India invades Pakistan… in an NBC serial

The tension on the subcontinent over the Kashmir dispute and American fears of a nuclear confrontation was grist for the television mill in what evidently is the first instance of the US entertainment industry milking the crisis. In last night’s episode, the White House is thrown into a tizzy when satellites of the National Reconnaissance Organisation (NRO) pick up movement of Indian troops invading Pakistan in two sectors along the Kashmir border, one of them Kargil. President Barlett (played by Martin Sheen) rushes to the Situation Room. He is told by his staff that India had launched theattack "after its forbearance had been repeatedly tested by Pakistani thuggery… and it is determined to teach Pakistan a lesson once and for all."

As usual, the CIA is caught napping along with the rest of the establishment. Advanced spy satellites are deployed post-haste. "Right now I’m trying to avoid making eye contact with the CIA Director," the President grates as his aides scramble for intelligence on the event.

The Pakistani and Indian ambassadors are called in. The Pakistani envoy says the attack is unprovoked and the Indian charge of Pakistani provocation is untrue because the events in Kashmir are the result of the oppression of defenceless people demanding self-determination. "Not so defenceless," the White House Chief of Staff corrects him testily. "They are carrying the M-16s we sold you."

"You are looking good, Mr President," the Indian envoy tells the US President as he breezes into the Oval office. "I was looking a lot better till your country breached 14 ceasefire conditions withoutas much as a phone call," the President snaps. The Indian ambassador tells the President that the US is frustrated because "you have discovered economic sanctions does not work against us anymore. "India must and will be a nuclear power," he declares. After he exits, the President fumes, "Every time he tells me about their colonial past, I want to tell him that the United States too fought and freed itself from colonial oppression." Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassador says Beijing will not allow Indian aggression to proceed unimpeded and "is prepared to use whatever force" is necessary to stop it.

The Pentagon assesses that unless the clash is arrested, it could turn nuclear. "The truly terrifying fact is that the command and control system (in the subcontinent) is unreliable. The decision-making system is incoherent. You cannot predict what will happen," the President’s aides tell him.

With the crisis threatening to spin out of control the President calls in an old friend an alcoholic English peer, agreat great grandson of a former viceroy of India who has been the British ambassador to New Delhi. He tells the White House how clueless it is about the conflict in the region. It is not based on history or geography but on religion. "Not since the Protestant-Catholic wars of the 16th century has the world known such religious malevolence," Lord John Marbury tells the President.

Inexplicably, while the British noble is delivering his drunken soliloquies to befuddled Americans, there is a ceasefire. For those who believe the White House is indeed often clueless, and the episode captures it in brilliant vignettes. Two White House staffers begin a briefing on the region using Encyclopaedia Brittannica, while the Press Secretary struggles to spell New Delhi. In fact, the episode has several real life elements and is obviously base on some actual events in the White House. For instance, the President’s advisors momentarily keep the White House press office in the dark about the Indian crossover (The White HousePress Secretary is played by a woman who takes after former Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers who was similarly kept out of the loop. She in turn snubs a reporter who says his source in Pentagon has tipped him about the invasion).

The President also has a Chelsea-esque 19-year old daughter who wants to date his 21-year old Black assistant. The West Wing White House is a liberal den being hounded by Conservative Republicans, just like the real thing. The episode pandered to the best and worst of US fears and fantasies that increasingly centers around the possibility of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. In fact, Washington claims to have defused at least once an imminent nuclear face-off in 1990 when Robert Gates, a top presidential aide, is said to have flown to the subcontinent to ward off a misadventure. Both Indian and Pakistani officials have scoffed at the claim.

But that hasn’t stopped NBC scriptwriters. "Any war between India and Pakistan that starts with conventional weapons isn’t going toend that way," an American general prophesises during a tense moment at the White House. The episode ends with the President looking up a quote from the Book of Revelations that portends an Armageddon: "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: And his name that sat on him was Death and Hell followed with him. And powers was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with his sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."