In a survey of the international scene at the governors’ conference last week-end, Mr Dinesh Singh is reported to have said that in view of the growing detente between the two super-powers and their parallel policies towards the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent, the policy of non-alignment has to “move to the next stage”.
This is a rather cryptic statement. But if it implies that the concept of non-alignment as interpreted all these years cannot by itself provide the framework for a purposeful foreign policy in the vastly changed and rapidly changing circumstances, he has done a singular service. Unthinking orthodoxy can be highly dangerous in times like these.
Today when neither the United States nor the Soviet Union is looking for allies or bases, it is ridiculous to pit non-alignment against alignment. The two super-powers are not particularly worried that some of their allies like France, Iran and Thailand in one case and Rumania in the other are moving towards non-alignment in pursuance of their national interests.
India has not been called upon to make a choice between alignment and non-alignment as such since the end of ’fifties, that is, after the death of Mr John Foster Dulles, when the United States reappraised its policy and came to the conclusion that the late Secretary of State’s pactomania was quite misplaced. The position did not change in any basic sense after the Chinese aggression in 1962. The then US Ambassador, Mr John Galbraith, in fact made it amply clear that his country was not interested in an alliance with India.
Infructuous
In fact, the distinction that was drawn between non-alignment and a Swiss-type neutrality in the early ‘fifties has become infructuous and even neutrality no longer arouses indignation in the West or much approbation in the Soviet bloc.
Broadly speaking, the policy of non-alignment was distinguished from the European concept of neutrality by Mr Nehru’s initial enthusiasm for the anti-imperialist struggles of the colonial countries, Afro-Asian solidarity and the cause of peace. Much of this fervour was gone by the end of the ’fifties.
The late Prime Minister was consistently lukewarm to the idea of holding a second Bandung-type Afro-Asian summit because his experience of the first was unhappy, He did not dismiss the concept of Afro-Asian solidarity as a myth in public, but he did recognise that many of the conflicts among the newly independent countries were quite serious, often fundamental, and that these could not be wished away in spite of the memories of the common anti-imperialist struggle and the desire to promote economic co-operation.
In fact he said again and again that the anti-colonial struggle had by and large been won by the end of the ’fifties, that the imperial powers were rapidly withdrawing from Asia and Africa and that it was quixotic to fight non-existent enemies. His clash with Mr Nkrumah and Mr Sukarno at the non-aligned summit in Belgrade in 1961 clinched this point.
Apparently Mr Nehru still believed at the time that countries like India had a contribution to make to the cause of peace by strengthening the United Nations, by bringing moral pressure on the super-powers to end the arms race and by serving as honest brokers between them. That is why he sent an army brigade to Congo and undertook a mission to Moscow on behalf of the non-aligned nations to persuade the Soviet government to stop its multi-megaton nuclear explosions.
Ill-Will
But by the time of his death he had had enough opportunity to review his position on these issues as well. The contribution to the UN peace-keeping mission in Congo attracted the charge of imperial ambitions and the ill-will of a number of African countries, particularly the non-aligned ones, without any compensating advantage. After the Russo-US confrontation over Cuba in 1962 it was clear that the two super-powers were quickly mastering the techniques of crisis management and that the smaller powers including their allies, could exert only marginal influence on their policies.
In spite of all this, interested parties have deliberately distorted the policy of non-alignment to make it serve the cause of their own partisan struggle against the West and they have met with considerable success. India may have serious differences with the US on its Viet Nam policy, but it has no grievance against the West as such. In fact it has every reason to feel grateful to the western countries for the sizeable economic assistance they have provided all these years. This applies particularly to the United States which has given more than 50 per cent of the total aid India has received from all sources, helped this country to insure against widespread famines and the consequent threat to the entire socio-economic-political fabric in 1966 and 1967, and has in no small measure contributed to the progress of the green revolution.
In the past, an anti-US-bias could be justified on three counts. Washington supplied arms to Pakistan and sided with the latter on the Kashmir issue. In larger terms, it was acting as if it was the successor to all the West European empires in Asia and it was seeking to establish its hegemony in the region.
All these factors have become inoperative one by one over the years. The US virtually repudiated its mutual security pact with Pakistan in 1965-66 and stopped the free supply of arms. It has since repeatedly proclaimed its neutrality on the Kashmir question. Finally, it has given up the ambition of establishing its military presence on the south-east Asian mainland and of intervening in local troubles elsewhere.
India has good reason to maintain cordial relations with the Soviet Union because Moscow is its principal source of arms supplies and is a valuable trading partner. But Indian policy-makers cannot be insensitive to the fact that Russia now sells arms to Pakistan as well, that it has adopted a neutral stance on Kashmir and that it has entered an expansionist phase in its policy. New Delhi will have to be careful lest it allows itself to be used to promote Russia’s expansionist aims. A case in point is Mr Brezhnev’s call for “collective security” in’ Asia. India need not have been enthusiastic about endorsing the proposal. Similarly, there was no justification for Mr Dinesh Singh’s unqualified approval of the Soviet stand in that country’s border disputes with China earlier this year.
It appears from Mr Dinesh Singh’s address that New Delhi has come to the conclusion that it should place reliance primarily on developing bilateral relations with other countries. This is a sober and realistic view. The earlier emphasis on a comprehensive policy framework and regional co-operation has not been to be particularly rewarding. The first created the tendency to ignore governments which, however friendly, did not endorse New Delhi’s over-all view of the international scene. Iran and Thailand provide suitable illustrations. While an effort has been made belatedly to develop fruitful relations with Teheran, India has yet to show a sympathetic understanding of Bangkok’s problems. As for regional co-operation, it has so far turned out to be a mirage for India.
Fruitless
Mr Dinesh Singh is perhaps the first Indian Minister for External Affairs to have invoked the concept of middle powers. He has not yet defined it. But if he is thinking in terms of a concert of middle powers, he should examine the pros and cons carefully. Middle powers by definition tend to think in regional as opposed to global terms. Their interests are too diverse to permit a meaningful coordination of policies. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty provided one occasion when Japan and West Germany tried to evolve a common stand. India kept out of even this limited effort. The whole exercise has proved fruitless. West Germany, once loud in its criticism of the treaty, has signed it and Japan is expected to follow suit in course of time.
Japan and West Germany are economic giants. India cannot be bracketed with them. Japan is already the third greatest economic power in the world. By 1975 its gross national product is expected to be more than four times that of 1960 at constant prices. Its defence forces are still numerically small – 285,000 men in all – but they deploy a fire-power greater than that of the imperial army at its wartime peak. Its defence expenditure – $ 1,340,000,000 in the current financial year – is growing at the rate of 14-15 per cent a year and will catch up with the Chinese total in a decade. These few figures should make it obvious that Japan will be a major factor in the Pacific and south-east Asia in the ’seventies.
West Germany also occupies a key place in Europe though this point may not be obvious in the context of Russia’s military power, its occupation of Czechoslovakia and its determination to maintain its hegemony in Eastern and Central Europe. But harassed by the Chinese threat in Central Asia, Moscow has begun to woo Bonn. This small beginning can have profound consequences in Eastern and Central Europe.
India, on the other hand, faces grave economic problems. It has entered a phase in which its ruling elite is likely to be wholly preoccupied with domestic problems. The principal concern of its foreign policy planners in this period cannot be so much influence abroad as the preservation of the country’s autonomy so that it can sort out its internal difficulties free from external interference. This calls for not only a new style in diplomacy, but dogged determination.
The Times of India, 17 December 1969