It was only to be expected that Mrs. Gandhi’s government would one day recognize the Heng Samrin regime in Kampuchea. The ruling party had made a clear commitment to this effect in its election manifesto last December. It could not have gone back on it unless some dramatic development had obliged it to review its stand. Apparently, despite the clashes between the Thai and Vietnamese troops on the Kampuchea-Thai border in recent weeks, New Delhi has not felt called upon to do so. The attitudes have hardened in south-east Asia. The Vietnamese are, for example, no longer willing to agree to pull out of Kampuchea in return for the cessation of external assistance to the Khmer Rouge guerillas. They now say that they cannot withdraw their troops in view of the Chinese threat to their security. And they see the Thai attempt to compel the refugees to return to Kampuchea and the US decision to step up arms supplies to Bangkok as part of a concerted plan to harass them. On the other side of the fence, Malaysia and Indonesia have fallen in line with the ASEAN hardliners who have been opposed to the recognition of the Heng Samrin regime and to the normalization of relations with Hanoi regardless of the possibility that non-recognition might lead to an expansion of the Chinese influence in the region. New Delhi has disregarded all this. The last-minute cancellation of the visit of the minister for external affairs to Kuala Lumpur some days ago was the first indication that it had decided to recognise the Heng Samrin set-up.
But why this timing? Perhaps this is not a pertinent question. Perhaps Mrs. Gandhi felt that delay might complicate the problem in case tensions on the Thai-Kampuchean border increase and both the US and the USSR are drawn further into the conflict. But it is also possible that after the Indian statements on Afghanistan and relations with China, the first fairly critical of the Soviet stand and the second positively friendly towards Beijing, she has thought it necessary to make a gesture towards Moscow. This is speculation. But it is not altogether without foundation in that policy-makers in New Delhi are generally guided more by considerations of the country’s relations with the two superpowers than by their assessment of the local and regional factors. It is also India’s general policy to de-link issues. New Delhi sees no contradiction between close ties with the Soviet Union and its criticism of the Soviet action in Afghanistan or between the desire to seek a border agreement with China and its recognition of the present set-up in Phnom Penh. This approach inevitably has its drawbacks. But it does make for independence in foreign policy and prevents the country from being committed too strongly on any one side at any time.