1971 Indo-Pak War and foreign involvement

[trackwhack]

Truth is almost always stranger than fiction. Here is the official transcript from state dept. for above conversation

Office of the Historian - Historical Documents - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–7, Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972 - Document 172

LOL ....

Yeah right, Nixon and Kissinger were politically correct probots .... what etiquette, a little tear in my eye, yes. sniffle sniffle .... Funny stuff.

 

[Anonymouse]

Official transcript of Nixon authorizing:

1. Aircraft carrier deployment to scare India
2. Passing a note to Chinese on asking them to move their forces
3. Cutting of all aid to India

Office of the Historian - Historical Documents - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–7, Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972 - Document 165

Kissinger: We should get a note to the Chinese.

Nixon: Right.
Kissinger: We should move the carrier to the Bay of Bengal.
Nixon: I agree with that. Go ahead.

Kissinger: We should—
Nixon: Let's, let's talk about the things I mean. One, I'd agree with him. Second, with regard to an announcement, with regard to the aid thing, I mean just cut it off. All aid to India, period.

 

[Anonymouse]

July 7, 1971: President's Assistant for National Security Affairs Kissinger and Indian Defense Minister Jagjivan Ram discussed Ram's perception of the threat posed by China to India. Kissinger said that the U.S. would take a "grave view" of any Chinese move against India.

Office of the Historian - Historical Documents - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–7, Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972 - Document 139

 

[pmaitra]

Anonymouse, thank you for participating. May I request you to introduce yourself in the Introduction Section?

Introductions & Greetings

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Truth is almost always stranger than fiction. Here is the official transcript from state dept. for above conversation

Office of the Historian - Historical Documents - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–7, Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972 - Document 172

How is the official transcript cited by you here cross-referenced to the horrible, stilted conversation in the original article? Can you use a word processor program to make anything close to a match? I would like to see that. The thrust of these conversations may share a theme, but the R&I Report article is sheer buffoonery. The latter must be written in a deliberate style to mimic what Indians think Yanks talk like.

 

[Anonymouse]

New York, December 10, 1971, 6:05–7:55 p.m.: Kissinger asking Ambassador Huang Hua, PRC Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Chinese military help against India



Office of the Historian - Historical Documents - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XI, South Asia Crisis, 1971 - Document 274

 

[Anonymouse]

How is the official transcript cited by you here cross-referenced to the horrible, stilted conversation in the original article? Can you use a word processor program to make anything close to a match? I would like to see that. The thrust of these conversations may share a theme, but the R&I Report article is sheer buffoonery. The latter must be written in a deliberate style to mimic what Indians think Yanks talk like.

I am not vouching for the accuracy of article, I am just looking for official records. For example the statement you quoted is there, search for Jordan and it will lead you to statement in question. If you have time please read through the conversations, its interesting to say the least.

I remember George Bush Jr. went to the extent of praising IG in public when these records were released in 2005. I thought this was a sincere effort by US to put behind mistrust. India-US strategic partnership was kicked off after this. Kissinger blamed it all on Nixon in 2005.

 

[trackwhack]

I am not vouching for the accuracy of article, I am just looking for official records. For example the statement you quoted is there, search for Jordan and it will lead you to statement in question. If you have time please read through the conversations, its interesting to say the least.

I remember George Bush Jr. went to the extent of praising IG in public when these records were released in 2005. I thought this was a sincere effort by US to put behind mistrust. India-US strategic partnership was kicked off after this. Kissinger blamed it all on Nixon in 2005.

A sincere effort would be to condemn the genocide of Bangladeshi's and and apology by the US for their support of such a genocide.

There is no India-US strategic partnership. There is a relationship of convenience driven purely on the basis of economics. An attempted American hedge against a bipolar world. The relationship will unravel and fall flat when the bipolar world becomes tripolar in 20 years.

Anyone thinking of a Indo-US honeymoon is delusional - be it Indians, Americans or Indian Americans or Indophiles.

 

[Anonymouse]

A sincere effort would be to condemn the genocide of Bangladeshi's and and apology by the US for their support of such a genocide.

