In an article last Sunday on Mrs. Gandhi’s forthcoming visit to Washington, I argued that the obvious disarray in the Reagan administration’s foreign and defence policies should enable her to command a sympathetic hearing for the Indian point of view. But what is the Indian point of view?
In the formulation of our policy, we have as a rule been strong on principles and weak on details. Thus we have parrot-like talked of non-alignment, anti-imperialism and anti-racialism as if they were a substitute for a precise definition of our interests from time to time and for an active pursuit of those interests through proper instruments.
This weakness has, of course, not been peculiar to us. What to speak of newly liberated countries with little experience of international relations, the super-powers themselves have suffered from it since the onset of the cold war in the ‘forties. Indeed, the cold war itself has been the result not so much of a clash of specific and identifiable interests as of the supposed conflict of ideologies which Mr. Nehru appropriately compared with religious wars of yore. But that cannot justify our own lack of precision and neglect of details.
It is generally not appreciated that this emphasis on principles has been an expression of defensiveness on our part. We have often been accused of being self-righteous. The charge has not been wholly unfounded. We do tend to strike moral postures. But such posturing in reality amounts to a refusal to engage in meaningful discussions with our interlocutors and to relate ourselves to reality. We have sought refuge in slogans, specially in our dealings with the United States and the Soviet Union, because we have been afraid of interacting with one for fear of annoying the other.
Strange Contradiction
This has created a strange contradiction between the appearance and the reality of our foreign policy. While we have been seen to be active and occasionally even aggressive actors on the international stage, we have in fact been evasive and defensive. One result has been that we have not acquired the capacity to influence US and Soviet policies in our own and adjoining regions.
Let us take the example of Pakistan and examine how we have handled the problems arising out of our conflict with it in our dealings with the West, especially, the United States.
Soon after the sub-continent’s partition and independence, Sir Olaf Caroe, an eminent British civil servant with long association with India, expounded a geo-strategic concept which firmly placed the newly established Pakistan in the Central Asian and the Persian Gulf framework. He argued that since the defence of oil interests in the Gulf region against Soviet encroachments would be of the greatest importance for the western world, Pakistan must have precedence over India in the West’s schemes and plans in the area.
Indian policy-makers challenged some of his propositions. They, for example, contested the view that a power vacuum had arisen in the region as a result of the liquidation of the British empire in the sub-continent, that the Soviet Union was an expansionist power by virtue of its Marxist-Leninist ideology and the Czarist-imperialist inheritance, and that the West needed to erect a new alliance system to contain the Soviet Union. Subsequently as Arab “nationalism” began to assert itself in the mid-fifties through President Nasser, they also argued that the West-sponsored alliance of “northern tier” states was likely to endanger western interests rather than promote them.
But it is doubtful whether in their discussions with their western counterparts the Indian policymakers ever emphasised strongly enough the fact that Pakistan, for good or ill, belonged to the subcontinent and that it could not be torn from this setting and attached either to Central Asia or the Gulf. This issue is still extremely important for us and therefore deserves to be carefully examined. In fact, it should form an important part of our dialogue with the Americans because their decision to provide F-16 aircraft and other highly sophisticated military equipment to Pakistan springs from the same assumption which Sir Olaf made and propounded over three decades ago.
Two Impulses
Beneath the surface of the Nehru framework, two impulses have informed the approach of many of us to the question of Pakistan’s identity and place in the world. Having grown up under the British influence, we have tended to think of the Hindukush being the natural line of defence for the sub-continent and to believe that religion and not ethnicity is the principal determinant of a society’s identity. Thus many of our military top brass and intellectuals have been in sympathy with the Anglo-US view that it is necessary to build a defensive barrier to check Soviet expansionism and that Pakistan must be an essential constituent of that barrier. Their advocacy of Indo-Pakistan friendship is also partly the product of their understanding of this wider problem.
Both these propositions are erroneous. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the Soviet leadership nurses expansionist ambitions, it cannot follow that it will pursue the old Czarist course and seek to annex Afghanistan and Iran in order to get to the warm water ports in the Gulf. As everyone knows, the terrain in Afghanistan and Iran is impossible and the Soviet Union is no longer a mere land power. Having developed the second most powerful navy in the world, it can get to the Gulf, if it is so inclined, through the easier and cheaper sea route.
But let us put that aside for the time being. Let us accept that the Soviet leadership is still guided by the Czarist approach which undoubtedly influenced Stalin and found expression first in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 whereby Moscow indicated an interest in areas south of its present border and then in its efforts to set up pro-communist regimes in Iranian Azerbaijan and Iraqi Kurdistan. Even then, we have no option to conclude that the task of organising a countervailing defence system is impossible for want of unity of outlook and purpose among the countries concerned and that Pakistan cannot in any case belong to such an arrangement, the protestations of its rulers notwithstanding.
Nature has made South Asia a distinct geographical entity and history has given it a distinct cultural identity. That alone can explain why no major ruler in Delhi has ever been content with anything less than control over the whole sub-continent. Thanks to the modern means of communication, the British were more successful than their predecessors in this pursuit. But the others had cherished the same ambition. The partition in 1947 could not annul the fact of geographical and cultural unity.
In a sense, western policy-makers, too, have known this to be the case. That is one reason why they have repeatedly tried to get the Kashmir dispute settled. They have taken the view that if somehow this obstacle can be removed, the two countries can be persuaded to co-operate in the military field in order to checkmate the Soviet Union and China. They made a monumental blunder. In sum, they tried to attach the centre of the sub-continent which is India to the periphery which is Pakistan rather than the other way about. But that is understandable. In view of their anxiety to project Pakistan as a Central Asian and Gulf power, they were unable to accept the obvious fact that if there was to be a South Asian order, New Delhi had to be its centre.
But while this blunder on the part of Washington was understandable in the ‘fifties and the ‘sixties, it is not in the ‘eighties. Despite the blinkers of ideology and wishful thinking that the Americans often wear, it should have been possible for them to recall that beyond providing a base near Peshawar which facilitated U-2 spy flights over the Soviet Union, Pakistan made no contribution to their cause during the period of the first alliance. It only embroiled them in its conflict with India.
More Confused
The US perspective on Pakistan has been even more confused since Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan in December 1979. If, in Washington’s view, the Soviet military presence constitutes a threat to Pakistan itself, it cannot legitimately expect Islamabad to be in a position to render worthwhile assistance to the security of conservative regimes in the Gulf. And if the Reagan administration does not expect the Pakistani junta to be of much help to Saudi Arabia, it cannot possibly justify its decision to accede to the Pakistani request for highly sophisticated military hardware.
Indeed, Washington would find it difficult to explain its proposed supplies even in the context of Saudi need for Pakistan assistance and Islamabad’s willingness to render such assistance. These can make sense only on the assumption that Pakistan is caught in a pincer of which the Soviet forces in Afghanistan are one arm and India another.
Surely the Reagan administration could not be encouraging King Khaled to befriend India and President Zia-ul-Haq to seek accommodation with it and inviting Mrs. Gandhi to Washington if it was making such an assumption. But, what other premises can it be working on? Indeed, has it thought through the assumptions on which its policy is based?
It looks as if the ghost of Sir Olaf still haunts Washington. If that is so, Mrs. Gandhi and her aides should try and lay it once and for all. They should seek to convince President Reagan and his aides that Pakistan cannot just transcend its sub-continental identity on the strength of Islam and play the role of the gendarme in the Gulf.
The Times of India, 28 April 1982