ABSTRACT
A MERICAN MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO PAKISTAN FORMSAN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF the UniteP. States-Pakistan relations during the decade of the 1950s. In February 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the recommendation
of the State and Defense Departments' officials determined that Pakistan was eligible for military assistance for the 'greater defense ... of the Middle East, in cooperation with its Middle East neighbors.'l The Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement of 19 May 1954 and the secret a ide memoireof 21 October 1954, marked the change in the nature of United States aid to Pakistan from 1954 onwards. Th~se two agreements form both the formal and substantive basis of the Military Assistance Program2 (MAP). United States military commitments to Pakistan were further strengthened and substantiated by the latter's membership of the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) in 1954 and the Baghdad Pact (CENTO) in 1955, and by the subsequent Agreement of Cooperation between the governments of the United States and Pakistan of 5 March 1959.3
With direct United States military assistance, the Cold War became a direct issue in the contemporary affairs of the subcontinent. India, although championing the non-aligned movement, sought Soviet friendship and cooperation for its developmental programs. On the other hand, the ·west committed itself totally to the strengthening of the military establishment of Pakistan in the hope of achieving its global security goals. This resulted in a
total disregard for the development and nurturing ofthe demoeratic forces in Pakistan. Recently declassified documents of the United States State and Defence Departments reveal the nature and the objective of the United States military assistance to Pakistan and the role i t played in creating a 'bureaucratic elite system-civil and military', which ruled the country without interruption between 1954 and 1971. The 'bureaucratic elite system' camposed of bureaucrats from West Pakistan saw the birth of Bangladeshin 1971 when the civil-military ruling elite declirred to acknowledge the success of the eastern wing in the first free general election held in Pakistan, since its creation in 1947. Between 1954 and 1993, Pakistan, except for a period of six years of demoeratic rule, shared between Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir Bhutto, has been ruled by the military establishment whose infrastructure was laid during the decade of the 1950s.
