It is impossible to agree with Mr. Kissinger that India should ignore President Nixon’s explanation of his stand in the crisis in the sub-continent last year and concentrate on future relations with the United States. It cannot do so even if it is so inclined. The relevant section in the foreign policy report to Congress sums up the Nixon-Kissinger approach to the world and the region and its importance cannot be negated by the admission that it is largely intended for domestic consumption.
The government and people of India cannot also forget that the United States sent a powerful task force of the Seventh Fleet headed by the world’s largest nuclear aircraft-carrier, the ‘Enterprise,’ into the Bay of Bengal during the hostilities with Pakistan.
Neither President Nixon nor Mr. Kissinger has so far said anything publicly about this shocking episode. But they have inspired two explanations. They have said that during the week beginning December 6, 1971, they received “convincing evidence” to show that India was seriously contemplating the occupation of portions of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the destruction of the Pakistani armed forces in the west and they have leaked it out that around the same time they became aware of the movement of some units of the Soviet Pacific Fleet into the Indian Ocean.
Explanations
Both these explanations are utterly false. But supposing for the sake of argument that some of the so-called hawks in New Delhi wanted to seize parts of the occupied Kashmir and inflict a defeat on Pakistan in the west as well, a number of questions arise. Was India in a position to do so and was it prepared to pay the price in terms of men and material? Would the Soviet Union have endorsed these moves? Could New Delhi ignore Moscow’s wishes in the matter? Would the Indian action have hurt America’s vital interests so badly as to justify the despatch of a naval task force? How would Islamabad have become an Indian satellite – Mr. Kissinger said so explicitly at a meeting of the Special Action Group of the National Security Council on December 8 – if New Delhi had delivered a blow at the Pakistani armed forces in the west? After all, no one can suggest that Egypt became Israel’s vassal after the military debacle in 1967.
President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger cannot have it both ways. They cannot argue that India was strong enough to destroy Pakistan’s armed forces and at the same time suggest that it needed the intervention of the Soviet fleet to clinch the issue. It would have been a different matter if they were suggesting that Moscow was egging New Delhi on in order to dismember West Pakistan. But they are doing nothing of the kind. In fact they have acknowledged that the Kremlin was helpful in persuading New Delhi to end the hostilities once Bangladesh had been liberated.
Mr. Nixon should have been particularly careful before he decided to engage in so blatant an exercise in gunboat diplomacy as the despatch of the task force to the Bay of Bengal. He was Vice-President when the late Mr. Eisenhower twice threatened the use of nuclear weapons against China – first during the Korean war and then at the time of Dien Bien Phu in Viet Nam – and landed marines in Lebanon in 1958 and should have known the disastrous consequences.
That is, however, his business. As far as New Delhi is concerned it cannot but keep the recent events fully in view when it undertakes a review of its foreign and defence policies. But that is not all because in spite of his proclaimed desire for a serious dialogue with India, President Nixon does not seem to be particularly anxious to open a new chapter in America’s relations with this country.
On the face of it, the conditions he has laid down are not difficult to meet. But a closer scrutiny will show that this is not the case. For, when he says that this country should maintain a “balanced relationship with all major powers,” preserve its policy of non-alignment and not try to push its neighbours, he is raising a host of issues, specially in relation to India’s ties with the Soviet Union and its place in the region.
Zone Of Peace
President Nixon is not solely to blame if he assumes that India can claim to be non-aligned only if it pursues a policy of equi-distance from the two super-powers and that it can establish its credentials as a peaceful nation only if it does not project its power and influence beyond its borders. Many other governments have interpreted the concept of non-alignment in this manner for well over a decade and most Indians themselves have accepted this view of their place in the world. But Mr. Nixon will have to revise his ideas if he is genuinely interested in a serious and fruitful dialogue with India now or in the near future.
