In her address to the United Nations in her capacity as India’s Prime Minister and chairperson of the non-aligned movement, Mrs. Gandhi has raised a number of pertinent issues. The world is in dire straits. The second cold war between the two superpowers has become dangerously intense. The nuclear arms race between them has been resumed. It looks unlikely that they can agree to get off this collision course. The economic recovery in the industrialized West, especially the United States, may not last. In any case, much of the third world is heavily in debt and desperately short of resources. The rich nations can still help despite their own difficulties. But they are hardly in a mood to do so. This is especially true of the United States. The Reagan administration is opposed to multilateral concessional aid by the World Bank and the IMF for developing countries. Without a shred of evidence, it has convinced itself that countries such as India can resort to commercial borrowing. The international banking system itself is under strain. Then there are the “local” conflicts which have shown no signs of abating – the Arab-Israeli dispute, the Lebanon crisis, South Africa’s pressure on its African neighbours and its determination to block independence for Namibia. Mrs. Gandhi referred to all these and other pressing problems and made a passionate plea for reason and a spirit of accommodation in the name of humanity. But to what end?
The Prime Minister said even before she left for New York that she did not expect any dramatic result from her exertions there and she took care to make this point during her address to the UN General Assembly. But in all conscience we cannot say that her efforts will make any notable contribution at all to the solution of the problems she has listed in that speech. The cold war is not likely to ease at least during President Reagan’s present term. This is not to say that he is solely to blame for the escalation of superpower tensions. The Soviets cannot avoid their share of responsibility in that they have pushed their military build-up far beyond the requirements of the security of their own country and of their allies. But President Reagan has introduced in superpower relations a rhetoric which is not conducive to discussion and even limited agreements. Similarly, his and his aides’ antiquated ideas on the world economy have virtually killed the possibility of a meaningful dialogue between the north and the south. Again, the Soviets cannot escape their share of responsibility for this state of affairs. They pretend that the poverty of the south is not their concern because it is the result of colonial exploitation. This is so much hogwash. They have reduced their already small economic assistance to third world countries which they should not have. But be that as it may, the fact remains that the north-south dialogue is for all practical purposes dead and is not going to be revived in the near future. And so we can go down Mrs. Gandhi’s list of urgent issues. The Arab-Israeli dispute will go on; foreign forces will not withdraw either from Lebanon or Afghanistan or Kampuchea; South Africa will neither yield on Namibia nor cease pressure on neighbouring African states. It is a dismal picture and the chances are that it will become more dismal.
Mrs. Gandhi must have known all this when she planned her present initiative and began urging other world leaders to come to New York. She must have been equally aware of the unpleasant reality that the non-aligned movement did not possess much of a clout. Many of its members were too poor and too weak as states to count for much in our harsh times and the movement as a whole had failed to promote co-operation among fellow members. This reality of the ineffectiveness of the movement was pressed home when only a relatively small number of heads of state or government agreed to meet in New York. Why then did she persist in this effort? Perhaps having taken the lead, she could not retrace her steps without loss of face. Perhaps she felt that it was her duty to do her best however adverse the circumstances. Her critics would say that she is trying to cast herself in the role of a world leader in order to make political gains at home. Indeed, there is no reason why she should not seek either such a role or such an advantage. But if she in fact has made such a calculation, it does not look as if she has had much of a success.