Next week, Mrs. Gandhi will be making her first state visit to the United States since 1971. She had then gone to Washington to urge President Nixon to use his influence with General Yahya Khan to negotiate a political solution of the Bangladesh crisis with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. That meeting became a virtual confrontation and vitiated Indo-US relations for years. Girilal Jain has just returned after a three-week visit to the United States where he met senators, officials, journalists and academics. He saw in America a new respect for and acceptance of India and Indira Gandhi.
On the eve of Mrs. Gandhi’s first state visit to the United States in 11 years, the signals from Washington are mixed. On the one hand there is the accumulated misunderstanding of many years and on the other a new awareness of the importance of a stable democratic India and a desire to befriend it. It is difficult to say which one of these tendencies will win out. But Mrs Gandhi has an opportunity to give a helping hand to friends of India in the US administration, Congress, the academic community and the media and facilitate their task of winning for this country the place it deserves in that vibrant and dynamic democracy.
The number of such individuals is not very large. We have pursued policies which have not been designed to win friends and influence policies. We have, for example, not encouraged US investments even in fields where these would have been greatly to our own advantage. And we have discouraged American scholars with life-long investment in Indian studies from pursuing their interest. Above all, we have refused to recognise the simple fact that one cannot get anything in the United States unless one builds a strong lobby. But friends of India survive and they are willing to do their bit for this country provided, of course, we do our bit.
India’s friends have traditionally been liberals and as a rule we have got along better with Democratic administrations than with Republican ones. But in the present context conservative Republicans are also our potential allies. The reason is simple. They resent the harsh manner in which the Chinese have sought to impose their will on the US administration on the question of arms supplies to Taiwan and they are not willing to buy lock, stock and barrel the view that China will remain for the foreseeable future America’s strategic ally in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
This is not to suggest either that the US honeymoon with China is over or that India should seek to build relations with America on the ashes of Sino-US ties. America’s honeymoon with China survives in that there are any number of Americans who sincerely believe that China is an ally in that it holds down and will continue to hold down one-third of Soviet forces and that it will make a success of its modernisation programme, however grave the difficulties. And as for us, we have not sought in the past nor will seek in the future to exploit America’s estrangement with China. This is especially true in the context of our own attempt to normalise relations with Beijing.
But Americans do think in such schematic terms. Unlike in the fifties, sixties and seventies, they do not look upon India as a possible counterweight to China. But as they begin to comprehend the Chinese compulsions and realities and to recognise that Beijing must seek a more balanced relationship with both super-powers by reducing the level of its hostility towards the Soviet Union, they cannot help turning to India.
It is not clear whether President Reagan’s invitation to Mrs. Gandhi has any connection with his reported annoyance with the Chinese over the arms-for-Taiwan issue. It is possible that he came to like her when he met her at the Cancun summit and concluded that it would be worth his while to explore the possibility of establishing cordial relations with her. But a reappraisal of America’s China policy cannot but strengthen India’s attraction for Washington. This is the logic of super-power politics which India can neither promote nor disregard.
Pakistan has caused no similar annoyance to the US administration. Its case for military-cum-economic assistance continues to be viewed with sympathy in Washington where it is taken for granted that the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan constitutes a threat to Pakistan and that India exaggerates the possible impact of US arms supply on the military balance in the sub-continent. But it seems that Islamabad’s importance in the US scheme might have declined more than slightly.
Regardless of whether the Americans admit it or not – some of them do – the Afghanistan issue has moved to the backburner. This is not the result of a conscious American decision. It is the result of the turn that events have taken in West Asia – the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Iranian invasion of Iraq. But whatever the reasons, the Afghanistan issue has got downgraded in the US list of priorities. This must bring down Pakistan’s importance in Washington.
Pakistan has been playing its cards reasonably well. While in Washington it has successfully projected itself as a frontline state willing to assist the Afghan guerillas and thereby raise the cost of its occupation for the Soviet Union, it has seen to it that it limits its assistance to the mujahidin to a level which is acceptable to the Soviets. There is so far no public evidence that this Pakistani policy is not acceptable to the United States. But during my recent visit to Washington I sensed that the American emphasis had shifted from raising the cost of occupation for the Soviets to the defence of Pakistan against possible pressure from across the Khyber. If this is in fact the case, India’s objections to the supply of highly sophisticated equipment may get a better hearing in the US administration than it has received so far. And, needless to add, Pakistan’s security is best assured in the context of an India friendly to the United States.
