In discussions of Indo-US relations, one point generally tends to get ignored, in our case because we are not sufficiently sensitive to consideration of power and in theirs because the shrewder among them do not wish to spell out such considerations. The point is that there were three potential successors to the departing British in South Asia – not only India and Pakistan but also the United States.
Implicit in this is another point which is that none of the three could fully inherit the British mantle. Pakistan’s case is obvious and need not be discussed at any length. It was a breakaway state which had inherited less than one-fourth of the subcontinent and its two wings were separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory. As it happened, most of undivided India’s industries, including defence establishments, were located in what remained India.
India was obviously much better placed to step into Britain’s place in the region despite the handicap resulting from partition and the communal holocaust that preceded, accompanied and followed independence. But it could not have excluded the United States which had emerged as a new formidable imperial power and was determined to move into a position of influence, if not of dominance, in all former West European colonies in Asia.
It is futile for our purpose to debate whether or not the US policy would have taken the expansionist turn it did soon after World War II if Stalin had not behaved the way he did in Eastern Europe. We are not concerned whether America was driven towards a search for world-wide hegemony by its capitalist character or by its fear of the Soviet Union or both. We are only interested in the fact that it was so driven.
Thus in fundamental terms divorced from other considerations such as the occupation of Tibet by Communist China, India had two choices – either to assert its independence with the claim to the British mantle implicit in it, or to come to terms with the United States and hope that Washington would be content with a partnership and not seek hegemony over South Asia.
Again it is not material for us to discuss the ideological considerations which are widely believed to have influenced Mr. Nehru in his decision to opt for independence of which neutrality in the cold war was a euphemism. The pertinent question for us is whether as a genuine nationalist, he could have made another decision even if he had not been influenced in the slightest degree by Fabian socialism and some vague Marxist ideas and had not been impressed by the supposed success of the Soviet experiment. The answer surely must be in the negative.
Strangest Irony
Two points are ignored by Mr. Nehru’s critics. First, that India’s freedom struggle flowed out of reform movements which aimed at once at restoration of the country’s ancient heritage and its renovation to bring it in accord with a modem society’s requirements, and that, therefore, on independence we required above all a measure of disengagement from world conflicts so that we could concentrate on this half-finished task of self-revival and self-renewal. Secondly, that given our preoccupation with our own selves, we could not but opt for a policy of neutrality.
An Indo-U.S. clash could have been avoided if China had not gone communist and if the decline in British power had not been so precipitous. Both conditions had to be fulfilled simultaneously. In the absence of the first development, the U.S. might have looked to China and not to India as an ally in the fight against the Soviet Union. And in the absence of the second, Britain could have successfully pressed its claim to preeminent influence in its former colonies and indeed to the management on behalf of the U.S.-led Western alliance of the region from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. But the communists seized power in China and the British had to call in the Americans in Greece, Turkey and Iran soon after the war.
India’s preoccupations and compulsion apart, however, the strangest irony of it all was that even the mighty America could not have moved into Britain’s place in South Asia. If India had not resisted, Pakistan would have. It would be useful to recall that when the Americans were wooing Mr. Nehru in 1949, Mr. Liaquat Ali announced his decision to visit Moscow.
The Indian decision to opt for neutrality (independence) was not dependent on the availability of the Soviet Union as a counter-weight to U.S. power. Indeed, up to 1952 Stalin was positively ill-disposed and it was not until 1964, that is after two years of frustrating negotiations with the United States in the wake of the Chinese aggression in 1962, that India turned to the Soviet Union for military supplies. On the contrary, Indo-Soviet friendship as it began to develop in 1955 with Moscow’s offer to build a steel plant in our country was contingent on the Soviet incapacity to dominate the region around us.
Decline And Retreat
It is difficult to say whether Mr. Nehru saw the matter in this light or whether he allowed his commitment to socialism and predisposition in favour of the Soviet Union to influence his iudgment. But if India had to retain its independence, it could have not responded to U.S. overtures because America was truly a superpower capable of and interested in exercising influence around the globe and it could have turned towards the Soviet Union precisely because it was incapable of exercising that kind of power.
The situation has changed in one and a half ways. The one full change is that the United States has ceased to be the kind of power it was in the fifties. President Reagans’ rhetoric and military buildup cannot cover up the reality of the decline in the U.S. economic power in relation to others and the accompanying retreat from the ambition and plans to build an economic order under its auspices. The decline and the retreat are inter-related, though it is absurd for the Americans to argue, as the Republicans do, that they cannot make their proper contribution to the World Bank’s soft-lending agency, the IDA.
America’s main problem is clearly Japan. The Japanese have not only run a $ 37 billion trade surplus but a $ 6.8 billion one in the field of high technology on which the Americans believe their future rests. They are fretting and fuming but they do not possess a viable policy to cope with this superpower of a different kind. Interestingly enough, they are no longer pressing too hard the old argument that Japan has prospered because it has not had to invest in its defence because they are beginning to be scared of the consequences if Japan decides to go in for a military build-up. Incidentally, it is the recent Japanese investments in India that has at least partly spurred U.S. interest in our country.
Inevitably the U.S. military aid to Pakistan looms large on our horizon. But it should not be allowed to cover up our view of the horizon. Similarly, while it would be wrong to ignore the
strength of the US economy and its critical importance for the world economy, we must not miss the fact of the American decline. The Chinese are quite right in proceeding on the assumption that this is a long-term affair and the Americans can no longer expect to dominate
the world.
Fluid Situation
The half change referred to earlier relates to the Soviet Union. Its decision to send its troops into Afghanistan has created a dangerous situation for us. It bodes ill for us whatever the outcome of the current struggle.
I call it half a change (perhaps I should call it one-quarter change) because while its military presence in Afghanistan does not yet place the Soviet Union in a position from where it can dominate the surrounding region, this presence could, if it is consolidated, enable Moscow to press on Pakistan. In such a contingency, Pakistan could yield to a mix of Soviet blandishments and threats. Two points are notable in this connection.
First, the Soviets have a strong preference for countries which are contiguous to their own and one of their dependency’s; Pakistan would be such a country if Soviet power is consolidated in Afghanistan. Secondly, since Pakistan is quite vulnerable by virtue of widespread disaffection in Sind, Baluchistan and potentially in the NWFP as well, its choices in such a contingency will be rather limited. America will certainly not be able to protect it for long.
The opposite possibility must be equally unwelcome to us. A Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan under pressure mounted from Pakistan under US auspices would destroy the already precarious power balance on which our policy of non-alignment rests. And to be candid, the ideal solution of a Soviet withdrawal following a negotiated settlement is just not on for the supple reason that no one can create a new political structure in Kabul which can be viable independently of external military support.
Quite clearly a resolution either way of the struggle in Afghanistan in the foreseeable future is not on the cards. So this is only a long-term dilemma for us. We are not called upon to tackle it immediately. But the circumstances in which Mr. Nehru and his advisers such as Mr. Krishna Menon shaped India’s foreign policy and in which Mrs. Gandhi continued and developed it have changed. It is, therefore, necessary for us to re-examine our approach towards the United States. It too is only half a superpower now, to use Mr. Brzezinski’s telling description of the Soviet Union. We should not continue to look at the United States through one prism (of its military assistance to Pakistan) and to discuss the world scene in bipolar terms when it has become multipolar, indeed highly fluid.
The Times of India, 24 April 1985