It was never in doubt that President Nixon would be re-elected for a second term. But so long as the election, or what some American commentators have called the non-election, was not over, it was possible for us to avoid coming to grips with the possible consequences of four more years of Mr. Nixon in the White House. We cannot afford this luxury any longer. We should look at the man and his policies as dispassionately and calmly as humanly possible if we are not to be trapped in a make-believe world of our own creation. The result this time can be as painful as in 1962.
To begin with, we must get over the twin falsehoods that some interested powers and commentators find it useful to spread. Mr. Nixon is neither waging the same old cold war as his predecessors in a different style nor is he implementing on the sly the policies his critics like Senator Fulbright and Senator Mansfield have been advocating.
Strange
This observation might appear strange in view of Mr. Nixon’s own statements which suggest that he continues to be concerned with a possible increase in Soviet influence in the third world, specially West Asia, that he recognises the American people’s unwillingness and inability to shoulder the burdens which flow from the country’s self-imposed role as the world’s gendarme and that he accepts the need to reduce external commitments. But the fact remains that in collaboration with Mr. Kissinger, he has shaped a new framework for America’s policy which accords with new realities like the economic power of Japan and Western Europe and the mood of the American people and yet manages to cater to their continuing desire for preponderant influence in the world.
On a superficial view this formulation, too, would appear to be self-contradictory. It can, indeed, be argued with some semblance of plausibility that the Americans cannot have it both ways, that is, they cannot seek a reduction in their external commitment without a simultaneous decrease in influence. But this is precisely what they want. That is indeed one of the reasons why they have not responded favourably to Senator McGovern’s passionate “America come home” plea and have preferred Mr. Nixon. He has not only promised what they want, perhaps without being fully aware of it, but has also shown the capacity to deliver the goods. The United States is reorganising its strategy and tactics. It has not abandoned its goal of primacy.
Unfortunately the thinking of many of us has come to be dominated by the rhetoric of the cold war so completely that we take it for granted that Mr. Nixon’s policy differs from that of his predecessors primarily in his ability to grasp the depth of Sino-Soviet hostility and his willingness to exploit it to his advantage. Soviet propaganda reinforces this erroneous belief by making it appear that the cussed Chinese are deliberately playing into the hands of the American imperialists to the detriment of communist countries as well as the third world. In reality the exploitation of the Sino-Soviet quarrel forms only a part of the elaborate strategy Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger have worked out.
They divide the world that matters in terms of actual and potential power, military as well as economic, into three triangles and they are keen to ensure that the United States stays at the apex in each case. It is by now a commonplace that Washington has placed itself in the middle in the great America-Russia-China triangle. But it is not equally well realised that it has put itself in an equally advantageous position in the two smaller ones, that is, the America-Russia-West Europe and the America-China-Japan triangles. Surely no one can seriously argue that it could have done so merely by exploiting, however skilfully, the Sino-Soviet dispute. There is much more to it than that.
It is well known that Mr. Kissinger idolises former practitioners of the old European concept of balance of power such as Prince Metternich and thinks in those terms. Mr. Nixon has also come to share this approach. This is evident from his statement last January wherein he said: “The only time in the history of the world that we have had any extended period of peace is when there has been balance of power … I think it will be a safer world if we have a strong healthy United States, Europe, Soviet Union, China and Japan, each balancing the other, not playing one against the other, an even balance.”
Humbug
Mr. Nixon cannot obviously be taken at his word when he talks about the undesirability of playing one power against the other if only because that is an essential part of the balancing game. But while we can ignore such empty and sanctimonious humbug, we should pay attention to the implication of this and many other similar statements by him and his chief foreign policy adviser. This is that the United States no longer looks upon itself exclusively in terms of being an ally of Japan and Western Europe and that its present scheme provides for these economic giants being held in some kind of check by their Chinese and Russian neighbours.
This is not to suggest that the United States intends to go back on its treaties with the countries in question or that it does not regard it necessary to balance the overwhelming military power of the Soviet Union in Europe and of China in the Far East and South-East Asia. The suggestion is that Washington is now not unduly concerned with the fact that the Soviet Union and China are ruled by communist regimes because it does not any more take the view that this automatically disposes them towards expansionist policies. They need to be balanced because they are great powers and not because they are communist powers.
Behind this approach lies Mr. Nixon’s and Mr. Kissinger’s conviction that competition in the struggle for markets, both at home and abroad, from Japan and Western Europe constitutes a greater threat to America’s place in the world than the ideological conflict with the Soviet Union and China. There is evidence to suggest that they reached this conclusion independently of each other by 1968. In any event, they have since tried to meet the Japanese and West European challenge. That the measures adopted by them, including a forced revaluation of the yen and the mark, have not been wholly successful in defending the dollar and reducing America’s trade deficits only underscores the magnitude of the problem and the urgent need to tackle it.
Apprehension
Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger are known to be specially worried about Japan’s ever-growing trade surpluses. The success of Mr. Tanaka’s trip to Peking has further aggravated this apprehension. This, too, can distort American policy just as the obsession with China did in the ‘fifties and the ‘sixties, specially if, like Moscow, Washington begins to talk of a possible Peking-Tokyo axis. But be that as it may, there can be little doubt that Mr Nixon and Mr Kissinger are guided by considerations which are very different from those that prevailed during the cold war era.
It is self-evident that the United States could not have evolved and implemented the new strategy if the two communist giants had not been prepared to co-operate with it. But they have been more than willing to do so. Peking has gone so far as to let it be known that it does not want the United States to withdraw completely from South East Asia and the Far East lest the Soviet Union move in to fill the resulting vacuum. Just now it finds it expedient to underplay its suspicions of Japan. But it remains as distrustful of Tokyo as of Moscow and depends on Washington to prevent it from going in for nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union does not need US support to cope with either the Chinese or the West European challenge. But it cannot afford let the three power centres, and possibly even Japan, combine against it. Thus while it may not be as explicit in its statements as China, it is no less eager to co-operate with the United States.
If this assessment of the Nixon-Kissinger approach to international relations and of Sino-Soviet response to it is generally accurate, it follows that it can only be a matter of time before Moscow stops pushing the so-called Brezhnev concept of collective security in Asia and that no third world country has much to gain by striking either an anti-US or anti-Soviet posture.
The Soviet leadership put forward its vague proposal regarding collective security in Asia at a time when the United States was in turmoil at home and when its tentative gestures had not evoked a clearly positive response from Peking. The men in Kremlin can neither be so naive as to believe that they have any chance of selling the idea in the wholly altered circumstances of today nor so reckless as to pursue a project which is as anti-US as it is anti-China.
Similarly, while it is open to countries like Iran and Iraq, or for that matter India and Pakistan, to be hostile to each other and acquire military hardware from the United States or the Soviet Union, they cannot expect to achieve their objective with the active help of the allegedly friendly super-power. That belongs to an era which is rapidly passing into history.
The Times of India 9 November 1972