Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s recent visit to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia has served a useful purpose inasmuch as it has helped to arouse interest in India’s potential role in South-East Asia both at home and abroad. New Delhi is showing signs that it is genuinely interested in making whatever contribution it can to the stability and well-being of the region.
This is a welcome break from the inertia and defensiveness of recent years. It is also evidence of revival of national confidence after six difficult years of war with China and Pakistan, droughts, crop failures and serious economic recession.
To begin with, New Delhi has offered training facilities for students from Malaysia. It also intends to establish a number of joint industrial projects in that country. India has trained Malaysian military officers in the past and is prepared to widen the scope of this kind of cooperation, it can meet Kuala Lumpur’s need for small arms if the latter so desires. All this does not add up to a grandiose scheme. Put there is no harm in making a modest beginning.
Security
The question of security was raised forcefully by the leaders of the countries Mrs. Gandhi visited. This was only to be expected. Malaysia fears pressures from Indonesia and the Philippines in addition to the revival of the communist guerilla threat in the wake of the impending British withdrawal. Singapore does not trust either Indonesia or Malaysia. Australia is apprehensive of not only nuclear China but also of Japan and even Indonesia and sees the continuing American military presence in the Pacific as well on the Asian mainland as essential to its and the region’s security.
It would be pointless to ignore the existence of these fears. In fact there is a great deal of sympathy in India itself with the view that regional economic co-operation, however desirable in itself, cannot help to meet the threat of subversion encouraged and assisted by Communist China. The implication is not that New Delhi should make the absurd attempt to guarantee the security of friendly nations but that it should not make a fetish of the concept of non-alignment and shun countries which depend on outside aid for their security. It has to show far greater imagination and flexibility than it has done in the past.
But the critics of the Government of India’s policy should be willing to recognise that New Delhi is not seeking exclusive or even dominant influence in the region and that it does not expect big powers like the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan to fold up just because it has declared its interest in South-East Asia. In sum New Delhi has no obligation to produce what may be called a fool-proof scheme for the security and development of the area. It is relevant to add that no such scheme is feasible.
India has followed a certain broad approach and naturally commends it to other countries in the region. Briefly, New Delhi has taken the view that while it is necessary to maintain military preparedness at a certain level it is even more vital for nationalist governments of newly liberated countries of Asia to tackle socio-economic problems and to meet the legitimate demands of ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities. Otherwise their nation-building efforts would suffer and they would be open to subversion.
It is hardly necessary to point out that South Viet Nam has vindicated the legitimacy of the Indian view that escalation by one side only invites escalation by the other and that even the mightiest military power cannot guarantee the security of a country if its Government fails to win popular support. But countries of South-East Asia will not move away from defence alliances, even after the experience of South Viet Nam, unless Peking comes to pursue a moderate line in propaganda as well as in fact. This is an issue of the greatest importance.
Much of the confusion regarding India’s role in South-East Asia is the result of the old theory that New Delhi is Peking’s principal, if not the only, rival for the leadership of this region. This theory is not stated in this crude form any longer but it continues to influence thinking. In point of fact India and China are only two out of several powers which are competing and will continue to compete for influence in the area.
The United States will not turn its back on Asia even if it disengages in South Viet Nam. It is likely to maintain and may even expand its bases and forces in Thailand. The Soviet Union is steadily widening its contact in the area. Moscow recently played host to Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister and has decided to establish diplomatic relations with Kuala Lumpur. It may soon agree to sell arms to Malaysia.
New Guise
Japan’s economic strength is so formidable that it is beginning to be assumed in certain circles that Tokyo is trying to revive the old co-prosperity sphere in a new guise. Even American officials are beginning to talk about it in private.
India is not only one of many powers seeking influence, but also the last to arrive on the scene assuming that Mrs. Gandhi’s recent trip is not just a flash in the pan and that New Delhi would take follow-up measures. It has far less to offer than the other powers. If therefore Tokyo and Moscow are not foolhardy enough to offer a so-called comprehensive policy, why should New Delhi attempt to do so? What is needed is hard-headed pragmatism and not a rigid philosophy.
Mrs. Gandhi could have visited fellow members of the Commonwealth and received the kind of welcome she did even if Britain had not decided to expedite the date of its military withdrawal and the United States had not been compelled to undertake an agonising reappraisal of Asia policy because of serious reverses in Viet Nam, the pressure on the dollar and the growing feeling in the country that it cannot finance an anti-poverty programme and the war in Viet Nam simultaneously. But in that event the visit would have been a routine goodwill affair and would have lacked any wider significance.
As a result of the two developments the situation in South-East Asia has ceased to be just fluid, it has become truly revolutionary and unpredictable. The British military withdrawal and the possible American disengagement in Viet Nam will transform the Asian scene in the same way as did India’s independence in 1947 and the triumph of communism in China in 1949. It is to Mrs. Gandhi’s credit that she has grasped this central fact and made an attempt to place India back into the regional picture.
Ignored
In all the discussion that is taking place on the future of South-East Asia the possibility of some kind of Sino-US rapprochement in the wake of an American withdrawal from South Viet Nam has generally been ignored. It is not suggested that this development is round the comer or that the mutual distrust that has governed the relations between the two countries is about to dissolve in one sudden gush of mutual goodwill. But the logic of events points in that direction.
Not many foreign policy specialists in the United States believe that China is hell-bent on expansion, that Peking can supplant Moscow as the headquarters of the communist movement or that the war in Viet Nam has any connection with the containment of China. Even the official spokesmen have tended to justify the involvement in Viet Nam not in terms of the old anti-Communist crusade of the ‘fifties but in terms of the desirability of building a world order in which the use of force is excluded as an instrument of changing the power balance. This is an after-thought. But even if it is taken at its face value the attempt to build a stable world system requires the co-operation of China. This is now widely accepted in America.
The United States is reconciled to the Chinese bomb and the great power role that it entitles Peking to play. Moreover, as the Soviet Union takes effective steps to become truly a super-power with worldwide interests and the military capacity to intervene in far off places, Washington will find itself disposed favourably towards Peking. The concept of great powers being entitled to spheres of influence – the US in Latin America and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe – is sufficiently ingrained in American thinking to assert itself in the case of China as well.
The consequences of even a mild shift in American policy in that direction cannot possibly be exaggerated. The Soviet Union is clearly concerned. It is no longer indulging in mere propaganda when it talks of the possibility of a Sino-American rapprochement and even cooperation.
Japan has not allowed its defence alliance with the United States to inhibit it from becoming China’s biggest trading partner. Its support for the proposed non-proliferation treaty also shows that it does not intend to compete with China in terms of military power. On its candid admission Tokyo will spare no effort to extend the area of co-operation with Peking. It is not possible to judge whether Japan is acting on its own initiative or in concert with the United States. But the latter possibility need not be excluded. That may be why a new note critical of Japan is discernible in the Soviet propaganda.
New Delhi cannot sit by idly as one dramatic development succeeds another in South-East Asia. The country’s resources are clearly limited, but it should at least be involved with the affairs of the region so that it does not find itself excluded completely.
The Times of India, 12 June 1968