President Nixon has recalled Mr. Nehru’s talk of “a generation of peace.” He should also be willing to remember that the late Prime Minister was not thinking in negative and defensive terms when he formulated the concept of non-alignment. A “zone of peace” was to be an integral part of it and though, for understandable and obvious reasons, he did not say so, he assumed that by virtue of its anti-colonial record, its ancient civilization, its size and its potentialities, India would have a special place in such a zone.
Mr. Nehru’s “zone of peace” was finally to include the whole of Asia and Africa because he believed passionately in the right of all peoples in these two old and long abused continents to become masters of their own destinies. Even so, it was only natural that the subcontinent should have dominated his thoughts and emotions. He was keen that if India and Pakistan could not annul the partition by agreeing to form a confederation, they would at least be able to minimise its disastrous consequences by resolving their differences without external interference.
Mr. Dulles willed it otherwise. Since all the battalions were ranged on his side, his view prevailed. Mr. Nehru did not wish to invoke Soviet power such as it then was because he was appalled at the very thought of converting the subcontinent into an arena of superpower competition. Inevitably, non-alignment came to acquire a defensive and apologetic look.
But neither Mr. Nehru nor India could accept this situation first brought about by US intervention in the affairs of the sub-continent and then aggravated by Chinese encouragement to the jingoists and militarists in Pakistan. That was why America’s aid in subsequent years could not produce genuine friendship between the two countries. India was grateful but it could not ignore the fact that Washington continued to follow the policy of arming Pakistan and thereby of preventing India from reclaiming its legitimate place in the region.
President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger should know that India would not accept the restoration of the old status quo in a new guise, however much they may swear by the concept of Pakistan’s sovereignty and talk of Soviet expansionism. It has justified its claim to primacy in the region and it will insist on a recognition of this fact. It welcomes the US effort to befriend China but it wants to be assured that this is not a new device to deny India its place in the sun.
Unlike West Germany, India does not talk of three states and one people in the sub-continent. The speed with which it has pulled out its forces from Bangladesh should convince even its worst detractors that it does not wish to abridge the sovereignty of its neighbours in any way. But sovereignty does not mean that a group of self-seekers in Islamabad have the right to play havoc with the liberties of their own people and the peace and stability of the sub-continent with external assistance.
In plain words, an Indo-US dialogue can be meaningful only if President Nixon recognises this country’s primacy in South Asia and reshapes US policy accordingly. New Delhi will even then maintain the friendliest possible relations with Moscow not only because the latter has stood by it in the gravest crisis since independence but also because the two need to cooperate with each other in future in order to preserve a power balance which can ensure their security. But it will not find it necessary to lean in one direction if the United States and preferably China, too, stop playing the old game.
Bhutto’s Role
Ideally, Mr. Bhutto and those who stand behind him should have taken the lead in fashioning a new and constructive role for their country. But he has chosen the path of hate and conflict. He is as explicit in his interview to Mr. Sulzberger of The New York Times as anyone could have expected.
Mr Bhutto has adopted an uncompromisingly anti-Soviet posture despite his plan to visit Moscow. He has not only endorsed the Chinese line that Russia egged India on at the time of the conflict with Pakistan, but has gone further than them because he has also accused it of stirring up trouble in the NWFP and Baluchistan. It is obvious that he would not have done so unless he was convinced that the United States and China would succeed in evolving a joint strategy to deflate India and the Soviet Union and that they would agree in their own interests to prop up Pakistan militarily and otherwise. He has indeed said so in so many words. It is in this context that he has shown a strong interest in resurrecting the mutual security pact with the United States.
Mr. Bhutto is thus back at his old game. There can also be little doubt that the Chinese will encourage him despite their lack of interest in a formal defence pact with Pakistan. The question now is whether President Nixon approves of Mr Bhutto’s formulation. If he does, whatever the form, the prospects of improved Indo-US relations will be very dim indeed and the kind of polarisation which he says he dreads will become extremely difficult to avoid.
The Times of India 16 February 1972