Mr Nixon’s visit to Peking has been described in a variety of ways – a gimmick to win the presidential elections next November, an expiation for America’s anti-China policy of the past 23 years, a tribute-bearing mission to the court of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, an attempt to cover-up the defeat in Viet Nam and an anti-Soviet move. He himself has called it a journey of peace.
In a sense all these descriptions are accurate because in arranging this summit Mr. Nixon and Mr. Chou En-lai have been guided by a variety of motives and calculations. But the visit is also part of a much bigger process whereby the post-war world order is being reorganised in conformity with the new power realities in the world. The United States and the Soviet Union may still be the only two superpowers. But other power centres have risen in Western Europe, Japan and China.
The treaties between the German Federal Republic on the one hand and the Soviet Union and Poland on the other, the four-power agreement on Berlin, the admission of Britain into the EEC, Moscow’s repeated calls for a European security conference which would, among other things, deal with the question of mutual reduction of forces in that continent, the SALT talks between America and Russia to limit the further development of nuclear missiles, Mr. Gromyko’s recent visit to Tokyo and a number of other developments are as much an expression of this complex process of reshaping the international system as Mr. Nixon’s present trip. Its success or failure should not therefore be judged strictly in terms of agreements or lack of agreements on specific issues which divide the two countries. In fact Mr. Nixon and Mr. Chou En-lai have more or less set aside the contentious questions of Viet Nam and Formosa.
Parallels
Historical parallels are never exact. Even so the Nixon-Chou summit can be compared with the four-power Geneva summit in 1955. This means that just as acute and often prolonged crises in Russo-American relations have been followed by moves to reduce tension and limited agreements, there will be ups and downs in Sino-US ties The Nixon-Chou discussions will neither end in a disastrous failure nor lead to a reversal of alliances in Asia.
India, too, should view the Nixon visit in this wider perspective. However much it may be concerned over the parallelism in US and Chinese policies towards developments in the sub-continent in the past one year, it should not draw the unduly pessimistic conclusion that the Peking summit must inevitably work to its detriment. The world has become much too complex for two major powers to combine against a third on a long-term basis.
Irrespective of the stance President Nixon may adopt towards India and Pakistan in the immediate future, the chances in fact are that in course of time the United States will be competing with the Soviet Union for influence in New Delhi and with China in Islamabad. Similarly, however large a place this country may occupy in the Soviet scheme for Asia, Moscow will be interested in improving its relations with Pakistan and thereby undermining to some extent the US and Chinese hold there. Indications to this effect may not be fully discernible today but they are not altogether absent.
It is difficult to be equally sure that the Chinese will also draw the necessary lesson and respond to India’s gestures. One cause of this uncertainty is that we really do not know the Chinese view of this country. In an interview to Mr. Neville Maxwell on the eve of the Indo-Pakistan war last December Mr. Chou En-lai made some observations to the effect that India “was not a single entity” before the British unified it, that “the colonial rule of the British empire fostered the Brahmin upper stratum’s idea of building an Indian empire” and that “Nehru had this idea.” But these remarks do not offer much of a clue to his thinking because they were made in the context of the border dispute. As for the Chinese propaganda and actions, they admit of diverse and contradictory interpretations.
Competition
But whatever the Chinese stance, it appears reasonably certain that the United States and the Soviet Union have entered a new era of competition in the Indian Ocean area. While Moscow has never under-estimated its importance and has always cultivated the key countries, Washington has also abandoned the earlier view that its interests in the region are too limited to justify rivalry with the former.
The United States could have made it difficult for the Soviet Union to successfully mediate in the Indo-Pakistan dispute after the 1965 war if it had wanted because neither Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri nor President Ayub Khan could have ignored its wishes. In subsequent years it could have resumed military supplies not only to Pakistan but also to India if it was concerned that Russia was threatening to supplant its influence in the sub-continent. But it did not choose to do so primarily because in its preoccupation with Viet Nam and the supposed Chinese threat, it just did not attach sufficient importance to this region and generally downgraded the competition with the Soviet Union. All this has now changed. That is one reason why Mr. Nixon is visiting Peking.
Another facet of the emerging international system deserves India’s attention. It is that the United States cannot expect its Western European and Japanese allies to toe its line. Though they share to some extent its preoccupation with the enormous expansion in Russia’s military power and wish to befriend China, they are, for instance, not willing to alienate this country either because it has helped the people of Bangladesh to end the Pakistan army’s reign of terror or because it has signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.
But India can derive the maximum advantage from these factors – the US reassessment of the importance of the area, the growing independence of Western European countries and Japan in relation to America and the compulsions of a five-cornered competition for China – only if it shows both resilience and toughness.
Mrs. Gandhi’s recent statements and interviews are an indication that under her leadership India is capable of playing the game according to the rules of a multi polar world which are of necessity very different from those of a bi-polar one. She has said that she is interested in the normalisation of relations with China, that she is prepared to enter a dialogue with the United States, that she would not be unduly discouraged if Washington supplies some arms to Pakistan provided that the overall policy is based on an acceptance of the new realities in the sub-continent and that she does not propose to do anything “tangible” to express her gratitude to the Soviet Union for its recent support.
Even so, the point needs to be made forcefully and authoritatively – this should preferably have been done before the Nixon-Chou talks opened in Peking – that the treaty with the Soviet Union is strictly a bilateral affair and that New Delhi is not interested in any collective security arrangement Moscow may have had in mind when it first proposed the pact in 1969.
New Delhi cannot be certain that the Nixon administration and the Chinese government will not continue to misinterpret its policy even after it has made it clear that it is not a party to any alleged Soviet move to encircle China and to eliminate western influence from the Indian Ocean area. But it owes to itself to leave no scope for honest doubt on this score.
Appreciation
It is open to question whether India could have commanded a better appreciation of its stand in the Bangladesh crisis if its spokesmen had not made the unnecessary claim that the treaty with the Soviet Union had been under discussion for over two years. If they had taken care to explain that they had acted solely in defence of their national interests, Mr. Nixon would at least have not found it easy to argue that the Soviet Union has enjoyed special political relations with India in recent years.
In any event the world scene has changed greatly since June 1969 when Mr. Brezhnev first disclosed publicly his country’s interest in a collective security system in Asia. He himself is not only alive to this fact but is busy adjusting his policies accordingly. That much should be evident from his moves in Europe, his refusal to underwrite an aggressive posture on the part of Egypt against Israel and his forthcoming meeting with Mr. Nixon in Moscow.
Since the Soviet Union itself cannot, in the new circumstances, regard any talk of Asian collective security as practical or desirable it is difficult to understand why Mr. Swaran Singh has, in an interview to Tass, spoken as if India endorses the concept of collective security in Asia. New Delhi does not need to appease either Peking or Washington. But it does not have to add to their suspicions either.
The Times of India 22 February 1972