Mr. Swaran Singh’s statement in the Rajya Sabha last Thursday and the positive response to it by Mr. William Rogers hold out the promise of improvement in Indo-US relations in the near future. Though this hopeful development cannot yet be said to dispose of the depressing assumptions that have informed much of the discussion on this subject in the last one year or so, it raises doubts about their validity and makes it necessary to take a fresh look at them.
To begin with, it may perhaps be useful to re-examine the assessment put forward by several American and Indian scholars that the Nixon administration has relegated this country to a very low place in America’s list of priorities in view of the improvement in its relations with the Soviet Union and China, specially the latter, and the setback to Russia’s influence in Egypt.
Assumption
This view obviously rests on the assumption that the Sino-Soviet conflict has taken the place of the Russo-American competition for primacy as, to use the communist jargon, the principal contradiction in the world, that the United States is no longer seriously interested in limiting Moscow’s and Peking’s influence because it believes that the two powers will cancel each other out and that it has nothing to lose if the Indian subcontinent becomes one of the focal points of Sino-Soviet rivalry.
Clearly all these assumptions are open to question. In military terms the world has not ceased to be bipolar. It will be decades before China can, if ever, match American and Soviet power and Western Europe acquire the necessary cohesion to be able to act as one entity in the political and military fields. Similarly the Nixon Administration has neither jettisoned the old American objective of primacy in the world nor become oblivious to the compulsions of the ideological competition with the Soviet Union and China. It has only refashioned its strategy and tactics in view of its own diminished resources, the growing economic competition from its Japanese and West European allies, its failure to win the war in Viet Nam, the consequent disenchantment at home, the need to reduce external commitments and the Sino-Soviet split. In other words, it will be reckless for anyone to suggest that the Russo-American competition has ceased to be the dominant fact of life in our era and that the United States has lost interest in limiting the Soviet and Chinese influence in the world.
The implication is that the considerations which persuaded the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations to extend considerable economic assistance to this country despite its refusal to deviate from its policy of non-alignment have not become irrelevant for the present US government just because it has woken up to the possibility of taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet dispute and Russia’s economic difficulties.
It has become a commonplace by now that the United States is no longer haunted by the threat of a direct confrontation with either the Soviet Union or China and that it has modified its old policy of establishing a cordon sanitaire around the latter. But since India did not figure in America’s military calculations even in the ‘fifties and the ‘sixties, there can be no question of its importance being undermined in the US scheme of things on account of the change in its approach to Moscow and Peking.
On the contrary, India’s importance for the United States will increase rather than decrease as the latter’s dependence on oil from countries around the Persian Gulf grows. It is estimated that Washington will be importing almost one-third of its oil requirements from West Asia by the end of the present decade unless, of course, the exporting countries raise the prices so high as to make this form of energy wholly uneconomical.
Broadly speaking, the Nixon administration has two long-term options in this regard. It can either fall back on a suitably modified version of Sir Olaf Caroe’s old concept and arm not only Iran but also Pakistan or endorse India’s proposals for an area of peace in the region and establish reasonable relations with this country.
Feverish
Iran’s feverish purchases of sophisticated equipment in America and Britain, its interest in close co-operation with Pakistan and the Shah’s rather impetuous statements regarding the so-called threat to his country from India’s treaty with the Soviet Union lend some credence to the fear that the United States may be tending to opt for the first alternative. But in the context of a shrunken Pakistan, the turmoil in the Persian Gulf and uncertainty regarding the future of monarchical regimes, it will indeed be surprising if President Nixon does so, specially when the much cheaper and less risky alternative of relative stability in the region based on friendly Indo-US relations is available to him. A local cold war backed by the two superpowers just cannot serve American interests which will in future be predominantly economic and not strategic.
It is often argued that President Nixon continues to be so upset over India’s treaty with the Soviet Union and involvement in Bangladesh’s struggle for independence that he would back a Teheran-Islamabad axis against it. But two points deserve to be noted. First, President Nixon has already recognised Bangladesh and given substantial aid to it and thereby helped stabilise the pro-India Mujib government. He may have been averse to the break-up of Pakistan but he has been remarkably quick to reconcile himself to it. Secondly, there is not the slightest evidence to suggest that he does not share Mr. Kissinger’s appreciation of Mrs. Gandhi. At the height of the Indo-Pakistan war and American annoyance with India last December he had the foresight to say that she is too tough-minded and nationalistic to subordinate India’s interests to those of the Soviet Union.
It is also about time that we re-examine dispassionately the widespread view that Washington has all along sought to build Pakistan into a counter-weight against India. Facts do not warrant the implied suggestion of hostility on the part of the United States towards this country. There were, of course, sharp differences between the two governments from time to time. But on the whole, all American administrations in the post-war period have recognised a stake in India’s viability and progress and acted accordingly, though it is hardly necessary to add the qualification that they have tried to keep Pakistan happy at the same time. This is specially so after the death of Mr. John Foster Dulles in 1958 and President Eisenhower’s visit to India in 1959. The files of leading Pakistani papers and President Bhutto’s well-known book Myth of Independence can provide voluminous evidence of that country’s disenchantment with the United States on the ground that it has been solicitous of non-aligned India’s susceptibilities and interests.
On its part, India also needs friendly relations with the United States not only because it has still a long way to go before it reaches its goal of complete self-reliance but also because its leverage in international relations depends to quite an extent on these. It should, for instance, be self evident that if New Delhi is not in a position to be able to lean towards Washington in times of need, Moscow will feel less inhibited in responding to Islamabad’s overtures. After all, the men who now rule the Soviet Union had agreed to supply military hardware to Pakistan in disregard of this country’s protests in 1968. They can once again trot out the plea that it is as much in India’s interest as in Russia’s to reduce Islamabad’s dependence on Peking.
Easier
It should be equally obvious that it will be easier for India to reassure China regarding its long-term intentions if it has good relations with the United States because Peking cannot then seriously believe that New Delhi is acting in collusion with Moscow. Moreover, once India has re-established friendly relations with America, China cannot hope to isolate it. It may appear ironical but it is not open to serious doubt that Peking is more likely to respond to New Delhi’s overtures when it is on good terms with both superpowers.
Similarly, it will be more difficult for the Nixon administration to approve and for the Shah of Iran to transfer military hardware of US origin to Pakistan if India does not lean too heavily towards Moscow and maintains a steady relationship with Washington. President Bhutto, too, will then feel obliged to stop blowing hot and cold in the same breath and settle down to a policy of peace in the sub-continent.
The Times of India 6 December 1972