No one in this country appears to have paid much attention to the report that the Chinese diplomats in Europe have dropped hints to the effect that Peking welcomes the Anglo-US decision to establish certain additional military facilities on the British-owned and uninhabited island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. This lack of interest is understandable partly because we are in no position to establish the veracity of the leak and partly because we know as well as anyone else that the present Chinese leadership is obsessed with the alleged Soviet threat.
But the same cannot be said of our reluctance to recognise the consequences of President Sadat’s firm decision to depend more or less exclusively on Dr Kissinger for bringing about a negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israel disputes. For, his actions are by no means shrouded in secrecy nor can they be explained in terms of an anti-Soviet obsession for the simple reason that he maintains close contacts with the Kremlin and keeps it reasonably well informed about developments in West Asia. Mr Fahmy’s visit to Moscow and Mr Gromyko’s to Cairo make that amply clear, though there have been some reports in the West that the Soviet leadership is somewhat unhappy that President Sadat has not consulted it in advance on certain key decisions.
It is, of course, not obligatory for New Delhi to align its policy with that of President Sadat. On the contrary, it has every right to criticise American actions as in the case of Diego Garcia, even if the Egyptian leader finds it worth his while to co-operate with Washington to the point of urging fellow Arab heads of state and government to lift the oil embargo against it. Such differences of approach are normal and natural between friendly countries.
Realities
But President Sadat’s decision to draw close to the United States, though to some extent voluntary, is also an expression of the tremendous changes that are taking place in the world scene. As such New Delhi owes it to itself to pay greater attention to his moves than it appears to have done and ask itself whether some of its own pronouncements and actions are in conformity with the new emerging realities. It would have been a different matter if it had the power to change these realities. But it does not possess such a capacity.
To begin with, Indian policymakers perhaps need to pose to themselves the question whether we are not witnessing in this part of the world an end of the era that began with President Nasser’s secret arms deal with the Soviet Union in 1955. In answering this question, they shall have to take note of a host of developments like the gradual weakening of the radical impulse that animated Arab politics in the ‘fifties and the ‘sixties, the revival of religion as a political force as symbolised by the recent Islamic summit in Lahore, the steady increase in the dependence of non-communist industrialised countries on the Arabs for the supply of oil, the fourfold increase in the prices of crude, the flow of massive funds into West Asia, the consequent reduction in its dependence on the Soviet Union for arms on the one hand and the shift in the US policy on the other, the Russo-American detente and Mr Brezhnev’s willingness to co-operate with Dr Kissinger in bringing about a step-by-step resolution of the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict.
It is not particularly surprising that Indian policy-makers should, like the rest of us, continue to discuss these developments in terms of concepts which belong to the cold war period because, despite the detente, the superpowers still compete for influence. But it is about time that we grasp the extremely important twin facts that the Arab countries have become too rich to be content with the status which some of them accepted in the past in relation to the Soviet Union or the United States, and that the West headed by America is much better placed than the Soviet group of nations to absorb the enormous oil revenues of the Arabs.
Autonomous
To put it differently, the Arab world has become truly autonomous as it has not been for centuries. It will be easier for western Europe and the United States to deal with it than for the Soviet Union and its East European allies for the good and obvious reason that the latter can at best attract only a small amount of Arab capital.
This is an ironical development in that, without Soviet support, the Arab world as a whole could not have shaken off western dominance, taken over western oil companies either through outright nationalisation or through acquisition of majority shares, sharply raised the prices of crude and compelled Israel to recognise the limits of its power. But that is how history moves. Having fulfilled its historic mission of destroying western hegemony over the oil-rich West Asia and of enabling the Arabs to recover their sovereignty in the true sense of the word, Moscow has now to look for a new basis for maintaining friendly relations with them. And, on present reckoning at least, it will be quite an achievement for it to ensure that West Germany, France, Britain and Japan do not enjoy greater influence in this area. Witness the scale of their proposed economic co-operation with the countries of the region and the virtual absence of the Soviet Union from this competition.
There were some reports immediately after the Arab-Israeli war last October that Mr Brezhnev had been under pressure from some of his Politburo colleagues, principally the defence and intelligence chiefs, to adopt a tough line towards the United States. While it is impossible to vouch for their accuracy or inaccuracy, it can be said with a reasonable degree of confidence that in realistic terms the Kremlin has had no choice but to co-operate with Dr Kissinger first in arranging and stabilising a cease-fire and in bringing about a disengagement of forces, to begin with, between Egypt and Israel and now between Tel Aviv and Damascus. Once President Sadat had opted for a negotiated settlement, the Soviet leadership could have tried to obstruct it only at enormous cost to its own interests.
The main implication of all this for India cannot be seriously disputed. This country has nothing to gain by taking the lead on issues like Diego Garcia. In the next context this role rightly belongs to the rich and powerful Arabs and if they choose to remain silent, there is no good reason for New Delhi to raise a hue and cry about it.
Some of us doubtless believe that criticism of the United States endears us to the Soviet leadership. This is highly doubtful if we are to go by Mr Brezhnev’s speeches during his visit to New Delhi when he repeatedly emphasised his government’s determination to pursue steadfastly the policy of detente with America and General Kozlov’s more recent statement in which he said that Moscow was not in competition with Washington in the Indian Ocean. It is perhaps relevant to mention that the General was rather anxious to make his view known to New Delhi.
But even if the above belief was not as erroneous as it appears to be, no Indian policy-makers can possibly ignore the harsh fact that their forecasts have gone wrong and that the country once again needs substantial economic assistance. In the ‘seventies and beyond the oil-rich countries of West Asia will have large surplus wealth for diversion to developing countries. But it appears as if even in the new context West-dominated institutions like the World Bank, its soft-lending affiliate the International Development Agency and the IMF will continue to play a key role in the transfer of resources from the rich to the poor. The Arabs have not yet endorsed the proposal the Shah of Iran has made to augment the resources of the bank, the IDA and the IMF. But it can only be a matter of time before they do so.
Debates
Meanwhile the accommodation that the Shah has provided to India in respect of supply, price and credit for the purchase of oil illustrates another point which is that US goodwill is a valuable asset. The Shah, of course, takes his own decisions and he has for years been keen on developing fairly extensive economic co-operation with this country. Indeed, if no progress was made in the last five years in this field, it was largely because New Delhi was trapped in a variety of meaningless debates. Even so it would be absurd for anyone to suggest that the process of negotiating the accommodation would have been as smooth and as quick as it has been if Washington had not used such influence as it has in Teheran in favour of the deal.
The Times of India, 6 March 1974