There is no India-US strategic partnership. There is a relationship of convenience driven purely on the basis of economics. An attempted American hedge against a bipolar world. The relationship will unravel and fall flat when the bipolar world becomes tripolar in 20 years.

Anyone thinking of a Indo-US honeymoon is delusional - be it Indians, Americans or Indian Americans or Indophiles.

That would be for US-Bangladesh relationship. Nothing for India to demand. India did the right thing, US was against it at that time.

All international relationships are for enhancing self-interests, strategic or otherwise. Its delusional to think otherwise. Indo-US relationship will do just fine and will get better over time.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

New York, December 10, 1971, 6:05–7:55 p.m.: Kissinger asking Ambassador Huang Hua, PRC Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Chinese military help against India



Office of the Historian - Historical Documents - Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XI, South Asia Crisis, 1971 - Document 274

Dr. Henry Kissinger:
In addition we have taken other measures. We have canceled $87 million of loans to India and $14 million of military equipment.

Leverage. The price of taking aid from the Great Satan.

 

[Ray]

The changed world geopolitics has caused the current strategic partnership with the US as a field of great interaction in the strategic field wherein the Indian foreign policy has found some teeth of late.

At the same time, it cannot be said to be perfect, but the areas of strategic convergence are many.

 

[lemontree]

This was perhaps one of the most ironic events in modern history where the Western world's two leading democracies were threatening the world's largest democracy in order to protect the perpetrators of the largest genocide since the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.

Ironic indeed...

 

[asianobserve]

The changed world geopolitics has caused the current strategic partnership with the US as a field of great interaction in the strategic field wherein the Indian foreign policy has found some teeth of late.

At the same time, it cannot be said to be perfect, but the areas of strategic convergence are many.

Personally, I have no doubt that India would have reaped the most benefits if it entered into strategic partnership with the US way back in the 60s. It should have ditched it's illusory (purely good weather) non-aligned thing. It's a fantasy that a lot of Indians are so attached to.

 

[Ray]

Personally, I have no doubt that India would have reaped the most benefits if it entered into strategic partnership with the US way back in the 60s. It should have ditched it's illusory (purely good weather) non-aligned thing. It's a fantasy that a lot of Indians are so attached to.

You maybe right, but the non aligned attitude has had its ups and downs.

The problem with alignment is that it demands a 'you are either with us or against us' attitude.

Given the difference in the manner how India looked at the world and its issues as against how US viewed them, the areas of convergence in the 60s possibly were few.

It is only now that China has taken a very strident hegemonic line that the areas of convergence are narrowing.

This is more so evident because China's hegemonic line is not only India centric, but has expanded to encompass the total neighbourhood and with military overtones!

 

[thakur_ritesh]

Should the past come to haunt us? No.
Should we forget our past? No.
Should the past teach us lessons? Yes.

While talking about the US's role, we shouldn't overlook the role played by France, but then may be the scars faded post the pokhran II, but then don't ever forget that was also a sight of the French.

This is one reason why even after the IN, of all the 3 services, having the most interaction, joint exercises with the US armed forces, still remains the most suspicious of the Americans even today.

Anyways, with time, the priorities and interests change, and so has happened with India. India primarily looks at the US for 4 main aspects, as I see it. There is common china factor, the Indian market looks to US as investor which awaits investments in large scale, India playing a prominent role in the multilateral fora where the US has a role to play, and don't forget, there remains an important US role in the indo-israel equation.

That aside, these common interests in no way mean India will forget what happened back then or on a lot of other occasions. The reason why India and US won't really be allies in the truest sense of word.

Sadly though, one area where we should also cooperate but we can be pretty certain we wont even today, which is, US wont side with us in splitting apart Pakistan.

 

[Anonymouse]

Personally, I have no doubt that India would have reaped the most benefits if it entered into strategic partnership with the US way back in the 60s. It should have ditched it's illusory (purely good weather) non-aligned thing. It's a fantasy that a lot of Indians are so attached to.

You are mistaken, Indian leaders despite what they said for public consumption, were very realistic including Nehru. India tried for alliance with US in 1963 after Indo-China war. After some initial help, US refused to provide further arms to India. (US was arming Pakistan to teeth during this period). It was after this refusal India went to USSR for arms. See Debacle to Revival: Y.B. Chavan as Defence Minister by R.D Pradhan for reference.

