linguistic:paraphrasing
Kennedy administration

During his time as an adviser to President John F. Kennedy, Galbraith was appointed United States Ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963. His rapport with Kennedy was such that he regularly bypassed the State Department and sent his diplomatic cables directly to the president. Galbraith disliked his superior, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, writing to Kennedy that trying to communicate via Rusk was "like trying to fornicate through a mattress". In India, he became a confidant of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and extensively advised the Indian government on economic matters.

Kennedy considered India to be important not just in its own right, but also because an Indian diplomat always served as the chief commissioner of the International Control Commission (ICC). Thus, Galbraith came to be involved in American policy towards Southeast Asia from his perch as an ambassador in New Delhi. In 1961, when Kennedy considered intervening in the civil war in Laos, Galbraith strongly advised him not to, warning him that the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion had been caused by Kennedy taking the advice offered by the hawkish Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had assured him that the invasion could not fail and were now saying the same about the proposed intervention in Laos. Galbraith also noted that the ICC was also responsible for Laos as well as the two Vietnams, and he had Nehru's word that the Indian diplomats on the ICC were willing to serve as honest brokers for a peace deal to make Laos neutral in the Cold War.

In May 1961, the Indian ICC members had been able to broker a ceasefire in Laos and Kennedy decided to go for the neutralization option instead of war. During the talks in Geneva to discuss a solution to the Lao crisis, the chief American delegate, W. Averell Harriman, discovered the Chinese foreign minister, Chen Yi, was willing to meet him in private. However, Rusk forbade Harriman to talk to Chen under any circumstances, fearful of Republican attacks against the Democrat Kennedy if the meetings should come out to the media, causing Harriman to explode in rage that during World War II, Roosevelt had allowed him to meet whoever was necessary. Unable to change Rusk's mind, Harriman appealed to Galbraith, who in his turn appealed to Kennedy. Kennedy granted permission for Harriman to meet Chen, provided that it was done under the strictest secrecy, but by that time, Chen had returned to Beijing. In May 1961, when Vice President Lyndon Johnson visited India, Galbraith had the duty of escorting him around various sites in India and attempting to explain some of his Texas mannerisms such as his shouts of "yee-hah!" that he made when he saw the Taj Mahal, which confused the Indians.

From the embassy in New Delhi, Galbraith emerged as a critic of the increasing American involvement in Vietnam. In November 1961, he visited South Vietnam where he presented an unflattering picture of the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, saying "we are now married to failure". He advised finding a new South Vietnamese leader, saying "nothing succeeds like successors". In May 1962, Galbraith cabled Kennedy, stating that according to the most recent statements made by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Diem had about 170,000 men under arms at present, while claiming that his country was in major danger from 20,000 lightly armed Viet Cong guerrillas. Galbraith proceeded to do a statistical comparison, under he which calculated that in proportional terms, Diem had an army that was approximately the ratio to the population that was equivalent to that of the U.S Army to the American people after the Civil War, while the Viet Cong had a ratio equivalent to that of the Sioux vs the American people, leading Galbraith to sarcastically ask why Diem needed more American support. He concluded his cable to Kennedy: "Incidentally, who is the man in your administration who decides what countries are strategic? I would like to have his name and address and ask him what is so important about this real estate in the Space Age".

In January 1963, when Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki visited New Delhi, Galbraith met with him to declare to him his "despair" about Kennedy's Vietnam policies and to ask that Poland, as one of the three members of the ICC, try help find a diplomatic solution to the Vietnam War. Galbraith told Rapacki that he favored an agreement to neutralize the two Vietnams similar to the neutralization agreement signed for Laos in 1962. On February 5, 1963, Przemysław Ogrodziński, the Polish ambassador in New Delhi, was ordered by his superiors in Warsaw: "As far as the Vietnam matter, we are discussing it. It was received with interest. Deliberations will continue. As for now, we suggest inviting Galbraith to lunch and sounding out, without committing ourselves, in order for him to see that we are looking into this matter".

Although Galbraith had acted on his own in approaching Rapacki, he had some support from Kennedy, who told him "to pursue the subject immediately." This was the origin of the "Maneli affair", named after Mieczysław Maneli, the Polish Commissioner to the ICC who, together with Ramchundur Goburdhun, the Indian Commissioner on the ICC, approached leaders in both North and South Vietnam with a proposal to make both Vietnams neutral in the Cold War.

On April 1, 1963, Galbraith flew to Washington to discuss the peace proposal with Kennedy, where the president told him "to be prepared to seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our commitment ", though it "might yet be some time away." In September 1963, Maneli met with Ngô Đình Nhu, the younger brother and right-hand man of President Diem, to discuss neutralization, a meeting that was leaked to the right-wing American columnist Joseph Alsop. At that point Kennedy lost interest in the "Maneli affair", instead deciding to back an alternative option he had been considering since August: a coup against the Ngo brothers.

While in India, he helped establish one of the first computer science departments, at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. (Even after leaving office, Galbraith remained a friend and supporter of India.)Because of his recommendation, First Lady of the United States Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy undertook her 1962 diplomatic missions in India and Pakistan.