Starmark launched ‘Neighbours in Arms’ by Larry Pressler
Starmark launched ‘Neighbours in Arms by Larry Pressler, former chairman of the US Senates Arms Control Subcommittee on 3rd October 2017, 6 pm at Express Avenue Mall.
About the book: As chairman of the US Senate's Arms Control Subcommittee, Larry Pressler advocated the now-famous Pressler Amendment, enforced in 1990 when President George H.W. Bush could not certify that Pakistan was not developing a nuclear weapon. 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. The book provides a comprehensive account of how US foreign policy in the subcontinent was formed from 1974 till today and ends with recommendations of a new US-India alliance that could be a model for American allies in future.
About the Author: Senator Larry Pressler was born and raised on a farm in South Dakota. The first in his family to attend college, he interrupted his Rhodes Scholarship in Oxford to enlist in the US Army and serve two combat tours in Vietnam. He went on to earn graduate degrees from Oxford, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Law School. Elected twice to the House of Representatives and later to the US Senate for three terms, among his signature achievements were the Pressler Amendment, which briefly halted the spread of nuclear weapons in the 1990s and the epochal Telecommunications Act of 1996 which enabled the start of the Internet. Pressler has held visiting professorships as a Fulbright scholar and has taught at more than twenty universities, including Harvard University, UCLA and the University of Paris. He has remained active in India and was a member of the board of directors of Infosys Technologies Ltd from 2000 to 2006.