Some visiting scholars from the US have been at pains to emphasise that South Asia occupies the lowest place in the list of priorities of their country whose main aim just now is to improve its relations with the Soviet Union, China, Japan and Western Europe. Not to leave their Indian interlocutors in any doubt, they insist that this is why Mr. Nixon is not interested in either opening a dialogue with Mrs. Gandhi or helping the countries of the sub-continent to sort out their problems.
This is certainly true to some extent. Despite India’s refusal to align itself with the United States in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties in the latter’s bid to contain China, Washington looked upon New Delhi as a partner albeit a troublesome one, in a common enterprise to prevent the expansion of communist influence in the region. But now that the US has established a measure of detente with Peking and given up, for all practical purpose, its policy of containing China, India has lost its old importance in US eyes and President Nixon can easily afford to indulge his personal antipathy towards it.
But this is only a part of the story. The very vigour with which Americans and their friends in this country are selling this line makes it somewhat suspect. After all, so many Americans cannot be spending so much of their time, energy and money just to inform people in the country about America’s new list of priorities which incidentally is not much of a secret.
Scrutiny
A closer scrutiny shows that the US Administration’s low posture in South Asia is not entirely the result of its short-sightedness or its preoccupation with more pressing problems elsewhere. Though these and other factors may have influenced US policy-makers, they have been guided primarily by considerations which relate more to the future than to the past. Three of these may be cited.
First, despite all its disclaimers, the Nixon Administration has a vested interest in the Sino-Soviet cold war. So long as the US does not withdraw from South-East Asia and the Far East and the USSR is unable to increase its influence to any appreciable extent in those areas, South Asia will continue to be the main battleground for Moscow and Peking by virtue of the friendly relations of one of them with India and of the other with Pakistan. China is also befriending Iran, Pakistan’s ally in CENTO, just as India is trying to improve its ties with Iraq, the Soviet Union’s ally in the Persian Gulf area.
Secondly, having assured itself that any expansion of Soviet influence in South Asia will be stoutly resisted by China, the US has nothing to lose by creating the impression that on its part, it is prepared to accept Moscow’s claim in respect of India in return for its willingness to trim its ambitions in West Asia. This is not to suggest that President Nixon and Mr. Brezhnev have entered into a secret deal on such lines. But since their relative interests in West Asia and South Asia are well known, it is not at all difficult for one to send the right kind of signal and for the other to decipher it correctly.
Finally, it seems the Nixon Administration has come to the conclusion that the most effective way to undermine Indo-Soviet friendship and co-operation is to push the two governments even closer to each other so that one comes to make demands which the other cannot fulfil. Since on its own testimony the US is also convinced that Mrs. Gandhi is too proud consciously to subserve Soviet interests and Moscow cannot possibly meet India’s economic needs, it may well have calculated that the nearer the two countries draw to each other the greater the chances of misunderstanding, estrangement and conflict between them.
Intention
The first two points do not need much elucidation. But it may be said that it is not an accident that the United States has not yet decided to deliver to Pakistan the military hardware it had agreed to supply under the so-called onetime exception in 1970. It has, for the time being at least, left it to China to rearm Pakistan. The intention clearly is to allow Peking’s influence to grow in Islamabad, much to Moscow’s chagrin.
Similarly apart from resuming economic aid to Pakistan, the US has not made any notable move to strengthen President Bhutto’s bargaining position vis-a-vis Mrs. Gandhi and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Instead, it has cheerfully let Mr. Chou En-lai assume this responsibility. It was, for instance, content to stand on the sidelines as China exercised its veto in the Security Council to block Bangladesh’s admission to the UN and demanded the release of all Pakistani prisoners of war in India’s custody.
As for the third point, it has not even been mentioned in this country. This can only be because we are so used to thinking of foreign policy problems in straight either / or and moral terms that this kind of Machiavellianism entirely escapes our attention. But to other governments for whom realpolitik is more than a word, such calculations come quite naturally.
American policy towards Egypt is a case in point. The United States last year not only ignored its threats as well as blandishments but also deliberately stepped up economic and military assistance to Israel in order to expose the Soviet Union’s inability to help Cairo get back the Sinai, thereby leaving President Sadat a choice between acceptance of the status quo and getting rid of Russian military personnel. No one can possibly suggest that the strategy has not paid off.
Moscow itself is now resorting to similar tactics. After having been extremely critical of Palestinian guerillas since 1967, it is now said to have started arming them directly to frustrate President Sadat’s efforts to secure some agreement with Israel under US auspices.
India is, of course, not in the kind of impossible position in which Egypt finds itself. Apart from Aksai Chin and the so-called Azad Kashmir which New Delhi does not contemplate recovering through the use of force, no part of its territory is under foreign occupation. It is also reasonably well placed to meet any threat Pakistan can pose in the foreseeable future. But its economic needs are enormous and are likely to increase as a result of the growing politicisation of the masses on the one hand and the steady drift towards a path of development which gravely inhibits accumulation of capital and investment. While the people, specially the lower middle class intelligentsia and organised workers, are making more and more demands on the system, its capacity to produce more goods is not likely to grow fast enough in view of poor management in industry, labour indiscipline and the feeling of uncertainty among the investors.
In theory it is possible for New Delhi to co-operate with the Soviet Union in foreign policy and security fields without making concessions to populist pressures. But in practice this kind of separation is not easy because the same elements, which are trying to block all avenues for a possible improvement of relations with China and the United States, are spearheading the populist movement and pressing for all sorts of curbs on production and investment in the name of radicalism. The consequences in terms of the strain of Indo-Soviet friendship are not impossible to forecast.
Vague
There are some vague indications in the form of some articles in learned Soviet magazines to suggest that the Kremlin is beginning to sense the dangers of populism in India. But it is trapped by its public support to the present path of development. From time to time it therefore makes formulations which contradict each other, leaving the faithful no better guidelines than old slogans.
In the field of foreign policy the Soviet Union and its supporters do not seem to have woken up to the risks of continuing to pursue Mr. Brezhnev’s concept of an Asian collective security system. It was devised in an altogether different international situation in 1969 when, amidst an unprecedented domestic turmoil over Viet Nam, President Nixon had proclaimed his country’s desire to reduce its commitments in Asia and when Peking had not responded to his tentative gestures. In the new context the proposed system and its corollaries make little sense.
The Times of India 27 September 1972