There is not the slightest doubt that Saudi Arabia played a critical role in persuading the Reagan administration to agree to sell F-16s to Pakistan against its own better judgment that F-5s meet Islamabad’s requirement adequately. Riyadh used the argument that a strong and stable Pakistan would help contain the Islamic fundamentalist upheaval in Iran. It is difficult to say whether the key US policy makers bought this ridiculous argument. In any event, the Iranian invasion of Iraq has exposed the irrelevance of Pakistan to developments and real problems in the Gulf so fully that it cannot escape even the naive in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department.
Finally, even those in Washington who remain critical of India’s Afghanistan policy and recognition of the Hanoi-backed Heng Samrin regime in Kampuchea have ceased arguing that India under Mrs. Gandhi is a Soviet surrogate and that the Prime Minister is not interested in improving ties with the United States. Arch conservatives in the Heritage Foundation, the so-called think tank of the right-wing Republicans, still talk of the way India has voted in the UN and non-aligned meetings to make the point that New Delhi has invariably sided with the Soviet Union and therefore does not deserve American consideration or help. But it is unlikely that anyone in the administration uses this kind of argument to make a case against this country.
The responsibility that goes with power can itself be a great teacher. Even ideologues have to deal with reality when they are in office. So it is possible that as President Reagan’s aides have had occasion to study Indian policies and actions, they have found it necessary to revise the theories they brought with them to Washington.
That apart, Mrs. Gandhi’s new economic policy with its emphasis on reducing controls, freeing the economy and welcoming foreign capital and know-how has begun to make an impact on influential people in Washington, New York and elsewhere. They have come to accept that India does not follow the Soviet economic model which they abhor. They are still not convinced that Mrs. Gandhi will go as far as she needs to in order to give the Indian economy the push it requires. American businessmen find the Indian controls and the bureaucrats who administer them highly irritating and tiresome. But they feel that the country is moving in the right direction and that this improves the prospects not only of Indo-US cooperation but of India making the grade as an industrialised country.
Similarly, American policy-makers have taken note of the Indian moves to diversify its sources of quests sympathetically to meet arms supplies and not depend solely on the Soviet Union for them. It remains to be seen whether they are willing to consider Indian requests sympathetically to meet New Delhi’s insistence for production rights under licence and credit on reasonable terms.
Some points may be made in this connection. Americans have always regarded arms sales as an important instrument of foreign policy. India is a sufficiently big market not to be sneezed at. Northrop has spent millions of dollars in developing a highly sophisticated plane known as F-5G. It expected to co-produce this aircraft in Taiwan. But that is now unlikely in view of the US need not to annoy the Chinese too much. Northrop is therefore looking for an alternative partner and perhaps finds India attractive. Men in Washington are truly impressed by India’s capacity to keep secrets in respect of the weapons system it has acquired from France and Britain. “We do not have to worry about our secrets being passed on to the Russians. One of our principal allies, the Federal Republic of Germany, is a big enough sieve,” a senior US official said to me half-jokingly. He took care to emphasise that India’s record in this regard was impeccable.
All this does not mean the United States is waiting to be conquered by Mrs. Gandhi. Her task is extremely difficult and tricky. India does not figure prominently in the American mind either as a friend or a foe. It has done well but not by the standards the Americans have come to apply. For them the success stories in Asia have been Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia with twice or thrice India’s average growth rate. They are no longer guided by humanitarian-ideological considerations which led them to support India in the past. There is a bilateral problem (Tarapur) which is not easy to resolve even if the administration takes a sympathetic view of India’s stand which it may well do.
By any reckoning Mrs. Gandhi will have done a superb job if she succeeds in improving what the Americans call the atmospherics. The US administration is willing to take a fresh look at India and this offers the Prime Minister an opportunity which has not come her way since 1971 when official Indo-US relations touched the lowest point. The American policy-makers are, it is true, preoccupied with Lebanon and the Iran-Iraq war and as Johnson’s, Nixon’s and Kissinger’s memoirs amply demonstrate, they are generally not able to deal with more than one crisis at a time. But India’s one great attraction to the Americans is precisely that it is neither facing nor creating a crisis.
Meanwhile as we wait for Mrs. Gandhi’s visit to take place, it will help if we can remove the misperception that Indo-US relations have been particularly bad for any significant length of time. This misperception is as widespread in the United States as in our country. In reality, both countries have followed what may be called a two-track approach and managed to avoid a prolonged crisis in their relations.
The Times of India, Sunday, 25 July 1982