After nuclear explosion by China in 1964, India again went to US for nuclear umbrella. US refused which led to India pursuing nuclear arms. There are declassified state department/intelligence records for all of this.

With POTUS openly aligning himself with Pakistan during east Pakistan crisis (against US state dept wishes), India signed strategic partnership with USSR in Aug 1971.

 

[pmaitra]

Personally, I have no doubt that India would have reaped the most benefits if it entered into strategic partnership with the US way back in the 60s. It should have ditched it's illusory (purely good weather) non-aligned thing. It's a fantasy that a lot of Indians are so attached to.

AsianObserve, you are mistaken. The reason is here:

You are mistaken, Indian leaders despite what they said for public consumption, were very realistic including Nehru. India tried for alliance with US in 1963 after Indo-China war. After some initial help, US refused to provide further arms to India. (US was arming Pakistan to teeth during this period). It was after this refusal India went to USSR for arms. See Debacle to Revival: Y.B. Chavan as Defence Minister by R.D Pradhan for reference.

After nuclear explosion by China in 1964, India again went to US for nuclear umbrella. US refused which led to India pursuing nuclear arms. There are declassified state department/intelligence records for all of this.

With POTUS openly aligning himself with Pakistan during east Pakistan crisis (against US state dept wishes), India signed strategic partnership with USSR in Aug 1971.

And, in addition to that:

• Pakistan had direct land access to Afghanistan, while India did not have that de facto. The US was following the Truman Doctrine. The Soviet Union was involved in Afghanistan for decades. There is no way the US would have let go off or annoyed Pakistan and therefore, there is no way Indo-US alliance could be forged.
• The US was seen as an extension of the British and often called the Anglo-American Empire, while the Germans and Soviets (along with the Irish, but they don't matter since they were not powerful) were viewed favourably by Indians due to the animosity the Soviets and Germans had with the British. Culturally too, the Soviets and Indians had a lot in common.
• There was an air of socialism, which started in Germany around Marx's time and had already influenced many Indian Nationalists and got an impetus with the victory of the Soviets (and other allies) in WW2 and their rise in military and economic clout.
• Nehru was a staunch socialist and was determined to implement Soviet style controlled economy with programmes such as, but not limited to, 5 Year Plans, Hydel Stations, Heavy Industries, etc., for which India got generous Soviet technical assistance which was again much cheaper than what US was willing to offer India.

Looking at these realities, there is no way India could have been an ally of the US.

 

[nitesh]

US is not a friend, we should not delude ourselves, an old article, how US wanted to bomb our nuclear sites using Pakistan

A Reporter at Large: On the Nuclear Edge : The New Yorker

The American intelligence community, also operating in secret, had concluded by late May that Pakistan had put together at least six and perhaps as many as ten nuclear weapons, and a number of senior analysts were convinced that some of those warheads had been deployed on Pakistan's American-made F-16 fighter planes. The analysts also suspected that Benazir Bhutto, the populist Prime Minister of Pakistan, had been cut out of—or had chosen to remove herself from—the nuclear planning. Her absence meant that the nation's avowedly pro-nuclear President, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and the Pakistani military, headed by Army General Mirza Aslam Beg, had their hands, unfettered, on the button. There was little doubt that India, with its far more extensive nuclear arsenal, stood ready to retaliate in kind.

An obvious explanation for the high-level quiet revolves around the fact, haunting to some in the intelligence community, that the Reagan Administration had dramatically aided Pakistan in its pursuit of the bomb. President Reagan and his national-security aides saw the generals who ran Pakistan as loyal allies in the American proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan: driving the Russians out of Afghanistan was considered far more important than nagging Pakistan about its building of bombs. The Reagan Administration did more than forgo nagging, however; it looked the other way throughout the mid-nineteen-eighties as Pakistan assembled its nuclear arsenal with the aid of many millions of dollars' worth of restricted, high-tech materials bought inside the United States. Such purchases have always been illegal, but Congress made breaking the law more costly in 1985, when it passed the Solarz Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act (the amendment was proposed by former Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of New York), providing for the cutoff of all military and economic aid to purportedly non-nuclear nations that illegally export or attempt to export nuclear-related materials from the United States.

