ISBN-10: 0670089311
ISBN-13: 978-0670089314
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Neighbors in Arms
Neighbors in Arms
As chairman of the US Senate s Arms Control Subcommittee, Larry Pressler advocated the now-famous 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 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, which the author terms Octopus, and how it controls significant aspects of the American presence in the Indian subcontinent.
Senator Pressler’s book deserves serious consideration by anyone trying to understand how foreign policy is made.
This book is a fascinating account…and also a recent history of US-India relations. While the proposed economic sanctions in the Pressler Amendment were never fully tested, as it was sabotaged by forces within the Pentagon, its lessons as a template for economic sanctions remain with us.
In telling the tragic story of the Pressler Amendment, which would have prevented Pakistan from taking the nuclear weapons route, Larry Pressler also explains the forces at work that first circumvented the Amendment…and later rolled it back.
