The Janata government deserves to be warmly congratulated on the way it has reacted to the Chinese attack on Vietnam. It has demonstrated as conclusively as it possibly could that it is not guided either by expediency or prejudice in such vital matters. Since it has been trying to improve its relations with China, it could easily have taken the stand that the national interest required it to stay quiet on the Sino-Vietnamese conflict. But it has done nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the minister for external affairs, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has gone so far as to describe the Chinese action as a clear case of aggression. He may have used this sharp expression under pressure from MPs. But he could have avoided it if he was determined not to give offence to Peking. Similarly, the Janata leaders, especially the two most concerned with the formulation and implementation of foreign policy, that is Mr. Morarji Desai and Mr. Vajpayee, have not allowed their old prejudice against the Soviet Union and in favour of the West to influence their judgement to the disadvantage of the Kremlin’s Vietnamese allies. This point is notable because the West is well disposed towards China, favours friendly relations between Peking and New Delhi and its three leading members, that is, the United States, France and Britain, have for all practical purposes endorsed the Chinese stand in its current armed conflict with Vietnam. They have sought to establish a parity between the Vietnamese intervention in Kampuchea (Cambodia) and the Chinese attack on Vietnam in order to justify the latter. The Janata government, too, could have fallen in line if it was so inclined because the Western argument has a superficial plausibility.
Since neither the Prime Minister nor the minister for external affairs has regarded it necessary to explain why India does not accept the proposition that Vietnam’s armed intervention in Kampuchea can justify the Chinese attack on Vietnam, there is bound to be some confusion in this regard. But basically the stand is wholly consistent with the propositions this country has advanced in the past. India has, for instance, always drawn a sharp distinction between local and regional powers and the great powers and held that the latter must not intervene in conflicts among the former. It does not follow that it has favoured and would favour in the future armed hostilities among the smaller powers but it does follow that it has been and continues to be irrevocably opposed to the intervention of the great powers in those conflicts. Since, by India’s definition, China is a great power, though not a super-power, it must keep out of regional clashes as between Vietnam and Cambodia or between Cambodia and Thailand. India has also favoured regional power balances from which external powers and the great powers are to be excluded. By that yardstick, New Delhi cannot view with disfavour Hanoi’s attempt to establish something like a confederation in Indochina and exclude, as far as possible, the influence of the external powers, including China, from it. And it cannot favour China’s present desperate bid to prevent the establishment and consolidation of a regional arrangement in which Vietnam is the dominant partner.
The Times of India, 24 February 1979