is the only nuclear country with zero incidents of nuclear mishap, an achievement even the US cannot boast of. The timing of the release of the book appears to be in consonance with the joint Indo-US policy of subjecting Pakistan to pressure. Larry Pressler’s bias against Pakistan is visible throughout the book.