Vajpayee’s Quiet Diplomacy: How India’s Ex-PM Outsmarted Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Pakistan

Atal Behari Vajpayee's term as Prime Minister of India ended over two decades ago-- in 2024, and he passed away in 2018, and yet, he's remembered in a way-- for his sagacity, his vision, his humour-- in a way few world leaders are. India, 25 years ago, wasn't the world's fourth-largest economy, it had only just (in 1998) had become a nuclear power, but Vajpayee's persuasive skills, his arguments, had earned the respect of other world leaders. During Operation Parakram, when virtually the entire Indian Army was on the line of control or the international boundary with Pakistan, Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of Britain, called Vajpayee. He was going to Pakistan, he said; he wanted the Indian leadership to know before the official announcement.

Vajpayee's reply was immediate. "To go to Pakistan would be sending a wrong message," he said. If he went to Pakistan, he told Blair, it would look like he was supporting a country that was encouraging terrorism. Did he want to do that? "Come to India," he said encouragingly. And Blair did, for a couple of days.

It was the same with Bill Clinton, the US President, during the Kargil war of 1999 with Pakistan. After Clinton summoned Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's Prime Minister to Washington DC, he called Vajpayee, inviting him to come. Clinton wanted both leaders in DC, face-to-face, and he as the American President would help to sort out things. Vajpayee's reply to the invitation was categoric: "out of the question." The basic minimum he wanted was the withdrawal of Pakistani forces from Indian territory. He told Clinton to tell Nawaz Sharif to do that. And accepting Vajpayee's point, it was Clinton who told Nawaz Sharif to immediately get his forces out of Kargil. It was a military victory, of course, but it was a diplomatic victory as well. And even in Kargil, during the war, soldiers would tell me, "Nawaz Sharif haath utha diye hain (nawaz Sharif has surrendered). "Even during the war, Vajpayee's messaging was apt. When General V.P. Malik, then army chief, requested Vajpayee not to speak about the army or air force not crossing the line of control or the international border as he might have to, if the war didn't go well. Vajpayee sent his national security advisor, Brajesh Mishra, remembers diplomat Ajay Bisaria (then his PS) to a television channel that evening. Mishra made it clear that India's decision not to cross the LOC or IB was "for the moment." Which meant that India, if necessary, could well cross the Rubicon. It wasn't necessary, but the unequivocal threat was there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGgr8pi4c3I

Then, there was Vajpayee's "poetic ambiguity." He used it quite tellingly, even with close friends like Brajesh Mishra. Just before the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, which Vajpayee's coalition narrowly lost to the Congress-led Opposition parties, Mishra asked him if he would get another term as national security advisor. Many assumed that a victory was inevitable. Vajpayee's reply was memorable: "Yeh mamla gambhir hai (This is a difficult issue)," he replied. What did Vajpayee mean? Was he thinking aloud about his party's prospects? Was he uncertain about another term for Mishra? Was this a typically ambiguous comment as he hadn't made up his mind? Nobody knew, not even Mishra. Well, that was Vajpayee.