Okay hear me out. During the cold war the west regarded USSR as the primary threat. The threat was overhyped but fact is America was paranoid about Red Russia. As long as you had a border or a angle on USSR you were hot commodity and could turn that into dollars just by signing up with Uncle Sam. This is exactly what a bankrupt Pakistan did in 1950s. And before you know it the largest military and economic aid flow began to Pakistan.
- PAF was made into a mighty airforce with decade free of cost. US made state of the art fighters liuke F104-Starfighters arrived, 100s of Sabres, radars, new airbases and training of pilots all free of cost.
- PAk army was turned into a modern mechanized army from just a left over of WW2 by recieving Patton tanks, artillery and entire new divisions were raised. New cantoments like Karian were built all again free of cost. Lot of the construction was done by US Army Corp of Engineers.
- Billions poured into new projects for roads, dams [think Mangla, think Tarbela, think Warsak], power lines and a brand new shiny capital called Islamabad. This was greater in real terms then CPEC today.
- Industry recieved huge input and began flourishing fueled by US dollar inpouts. Education institutes were laid like SUPARCO etc and the nurseries that would produce the nuclear talent for future nuke programme under US 'Atoms for Peace' programme.
All this was premised on opposition to the Red threat - primarily USSR but secondarily included China. While this was going on India was milching the Red Russkies. However when China tangled with India and then thrashed them the Americans got rattled. The Chinese never intended to invade India but New Delhi used the American paranoia to it advantage.
Dr Moeed mentions this. Not many people know this but as China was giving the Indians thrashing the rattled West launched one of the largest military aid programmes in history free of cost. Massive scale aid poured in emergency mode to 'save India' from Red Chinese. It included billions of dollars, tanks, artillery.
To give you some examples. India recieved huge number of British Centurion tanks and Fench Amx tanks - the former probably the best tank of the era and superior to the Patton. Hawker Huntera and Gnats also arrived in huge numbers.
This massive arming of india alarmed Pakistan which referanced that these platforms would be used against it and not the Chinese in the high Tibetan pleateu. Sure enough when Pakistan attacked in 1965 it ran into the very arms the west had gifted India as protecton from Red China.
Again as Dr Moeed mentions people and particularly Indians always point to Pakistan as being the biggest recipient of western aid. Truth is India has recieved far greater aid then Pakistan from USA.
Furthermore when Pakistan attacked India in 1965 USA was not happy precisely because of the Chinese factor. Because of the paranoia of the Reds the Americans did not want India to be weakened as in their estimation it could fall victim to Red China.
All that aid they provided to India after 1962 was to address the threat from Red China and thus were not too happy to see all the aid they had given to Pakistan be used to weaken India. The driver behind this all was the China factor.
Of course we can't blame Chinese for this. Our leaders should have calculated the strategic consequences and worked up all the possible scenarios to address this. A nuanced policy should have been developed to handle this complicated dynamic.
Summary: line. Firstly without China factor India would not have recieved the massive arms supply which was used to blunt Pakistan in 1965. Secondly without China factor I doubt USA would have taken such harsh action as sanctioning supplies to Pakistan which it did because it did not want India to be weakened.
