It is somewhat disappointing that the Indian view of China remains strangely lopsided. The failure to evolve a comprehensive and viable approach to this key problem of our foreign relations as vitiated our thinking on a vast variety of related issues and accounts for the vague search for “room for manoeuvre” as if it were a substitute either for the substance of power or stable and dependable relations with friendly countries.
The concept of room for manoeuvre comes straight from the vocabulary of the cold war which is largely responsible for preventing us from taking a realistic and non-doctrinaire view of the world. We can say in extenuation that we are not the only victims of the massive propaganda which continues to pour out of the United States and the Soviet Union and leads one to believe that co-operation among them is still limited to the avoidance of war. But we cannot blame the super-powers for our hankering to return to the “golden age” of our foreign policy when we acted as honest brokers between the East and the West as in Korea and Indo-China.
Golden Age
This intense desire to go back to a mythical golden age reflects as well as accentuates our dissatisfaction with the Government’s present performance in the field of foreign policy. It will be idle for anyone to pretend that Indian diplomacy is as effective as it can be or needs to be. But the true source of our dissatisfaction is that the world has changed and is changing fast and we are unable to keep pace with it. That is one explanation for a hankering after the seemingly simple, straight and uncomplicated world of the ’fifties when a country was either aligned or non-aligned, and when India did not have to bother about the vexatious and unfamiliar problems of defence and security.
As for China, the inadequacies of our general approach are only too obvious but they can bear mention in the context of the present debate on the desirability and possibility of reviving the dialogue with it. First, we have thought of China either as an expansionist power with unlimited objectives or as an essentially peaceable nation which has been forced to adopt an aggressive posture in response to America’s hostility and the need to prevent the installation of hostile US power on its borders – North Korea on one end and North Viet Nam on the other. It is not only that persons of different ideological persuasions have expressed these diametrically opposite viewpoints. Even official pronouncements have not been free from this either/or approach. The fact is that China’s behaviour has depended and will continue to depend on the prevailing circumstances. It will not be averse to building an empire for itself if there is no effective resistance and it will settle down as a peaceful and law abiding nation if its expansion is checked.
It is an academic exercise to debate whether the urge to expand is rooted in Chinese history or it is the result of the communist ideology. It may be useful to know that Peking is trying to avenge the humiliation it suffered at the hands of European powers, including Russia, in the 19th and early part of the present century but we cannot condone its aggressiveness on that account.
Secondly, as a rule we have behaved as if the containment and accommodation of China are mutually exclusive concepts. That explains the criticism of the Government’s policy of supporting China’s admission to the UN in spite of its aggression in 1962. The historical experience is that the two processes of resistance and reconciliation must be pursued simultaneously by the world community in respect of a major and resurgent nation if the twin evils of appeasement and avoidable conflict and even war are to be avoided. If New Delhi was sensitive to this point it would not have made a fetish of its opposition to foreign bases on the periphery of China and would have adopted a more friendly posture towards Thailand and other Western allies in the region.
Strong Force
Thirdly, our official position has been that the withdrawal of western imperial powers from south-east Asia need not create a power vacuum for China to fill because nationalism is a sufficiently strong force there. This view, to put it mildly, represents a gross oversimplification. The force of nationalism has not by itself prevented the Soviet domination in Eastern Europe or American domination in the western hemisphere. In spite of the hopeful example of North Viet Nam and Algeria, nationalism is not a substitute for the presence of a countervailing power. In south-east Asia local nationalisms cancel one another. Witness Cambodia’s preoccupation with Thailand, Malaysia’s with Indonesia and so on.
It would have been a different matter if India was consciously using this language in order to keep external powers out so that it could extend its own influence in the region. This clearly has not been the case. Even in the early and middle ’fifties, supposedly the period of maximum Indian influence, New Delhi tried only to moderate the conflict between the United States and China which were competing for influence.
New Delhi’s formulations regarding south-east Asia have been based on the assumption that there is an inherent, unavoidable and irreconcilable contradiction between local nationalisms and the American presence. In fact the reverse has been true in spite of terrible bungling, over-reaction and over-commitment by the United States in the specific case of Viet Nam. Most of the countries of the region have been or have become friendly to the United States and have derived encouragement from its presence. Even Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia would be loath to see America withdraw completely from the south-east Asian mainland.
It can be argued, to some extent legitimately, that most of these inadequacies refer to the past which is dead and buried. New Delhi has of late shown a better appreciation of the complexity of the situation than it did before. The best example is its studiously careful attitude regarding Viet Nam. It is indeed ironical that critics should have mistaken sophistication of approach for surrender to pressure. There are however certain aspects of the developing situation which are not yet properly reflected either in the official policy or non-official discussions.
First, we continue to think of the problem of containment of China wholly in terms of the Himalayas and south-east Asia where the United States and the Soviet Union have been at odds on account of differences of approach regarding Viet Nam. The result is that we have not paid sufficient attention to the ever widening area of agreement between the two super-powers on this particular issue.
One illustration of this area of agreement is the pursuit of more or less parallel policies by the United States and the Soviet Union in respect of India and Pakistan. A similar parallelism is likely to develop in respect of Japan and countries of south-east Asia like Malaysia and Singapore.
Border Clashes
Secondly, the Soviet deployment in Outer Mongolia and its own Central Asian republics may be the result of border clashes with China and Peking’s claim to large chunks of Russian territory. But it also helps in the containment of China. In fact this may well turn out to be more important than anything the United States has done.
As Prof. Carroll Quigley, of Georgetown University, writes in the October issue of Current History: “If it is necessary to contain China as an expansionist force on the Asian mainland, this must be done along her most vulnerable land frontier, the open grasslands of Mongolia; the pressure to restrain Chinese expansion, if and when it threatens, must be exercised by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union will do this if it is left free to do so, and it can do so by day-to-day increase of Soviet power in the area, such as will arise from the growth of population and Soviet influence in Outer Mongolia as well as the growth of Soviet population, industry and military strength in the Soviet areas of east Asia.”
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, former British Prime Minister, has repeatedly expressed the view that the countervailing power against China has to be provided by the Soviet Union and India. This certainly makes better sense than the much talked about but wholly impractical proposal of an alliance between India, Japan and Australia.
There is thus a bedrock of substance in the Chinese propaganda regarding Russo-American collusion and attempt to encircle their country. But there is nothing unusual, unexpected or wrong about this desire to restrain China from wrecking the fabric of international life and of playing havoc with neighbouring countries.
Finally, it is a legacy of the cold war that we still think in terms of either the United States or the Soviet Union making up with China at the cost of its relations with the other. Russia and America cannot afford discord on the question of China’s legitimate place in the world. Peking has to be accommodated in the international community without being allowed to disrupt it. This calls for a high degree of Russo-American co-operation.
It is not particularly useful to speculate on the next phase of Chinese foreign policy. What Peking will do in the near future will depend on a host of internal and external factors. But it is reasonably certain that in course of time it must make a serious attempt to come out of the make-believe world of ideology and frustrated nationalism.
It is perhaps premature to conclude that the Chinese initiative in seeking talks with the incoming American Administration marks the beginning of this process. But the possibility cannot be ruled, out, especially in view of the de-escalation of the war in Viet Nam and the end of the cultural revolution at home. For us the more pertinent point is that it is only the United States and the Soviet Union which can contain and tame China and that we can expect the lifting of pressure only when Peking has made the necessary adjustments with them. It will be a surprise, though a pleasant one, if it holds out an olive branch to New Delhi earlier.
(Concluded)
The Times of India, 16 January 1969