Redefining Indo-U.S. ties

By Harold A. Gould

A SPATE of recent publications suggests that either by reflex or design a backlash is developing against the present trend toward improved relations between the United States and India. One cannot help but wonder if unreconstructed denizens of the fading Cold War culture may be behind it. Examples abound. An article by Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor of the New Republic, appeared in the August 6 edition of that magazine which offered grudging praise to India for having at last seen the light and cast its strategic and economic lot with the United States. An article in the Wall Street Journal written by Kenneth Weisbrode on August 22 adopts a similar tone. As does an article by Robyn Lim in the August 16 edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review.

The theme running through all of these articles is that the U.S. may be putting its strategic eggs in a rickety basket; that when push comes to shove the Indians, who opposed our policies during the Cold War, might prove to be an unreliable strategic partner in the new global firmament now struggling to be born.

This line of reasoning proceeds on the assumption that all the blame for what Dennis Kux refers to as the past ``estrangement'' between the world's two largest democracies lies almost exclusively on the back of India. The fact is that India has no need to apologise to anyone for its past behaviour. There were many good and sufficient reasons for India's adversarial stance toward the U.S. throughout the Cold War era.If India has now decided to move into a more harmonious relationship with the U.S., something which India's American friends surely welcome, it is not motivated by guilt or contrition, nor should it be, but by the one thing that motivates all nation states, including the U.S., to behave as they do - viz., good old fashioned self- interest.

The Cold War recidivists ignore the fact that the manner in which the U.S. comported itself in South Asia during the dark days of the Cold War had plenty to do with the way India in turn comported itself during that same period. Cultural and historical ignorance, combined with anti-Communist obsessions, drove America's leaders to completely misread the political situation in South Asia. The result was a foreign policy that ignited an arms race in the Subcontinent, fuelled two wars and perpetual skirmishing between India and Pakistan, resulted in distortions of both the Indian and Pakistani economies, drove a disgusted and disillusioned Jawaharlal Nehru to seek political succour from the Soviet Union, and in the end left the world facing a senseless nuclear arms race in the Subcontinent.

In his New Republic article, Mr. Kaplan bases much of his argument on Stephen P. Cohen's assertion in a recently published book that India ``went wrong by placing its chips on the Soviet Union, economic autarky, and military might''. These tired cliches, including the subjective judgement that India ``went wrong'' in the first place, sustain the self-serving certitude that has plagued all efforts by mainstream policy analysts in the U.S. to understand and deal effectively with South Asia.

Let us briefly examine the basis for these three theses. (1) Why the `tilt' toward the Soviet Union? While we are told that U.S. officials were compelled throughout the Nehru era to, as Mr. Kaplan puts it, ``nap their way'' through anti-imperialist diatribes that got in the way of substantive diplomatic accomplishments, the fact is that there were cogent reasons both for Indian anger and their tilt toward the Soviet bloc. It happened because U.S. South Asian policy gave India no alternative - not, it might be pointed out, from an ideological standpoint (fellow- travellership, and all that), but from a purely strategic and geopolitical standpoint. When the U.S. decided, for its own purely strategic and geopolitical considerations, to recruit Pakistan into its Grand Alliance against the spread of Communism, it meant putting large quantities of modern weaponry in the hands of India's sworn enemy that even in the 1950s was promising jehad to liberate Kashmir.

War in the Subcontinent came for the first time in 1965, a year after Nehru's death, when Pakistan's first (but by no means last) military dictator, General Ayub Khan, marshalled his American- supplied military hardware and launched an unprovoked invasion of India. The U.S. had pooh- poohed Nehru's claim that Pakistan joined the Western alliance solely to obtain the military wherewithal to attack India. Why should Nehru not have been angry and fed up when in fact that turned out to be the case?

Nehru resorted to the realpolitik that he was allegedly too woolly-headed to grasp. He turned to the Soviet Union not because he was ``pro-Communist'', but because the Soviets were the only credible source of help in parrying both the consequences of the Western alliance's unwelcome intrusion into South Asia and of Chinese aggression across the Himalayas. The irony is that undermining India's non-alignment policy reduced America's own South Asian policy to a shambles. Its raison d'etre, let it be remembered, had been the prevention of war in South Asia and deterring Soviet geopolitical inroads into the region!

(2) Why `economic autarky'? Centuries of British colonialism had left India with no realistic alternative to a forced-draft, centrally driven economic development programme if the country was to avoid becoming an economic and political lackey of the great powers. Nehru rightly believed that genuine independence required national planning and aggressive mobilisation of capital resources. Despite flaws in the development scenario - viz., over-bureaucratisation and insufficient latitude for free-market entrepreneurship - this strategy provided India with a strong industrial base and afforded India enough political autonomy to pursue with impunity the very diplomacy which stuck in America's craw.

(3) Why `military might'? Because, as already stated, India was compelled to seek it in order to preserve her national integrity and ward off grave threats to her survival. America itself, in fact, directly contributed to India's threat-syndrome in 1971 when it blatantly ``tilted'' toward Pakistan during the Bangladesh War.

Power-worshippers like Henry Kissinger scoffingly dismissed India as a ``soft state'' that did not deserve to be taken seriously in his Metternichian halls of international diplomacy. Because India did not factor into Kissinger's primitive balance-of-power calculus, he had no qualms about rattling sabers at her in order to impress Mao Zedong with America's determination to be ``steadfast toward a friend''. His direction to William Saxbe (in 1975) as he was leaving to assume his post as Ambassador to India, exemplified the sophomoric depths to which U.S. diplomacy had sunk. ``Once you reach there,'' he declared, ``I don't want to hear from you again!'' Mrs. Gandhi also got the message and resolved to do whatever it took to ``harden'' the Indian state.

What then does this tell us about how the Bush administration and the American people should approach the new turn in U.S.-Indian relations? Should India be treated as a repentant sinner who has now realised the error of its ways, which the Cold War recidivists imply? America needs to abandon the neocolonialist nonsense once and for all. With the Cold War behind us, the U.S.- Indian relationship needs to be rooted in historical insight and political practicality. This will enable both countries to dispense with the past ideological baggage that led to ``estrangement.'' A mature relationship with the U.S. will enable India to become an ``emergent power'' in a manner that is good for America, good for India and for world peace. India's economic prosperity, political health and strategic cooperation will indeed serve as a powerful antidote to the spectre of Chinese power driven by totalitarian politics and arrogant cultural chauvinism. Let this opportunity not be undermined by cynicism and Cold War recidivism.

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