There was widespread agreement inside the American intelligence community in 1987 that Pakistan had enough enriched uranium to put together perhaps six nuclear devices. But was it in a form that could actually be used in a warhead? In more precise terms, the unresolved question was this: Had Dr. Khan's men converted enriched-uranium hexafluoride gas (UF6) into a metal? The question resulted in the design of a highly sensitive C.I.A. operation, which produced irrefutable evidence that Pakistan was capable of manufacturing weapons-grade enriched-uranium metal at a facility near Islamabad—but not at Kahuta. The metal could then be machine-tooled to fit into a warhead small enough to hang under an F-16 wing.

Despite such evidence, the Reagan and Bush Administrations certified Pakistan in 1987, 1988, and 1989 as not having a nuclear weapon, the rationale being that there was no specific evidence that Pakistan had indeed done what it was known to be capable of doing. "There is no question that we had an intelligence basis for not certifying from 1987 on," Richard Kerr told me. The public American rationale for certification was that the continued flow of American weapons and ammunition to Pakistan would reassure its leadership that it could rely on conventional arms, and thus have no need to go nuclear. It was a very thin argument, as everyone involved knew. The C.I.A.'s role in all this, Kerr said, was merely to supply the political leaders with the best available information and for them to carry on from that point.

The official added that General Beg and his colleagues understood, as did the American intelligence community, that Pakistan could never stand up to a full-scale Indian assault. "The only way for the Pakistanis to deal with the Indians is to be able to take out New Delhi," he said. "There's no way that sending ten F-16s with conventional bombs is going to do it. Only the nukes could strike back."

Another American who has been involved in nuclear intelligence for many years told me that his reservations about Pakistan and "an Islamic bomb" transcended General Beg: "What if they decide they truly want to be a player on the world stage? Look at the Pakistani ego. They want to be with the Big Boys—China, the United States, the Soviet Union. Pakistan is deadly serious."

The American intelligence community noticed an intense increase in Pakistani radar activity early in the year. Earlier reports showed that the Pakistani Air Force, working closely with officials from Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, had stepped up its F-16 training to practice what seemed to be the dropping of a nuclear bomb. Further intelligence, from Germany, reported that the Pakistanis had designed a nuclear warhead that could be fitted under the wing of an F-16, and that the design had gone through a series of wind-tunnel tests. Pakistan was also reported to have learned to program its in-flight computer system to provide the correct flight path for a nuclear-bomb run.

An American analyst who participated in White House situation-room meetings throughout the crisis described what happened next: "We thought the reason for the evacuation of Kahuta was that they expected a retaliatory attack by India, in response to a Pakistani first strike. We were keyed to an offensive ground strike"—into the Pakistani state of Sind—"by the Indians. The Pakistanis were going to cut it off with a nuke. We thought they'd go for Delhi."

Eventually, the intelligence community picked up a frightening sight, the analyst recalled: "They had F-16s pre-positioned and armed for delivery—on full alert, with pilots in the aircraft. I believed that they were ready to launch on command and that that message had been clearly conveyed to the Indians. We're saying, 'Oh, shit.' We've been watching the revolution in Kashmir, the internal problems in India, and we look at the Pakistani pre-positioning. These guys have done everything that will lead you to believe that they are locked and loaded."

The Pakistani government had told Washington that it had intelligence—whose reliability was suspect, as was all Indian and Pakistani intelligence in moments of crisis—indicating that India was prepared to send its army across the border. "We were holding a session in the National Security Council conference room in the White House basement," the analyst said. "And one of our guys"—a senior military man who had served as defense attaché with the United States Embassy in New Delhi—"said we ought to focus on getting the Paks to hit Tarapur, not Delhi." A large reactor at Tarapur, north of Bombay, was known to be one of India's main sites for the chemical extraction of weapons-grade plutonium. "In other words, he wanted to do a tit for tat: Kahuta for Tarapur. It was the old limited-war issue: If they do a strike, what could we do to get them to neutralize each other?"

