Nothing has happened in the bilateral relations between India and China in recent weeks to justify last week’s propaganda blast from Peking which is reminiscent of the vilification campaign it conducted against this country in the ‘sixties. The explanation for it has therefore to be sought and found in other developments.
So far as one can make out, until recently the Chinese government was by no means opposed to Mrs Gandhi’s efforts to reach an accord with Sheikh Abdullah. On the contrary, it is possible that it viewed this move in the context of Mr Bhutto’s plan to integrate the Pakistan-occupied part of Jammu and Kashmir with his country and concluded that both New Delhi and Islamabad were taking steps which would enable them in course of time to convert the line of control into an international frontier. Peking did not welcome such a possibility publicly. But it did drop hints which suggested that it was not averse to a settlement in respect of Kashmir. As such the agreement between Mrs Gandhi and Sheikh Abdullah cannot by itself be the reason for the Chinese blast.
Similarly, it is highly unlikely that Peking has been provoked by the recent visit to New Delhi of the high-power Soviet military delegation headed by Marshal Grechko. India has been buying arms from the Soviet Union for over a decade and the relations between the two countries have been specially intimate since 1971 when they concluded the treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation. The Chinese do not like all this. But they have taken it into account in formulating their own approach towards India which has been far from hostile in the past one year and even longer.
Explanation
This leaves the US decision to resume arms supplies to Pakistan as the only major development which can explain the Chinese action. This makes sense on two counts. The American move will complicate relations between India and Pakistan and thus facilitate China’s task if it wishes to use Islamabad to harass New Delhi. Also, the US action can intensify the rivalry between the two superpowers in South Asia and vindicate the Chinese view that “the contradiction between them is irreconcilable.”
There were reports last year that in his discussions with visiting American senators Mr Chou En-lai had himself advocated Pakistan’s case for US arms. He has therefore reason to welcome the American decision. But the vindication of the larger proposition is equally important for him because he appears to be its author.
All of China’s major foreign policy pronouncements in recent years have rested on the formulation that the “compromise and collusion” between the United States and the Soviet Union “can only be partial, temporary and relative, while their contention is all-embracing, permanent and absolute”. Peking has even used it to convince itself that the Soviet Union constitutes a threat not so much to it as to western Europe.
This formulation represents a repudiation of the earlier Chinese view that the two super-powers are colluding in order to divide the world into spheres of influence and it was made following the death of Marshal Lin Piao in 1971. As such it may well be the product of an internal struggle. But both these points are less pertinent than the fact that either it has not occurred to the Chinese leaders that collision can also be a form of collusion in our era or they have chosen not to give expression to this proposition.
One must be purblind to suggest that the governments in Washington and Moscow have at any point agreed to go through the motions of competition in order to fool the rest of the world. Their competition in respect of weapons, both nuclear and conventional, has, for instance, been an extremely costly and a deadly serious affair for both. The Soviet Union, the weaker of the two super-powers, has also made moves beginning with the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950 to change the power balance in its favour. But the results of the arms race, the ideological competition and the cold war are illuminating.
Focus
The Chinese leaders have said again and again that “strategically, Europe is the focus of their contention where they are in constant confrontation”. But what has the contention led to? Leaving aside recent developments in Portugal and the aggravation of the conflict between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus, there has been no significant change in the power balance since Marshal Tito’s defection from the communist bloc in 1948 and the collapse of the communist revolt in Greece.
In plain terms, it will not be unfair to say that the net result of the super-power rivalry has been to freeze the division of Europe and to consolidate the influence of the United States in the western part and of the Soviet Union in the eastern. Neither the economic upsurge in Western Europe nor the search for greater autonomy in Eastern Europe has made much difference to this fundamental reality.
By any reckoning, the competition between the super-powers has been acute in West Asia since the mid-’fifties when the Soviet Union agreed to supply weapons to President Nasser and support the forces of radical Arab nationalism headed by him. But the Soviet moves also frightened conservative regimes in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran and thereby greatly facilitated the task of the United States in making them safe for western oil companies and other interests.
The situation has greatly changed since the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973. But President Sadat could not have gone to war unless he had taken steps to reduce Soviet influence and win the cooperation of King Feisal because, without it, oil could not have been used as a political weapon and the outcome of the Yom Kippur war could well have been very different.
Also, it is a reasonable inference that the United States would not have adopted as helpful an attitude towards the Arabs as it has since if its Western European and Japanese allies were not critically dependent on Arab oil, if its own import of oil had not increased considerably since the 1967 Arab-Israel war and if it was not assured that President Sadat was genuinely interested in living in peace with Israel as well as the pro-Western and conservative monarchies and sheikhdoms.
Plainly, factors other than the US-Soviet competition account for the rise in the power and influence of the Arabs. That could have only kept them divided and perpetuated external influence over them.
Despite the remarkable changes in West Asia, the super-powers would have maintained and extended their hold on Iran and Iraq if other Arab leaders, especially President Boumedienne, had not brought about an agreement between them. But for it, both Teheran and Baghdad would have continued to spend billions of dollars on purchasing arms from America and the Soviet Union and thus remained dependent on them. Whom would this competition benefit if not the super-powers themselves? Also, who can say that the present agreement will lead to a normalisation of relations between Iran and Iraq and to peace in the region if the two regimes continue the arms race and allow themselves to be manipulated by Washington and Moscow?
Competition
China itself has suffered as a result of the competition between the super-powers. But for it, the United States would not have had any good reason to intervene in the Korean war, recognise Taiwan and do all the evil things it has done in Indo-China for the last decades. In other words, China would have achieved its objective of national unification in the ‘fifties and its security environment might well have been much more favourable if the super-powers were not contending for influence in the regions around it. This would naturally have reduced for it the need to go in for nuclear weapons at a hectic pace. And the absence of a military threat and the availability of larger resources for development could have greatly reduced the compulsion to go in for the kind of austerities Peking has had to impose on its people.
The Chinese leadership can legitimately argue that collusion between the two super-powers would have been far more dangerous for the militarily weaker countries. But collusion without the backdrop of collision could not have fooled anyone or won willing supporters for either. Perhaps it could not have been sustained because in the absence of fear of each other, neither might have been able to mobilise the will and resources that are needed for a bid for world domination. Both the Soviet Union and America were expansionist and imperialist powers before they came to confront each other. But their post-war ambitions fall into an altogether different category. Collision has suited them remarkably well in undermining the autonomy of other countries.
The Times of India, 19 April 1975