AMERICANS have expected a change in India’s foreign policy approach and therefore an improvement in Indo-US relations every time there has been a change of Prime Minister in this country. They entertained such hopes when Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri succeeded Mr. Nehru in 1964, when Mrs. Gandhi succeeded Mr. Shastri in 1966 and when Mr. Morarji Desai displaced Mrs. Gandhi in 1977.
Mr. Shastri, of course, did not live long enough to prove or disprove the validity of the American expectation. And in between the Pakistanis sprang two surprises on him, the first in the Rann of Kutch and then in Jammu and Kashmir, obliging him to order Indian troops across the international border into Punjab. He had begun well from the US point of view by asking for an Anglo-US-Soviet nuclear umbrella against communist China which had acquired nuclear weapons in 1964 and by indicating that agriculture would have priority over industry during his reign.
Mrs. Gandhi too looked promising when she took over in 1966 and, under pressure from the United States exerted through the World Bank, agreed to a whopping 56 per cent devaluation of the India rupee. This decision could not have been more ill-timed, coming as it did amidst a terrible drought and widespread shortages which guaranteed that India could not take advantage of devaluation to step up its exports. While mercifully for her, this unfortunate decision did not destroy her politically, it alerted her to the danger of heeding that kind of advice and pressure. So she turned left, to America’s great disappointment.
As if this and the subsequent power struggle in the Congress party were not enough to frustrate American expectations, President Yahya Khan unleashed a reign of terror in what was then East Pakistan, leading to the flight of millions of refugees into India and thereby obliging Mrs. Gandhi to support the East Bengali people’s demand for a sovereign state of their own. And as it happened, President Nixon was busy just then trying to open a dialogue with China through President Yahya Khan and therefore found himself under an obligation to be seen to be siding with Pakistan.
Old Play, New Actors
Mr. Desai began his tenure with the announcement that he would follow a policy of genuine non-alignment, implying thereby that his predecessor had not done so. But he was at once too weak and too burdened with his own self-righteousness to be able to clinch some worthwhile deal with the United States in return for his pledge not to go in for nuclear weapons. As his ill-luck would have it, the occupant of the White House too was a self-righteous moralist with no feel for power and all that goes with it. By the time Mr. Desai’s government collapsed in the summer of 1979, it had negotiated a wide-ranging arms deal with the Soviet Union.
So in a sense we are witnessing the re-enactment of an old play. Only the actors are new. But to recall history is not to clinch the issue. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi and his advisers will have to work out an overall strategy of dealing with the United States if they are not to flounder.
A worthwhile Indian response to the US overtures must inevitably include a detailed assessment of the country’s strategic environment now and in the foreseeable future, of the correlation of forces in our region, of the challenges we face and are likely to face in coming years both at home and abroad, and their implications for the country foreign policy, especially in respect of the United States and the Soviet Union. Such an analysis must raise highly contentious issues which might form the subjects of subsequent articles.
Meanwhile it seems to me that we must get rid of some of the cobwebs which have clouded our thinking for decades if we are to understand the long-term US purposes in south Asia and present moves. To begin with, one persistent but erroneous impression needs to be shed once and for all. This impression is that early in the fifties the United States bought completely the British theory as expounded by Sir Olaf Caroe that Pakistan and not India was central to Western interests since it bordered Afghanistan and Iran and opened on the Gulf which contained the “wells of power” (oil), that Washington has stuck to this proposition ever since, and that as a result it has not had anything like a south Asia policy.
This assessment, first put out by Mr. Selig Harrison in a series of articles, should have been questioned then itself. For if the Americans had in fact bought the British theory, President Eisenhower would not have offered “proportionate” military assistance to India in 1954 when his administration concluded a mutual security pact with Pakistan. Surprising though it might appear, this simple proposition has not occurred to most India commentators, including this one, all these years.
Strong Evidence
This is not to suggest that the United States did not subscribe to the British argument on the geostrategic importance of Pakistan, but that it did not on that count either write off India, or abandon the hope of reconciling India and Pakistan so that it could have amicable relations with both and possibly bring both into its strategic plans. The evidence to this effect has been overwhelming. Only we have not been willing to examine it.
Much of this evidence can be said to be an offshoot of America’s hostility to communist China. President Eisenhower’s offer of military assistance in 1954, his invitation to Mr. Nehru to visit the United States in 1956, his own trip to India in 1959, President Kennedy’s effort to mobilize economic assistance for this country, his administration’s acknowledgement of India’s pre-eminence in south Asia, the Anglo-US military supplies in the wake of the Chinese aggression in 1962, President Johnson’s decision to end military supplies to both India and Pakistan at the time of the Indo-Pakistan war in 1965, America’s subsequent reluctance to restore security ties with Pakistan – all these we can perhaps shove under the umbrella of US hostility towards China.
But some of the evidence cannot be so shoved. The US did not resume military ties with Pakistan up to the time of Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. Surely this cannot be explained in terms of US hostility towards China, especially after 1971 when the process of Sino-US rapprochement had begun. Nor can the US administrations’ effort to promote Indo-Iranian economic cooperation in 1973 which would have either reduced Pakistan to the status of a corridor between the two countries (India and Iran) or made it marginal in the affairs of the region.
My purpose is neither to provide a justification for various US moves and actions in south Asia nor to question the validity from the viewpoint of the nation’s interests of Mr. Nehru’s decision first to resist the US search for influence in Asia and then to reject President Eisenhower’s offer of military aid. The intention is to point out that the United States has had a south Asia policy; that supply of weapons to India, if acceptable to New Delhi, has been part of it; that while Pakistan has had an important place in its scheme, it has not been of a kind which would give Islamabad a veto on US policy towards India; that the US policy as it evolved in the fifties was as much the result of its assessment of its interests as of Mr. Nehru’s rejection first of President Truman’s and then of Mr. Eisenhower’s offers.
Resisting Pressure
It is necessary to enter a caveat here based on our past experience. When in the wake of the Chinese aggression in 1962 India decided to expand its defence forces and sought US assistance in that regard, Washington refused to accede fully to the request. It had its own assessment of India’s requirements and wanted New Delhi to limit its defence capability to that assessment. It follows that should India ever place itself in a position where it is dependent on US arms supplies, Washington would again seek to limit its defence capability to a level the US regards essential for India’s requirements which could be a level acceptable to Pakistan and possibly China as well.
This is, of course, only a theoretical problem. There is no question of either India wanting to replace the Soviet Union as the principal source of its military supplies, or of the Americans being willing to step into Russia’s place. They are feeling their way. But for all we know, they might already have sounded President Zia-ul-Haq for his reaction.
India has been trying to diversify its sources of military supplies on two counts. It has not wanted to place all its eggs in one basket and it has needed weapons which the Soviets have either not possessed or not wanted to part with. It has, for instance bought Jaguars, Sea Kings and Harriers from Britain, Mirage-2000 and Alouettes from France and submarines from West Germany. So it would be in order for it to purchase some of its requirements from the United States provided the prices and terms are acceptable.
There is no good reason why such a development should cause undue concern either in the Kremlin or among its friends in India. In any case, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi must resist if there is pressure on this count. He cannot afford to compromise his freedom of action in such matters.
But let us face it, the United States, unlike France and Britain, is not an ordinary arms dealer anxious to increase its size of the world market. It is pursuing a long-term strategy. We must know what this strategy is in order to be able to ensure that we do not compromise the very freedom which we are seeking to expand by increasing our options for purchase of our defence requirements. This would form the subject of my article next week.
The Times of India, 10 April 1985