One of General Beg's military colleagues subsequently gave me a blunt account of the Gates presentation. According to the officer, Gates angrily let the Pakistani government know that the United States had hard evidence that "we'd crossed the line" and developed nuclear warheads. The American criticism prompted a bitter protest from President Khan. He accused the United States of being hypocritical in its sudden concern over Pakistani nuclear intentions. "Now, after the Afghanistan war is over, you are squeezing us," Khan was quoted as telling Gates. "You're telling me what's going on. Don't you also know what's going on in India and Israel? It's a double standard." Pakistan's fear, as it was said to have been relayed to Gates, was that a full-scale ground assault by India could dismember the nation within two weeks, as had happened in 1971, leaving the leadership with, in the Pakistani officer's words, "no option but to go nuclear." In the Pakistani officer's account, Khan and Beg did seek, with no success, a United States commitment to reward Pakistan for not using nuclear weapons in case of all-out war with India, by providing a full-scale airlift of conventional arms and ammunition, as had been done to bolster Israel in the early days of the 1973 Mideast war.

In its aftermath are the inevitable questions about Pakistan's nuclear status—who knew what, and when? Oakley insisted, as did many former members of the Reagan and Bush Administrations, that the essential facts about Pakistan's inevitable emergence as a nuclear power were known fully in the late nineteen-eighties to the United States Congress, whose members "acquiesced"—as Oakley put it—in continued foreign aid to Pakistan because of the Afghanistan war and the enormous personal popularity of Prime Minister Bhutto in the United States. Oakley's point seemed to be that passive approval by Congress of bad policy somehow justified bad policy. In an interview, a former top-level Reagan Administration official went further and questioned the integrity of those members of Congress who publicly supported the Solarz and Pressler Amendments: "All this morality horseshit. We were caught in a dilemma, and I didn't know how to solve it: there was no way to stop the Pakistanis. Pakistan had been I need to read the rules.I need to read the rules.I need to read the rules.I need to read the rules.ing around for years on the bomb. They weren't going to depend on us. What do you expect of the Pakistanis? All this talk about breaking the law—it's just a morality play. Of course everybody in Congress knew. The Administration was carrying out a popularly based policy in Afghanistan. If we'd cut off the aid to Pakistan, would we have been able to withstand the political heat from Congress?"

There were other signs of business as usual. President Bush continued his policy of invoking the Pressler Amendment and not certifying Pakistan to be nuclear-free in 1991 and 1992, as he had in 1990, but he also permitted Pakistan to buy American-made arms from commercial firms, thus nullifying the impact of the law. Pakistan and India, while still refusing international inspection of suspected weapons facilities, continue today to publicly deny, as they did throughout the nineteen-eighties, that they have nuclear weapons.

The N.E.V.W.G.'s undercover operation led to a highly publicized arrest, in Pennsylvania, in July of 1987, of a Pakistani-born Canadian named Arshad Z. Pervez: he was seized while attempting to buy twenty-five tons of a specially strengthened steel for use—as Barlow knew—in Pakistan's uranium-enrichment program. There was now little doubt about Pakistan's nuclear intentions. The arrest created a furor among those members of Congress committed to nonproliferation, including Senator Glenn and Representative Solarz. Congress, obviously more concerned about safeguarding aid for the Afghanistan war than about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in South Asia, nonetheless approved a foreign-aid package of four hundred and eighty million dollars for Pakistan in December. A dismayed John Glenn subsequently told the Times that the threat of nuclear proliferation "is a far greater danger to the world than being afraid to cut off the flow of aid to Afghanistan," and added, "It's the short-term versus the long-term." In January, six months after the arrest of Pervez, President Reagan finally invoked the Solarz Amendment, as he was compelled to do under the law, and then immediately waived its provisions, clearing the way for the American aid. The President was telling Pakistan that it could have its money—and its bomb.

He produced an extensive analysis for the Department of Justice and the Customs Service on the hundreds of documents found in Pervez's apartment. He was brought into a sensitive case involving possibly illegal State Department approval of licenses to the Pakistani Embassy in Washington for equipment whose export had previously been denied—for nuclear-proliferation reasons—by the Commerce Department. There were many other cases in which high-tech goods, approved for export by Washington, turned out to have a significant application to Pakistan's nuclear program.

