New Delhi needs to bear three major points in mind in assessing the significance of Mr. Kissinger’s secret visit to Peking and President Nixon’s prompt acceptance of Mr. Chou En-lai’s invitation to visit China and in shaping its own response.
First, though a Sino-US detente is still some way off, neither Washington nor Peking will allow the Formosa issue to block progress towards an improvement of relations between them.
Secondly, it is unlikely that the Chinese will welcome at this stage a belated initiative by this country to open a dialogue with them or that they will fail to live up to their assurance to General Yahya Khan that they will help him defend the territorial integrity of Pakistan against an Indian attack across international boundaries.
Finally, there is nothing in the record of Soviet foreign policy in the past two decades to justify the view that closer relations with Moscow will enable New Delhi to defy the United States and China and secure the independence of East Bengal through unilateral military action.
As for the first point, it is hard to believe that Mr. Chou En-lai would have invited Mr. Nixon and that the US President would have accepted the invitation unless each had made sure in advance that the other was prepared to make concessions which would narrow the gap in their respective positions on Formosa.
It is safe to infer that President Nixon will no longer block the admission of China to the UN and its getting its legitimate permanent seat in the Security Council and that this decision has been communicated to Peking.
Working Ties
Once this move goes through, the process of cutting the problem of Formosa to size will have begun since Peking, on its part, has once again said that it will not seek to enforce its claim to the island through military force.
This does not mean that the United States will not have to take any excruciating decisions after China is in the UN. It will not find it easy to switch recognition from Taipeh to Peking and to end its defence commitments to the island republic. But it can establish working, as distinct from normal diplomatic, relations with Peking as a new relationship grows between it and Formosa on the one hand and between the mainland and the island on the other.
The United States, it may be recalled, was reconciled to some such development before the outbreak of the Korean war in June 1950 when it rushed to the wholly mistaken conclusion that, in collusion with Moscow, Peking had instigated the North Korean attack and that American security interests – the tip of South Korea is only 145 km away from Japan – required the quarantining of China and an alliance with Formosa.
In fact Stalin had planned the invasion at least partly to strengthen the Soviet Union’s strategic position vis-a-vis China as part of his long-term design virtually to detach Manchuria from Peking’s control and to establish an autonomous government there under Kao Kang. Kao was disgraced and arrested after Stalin’s death and is said to have committed suicide in jail.
Normally the process of readjustment between America and China should have begun in 1963 when the Sino-Soviet rift came into the open because the myth of a monolithic communist bloc out to conquer the world had been exploded by then. Washington had even less reason for persisting in its anti-China posture after the middle of 1965 when both Moscow and Peking gave up the hope of reconciliation and started taking measures to strengthen their defences against each other along their 7,240 km-long common border. But instead of seizing this opportunity the United States steadily stepped up its involvement in Viet Nam, partly in the conviction that it could take advantage of the Sino-Soviet hostility to realise its dreams of establishing a Pax Americana and partly as a result of the momentum of past policies – a point New Delhi would do well to remember in dealing with Washington.
Not Expansionist
However, even then most Sinologists both within and outside the American Administration rejected the official claim that China was an expansionist power which had to be contained through a chain of island bases in the Pacific and a strong US military presence in South East Asia. Though it is hard to believe that the Americans escalated the war in Viet Nam and in the process tore their own society apart, without being convinced of China’s expansionist character, this was in fact the case. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearings on China and Viet Nam in 1966 bear this out.
Now that Washington has been finally convinced that it cannot win the Viet Nam war and that it is not worth the sacrifice in men, materials and domestic turmoil, it is only rational for it to try to come to terms with China with whom it has no territorial dispute and no deep-seated antagonism.
Two other points are equally relevant in this context.
First, since the mid-’sixties, Chairman Mao has not deviated from his view that the Soviet Union is China’s principal adversary. It is well known that he held fast to it even in 1966 and 1967 when the United States carried on intensive bombing of North Viet Nam. In fact, he used the cultural revolution to get rid of Chinese leaders who favoured accommodation with the Soviet Union to defeat American aggression against North Viet Nam and secure sophisticated military hardware to strengthen China’s own defences against a possible US attack. The Sino-Soviet tensions rose to a new high in 1966-67 with the huge anti-Soviet demonstrations in Peking.
Secondly, over the past one year and more the US Administration seems to have gradually returned to the view that the Soviet Union constitutes a far greater threat to its influence and to the stability of the international system than China – the very reverse of what President Johnson said repeatedly during his tenancy of the White House. One cannot possibly overestimate the impact on Washington of the massive Soviet arms supply to various Arab countries, specially the UAR, the expansion of the Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, the development of the Sam-9 missile which is capable of destroying American minuteman sites and so on.
President Nixon had apparently made up his mind by September last when he said that he would explore all possibilities of a dialogue with China because in his view there was no other way to stop the Russians from pushing the United States.
Thus from whatever angle one may view the recent moves between America and China, one cannot avoid the conclusion that both are keen on mutual accommodation and adjustment and are not likely to permit any obstacle in their way to become insuperable. The analogy of complications in Russo-US relations does not apply because China is not America’s main competitor in the world and is not likely to become so at least in the ’seventies.
Similarly, China has no good reason at the moment to help India get over the predicament it now faces. Peking can, and is most likely to, wait and watch as New Delhi tries to cope with the Bangla Desh issue and the colossal refugee problem and sorts out its relations with the United States. There was a case for an Indian gesture towards China so long as the East Bengal crisis had not developed and the nature of the secret Sino-US negotiations was not known. Now the country faces an altogether new situation.
Nothing Secret
Some feel that the rather moderate Chinese propaganda campaign against India is an indication that Peking does not propose to intervene in case New Delhi resorts to force to settle the Bangla Desh and refugee problem. But they ignore the fact that this is because New Delhi is not yet seriously thinking in terms of military action to liberate Bangla Desh. Since nothing in New Delhi is secret, the Chinese do not require a particularly efficient intelligence set-up to know who is thinking and saying what.
On the basis of what the Chinese have said all that one can infer is that they are not irrevocably committed to one Pakistan, that they are not too sure that the present military regime can perpetuate its hold in East Bengal without seriously weakening West Pakistan in the process, that they are anxious to keep their options open and that they are not opposed to an independent Bangla Desh as such. But an independent Bangla Desh brought into being by Indian military action is an altogether different proposition. It is difficult to believe that they will be willing, at this stage at any rate, to reconcile themselves to it, specially when they have no strong compulsion to do so in view of the US opposition to Indian military action.
(To be concluded)
The Times of India 21 July 1971