United States Cold War Strategy in South Asia: Making a Military Commitment to Pakistan, 1947-1954

Abstract

On February 25, 1954, the United States announced its intention to embark on a major program of military aid to Pakistan. On May 2 the two nations formally signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement. Later that year, Pakistan joined the United States alliance system as a member of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO); the next year, it became an original member of the Americansponsored Baghdad Pact. In a remarkably short time, Pakistan had thus become, as one of its leaders so aptly phrased it, America's most allied ally in Asia.' Pakistan's alignment with the West can best be understood as part of an evolving global strategy devised by the United States for containment of the Soviet Union. Convinced that unchecked Soviet expansion would pose an unprecedented threat to American interests and world order, the administration of Harry S. Truman had by the late 1940s broken fundamentally with past policies and assumed vastly increased responsibility for the maintenance of international stability. Initial efforts to implement the so-called containment doctrine focused on Western Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. By 1949, with the formation of an Atlantic military alliance and the massive infusion of American capital into Europe under the Marshall Plan, administration analysts believed that effective deterrents to Soviet aggression in those areas were being established. United States policy makers were convinced that their firm response to the Korean War ofJune 1950 demonstrated the nation's determination to meet all Communist threats to East Asia as well. Another critical region, the Middle East, proved more problematic. By 1951 American policy makers viewed the oil-rich Middle East as strategically and economically indispensable to