After Pervez's arrest, Representative Solarz, who was obviously concerned about the violation of his amendment, requested a top-secret briefing by the C.I.A. and the State Department on Pakistani bomb procurement. Barlow was assigned to accompany David W. Einsel, the C.I.A.'s senior nonproliferation officer, to the briefing. It would be Barlow's first appearance before Congress.

All this gave the government a big problem. President Bush, after his June meeting with Benazir Bhutto, had agreed to sell sixty of the aircraft, a sale of a billion six hundred million dollars that the Pentagon—and Pakistan—badly wanted. But that sale hinged on the Pentagon's assurances to Solarz's subcommittee that the Pakistani government would not modify the F-16s for nuclear delivery. Furthermore, Barlow was involved just at that time with investigating four major criminal cases involving senior officers of the Pakistani Army who had attempted to make illegal purchases in the United States or abroad of American-made nuclear-related materials, including highly enriched uranium. One of the cases involved evidence showing that Pakistan was attempting to obtain dual-use items for its nuclear program by claiming that the materials were to be used for its F-16 fleet. The State Department's Near East Bureau had learned of Barlow's activity only a few days before.

On August 2, 1989, Arthur Hughes, a newly appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, testified before the Solarz subcommittee that the F-16s to be sold to Pakistan would be stripped of nuclear wiring before delivery. To deliver a nuclear bomb, therefore, Hughes said, "it first would be necessary to replace the entire wiring package of the aircraft." Hughes assured Solarz, in response to a question, that the F-16s to be sold to Pakistan were not nuclear-capable unless the nuclear wiring, or some modification of it, was replaced.
Barlow knew that the Hughes testimony was totally contrary to the analyses that had previously been prepared. The fact that the Pakistani Air Force had practiced low-level F-16 delivery of nuclear weapons was widely known throughout the American intelligence community. The primitive delivery system required very little in the way of electronics or special wiring. Barlow informed his superiors, including Gerald Brubaker, his immediate supervisor, of his problems with the testimony, and urged that it be corrected.

Two days later, Brubaker called Barlow into his office and, with no warning, handed him a letter of termination. He stood accused, as he did not know at the time, of being a national-security risk to the United States. He was stripped of all his classified clearances and given three weeks to clear out of his office. Barlow decided to fight the dismissal. He spent the next eighteen months assigned to a Defense Department personnel pool, under surveillance by Pentagon security officers. He learned later that the "national-security risk," according to classified documents released to him under the Freedom of Information Act, was the fear of Brubaker and his superiors that Barlow would go, without authorization, to Representative Solarz and tell him the truth. "Would I have done it?" Barlow recently said, in astonishment. "Hell, no. I was trained to work within the system." Nonetheless, over the eighteen months, Pentagon investigators, on the pretext that they were dealing with a national-security threat, began looking into his personal life, his finances, his taxes, and false allegations that he had been fired from the C.I.A. and from the Customs Service.

n May of 1990, after an eight-month investigation, the Pentagon determined that the security charges against Barlow were false. In a formal memorandum, Barlow was told that "after thorough investigation . . . any question of your trustworthiness for access to sensitive information was resolved in a manner completely favorable to you." His top-secret security clearances were reinstated, but the Pentagon did not restore his clearances to compartmentalized intelligence, without which no intelligence officer can do his job. Barlow remained on duty in the personnel pool, arranging civic luncheons and obtaining computers for public schools in Washington.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

More recently from Seymour Hersch:

Are nuclear weapons safe in Pakistan? : The New Yorker

 

[The Messiah]

"We've been watching the revolution in Kashmir, the internal problems in India, and we look at the Pakistani pre-positioning. These guys have done everything that will lead you to believe that they are locked and loaded."

"And one of our guys"—a senior military man who had served as defense attaché with the United States Embassy in New Delhi—"said we ought to focus on getting the Paks to hit Tarapur, not Delhi." A large reactor at Tarapur, north of Bombay, was known to be one of India's main sites for the chemical extraction of weapons-grade plutonium. "In other words, he wanted to do a tit for tat: Kahuta for Tarapur. It was the old limited-war issue: If they do a strike, what could we do to get them to neutralize each other?"

Democracy and freedom loving west