After his recent meeting with President Reagan and his aides, Mr Rajiv Gandhi has been quoted as having said that the United States now sees a larger role for India in the region and beyond. Implicit in this statement is a proposition which it is doubtful the Prime Minister has paid adequate attention to. This proposition is that India under his leadership is willing to play a role the Reagan administration envisages for it.
It is possible that we are taking Mr Gandhi’s statement far more seriously than we should. For it is plausible to argue that, as on earlier occasions, the Americans have made some polite noises about India’s “pre-eminence” in the region and that Mr Gandhi finds it useful to repeat what they have said to him in order to improve his own image which, as is only too obvious, has taken a great deal of battering in the last six months. But we might be guilty of complacency if we were to take it for granted that Mr Gandhi is speaking the language of expediency. So while we do not wish to be dogmatic, we would regard it necessary to spell out the possible implications of Mr Gandhi’s statement as it stands.
Basic Issue
Before we proceed further, one basic issue deserves to be addressed. Which is whether or not we are a regional power. The answer has to be firmly in the negative in a serious discussion. India is not a regional power in a meaningful sense of the term precisely for the same reason that no other country is in any region.
It was a gross simplification to talk of a bipolar world at any stage in the fifties and the sixties; now such talk has become so much nonsense. For while the Soviets have adopted a low profile outside eastern and central Europe where they can still call the shots by virtue of the presence of their security forces, the American incapacity to control events even in what they regard as their backyard (Latin America) and areas of vital interest (the Gulf and West Asia) is too patent to be denied. The US and the Soviet power, however, remains massive enough to permit the international scene to be re-ordered on a regional basis.
Thus China too cannot claim to be an effective regional power. Both the Soviets and the Americans are blocking it in south-east Asia. The Soviets may be a greater irritant for the Chinese right now in view of the Soviet support for Vietnam. But the US roadblock is also an indisputable fact. Indeed, if for some reason the Soviets had not come to the assistance of the Vietnamese, the Americans would have, the bitter war notwithstanding. This is the nature of the superpower game. If you doubt the validity of this proposition, please read the Tower Commission’s report on US arms supplies to Iran. I do not wish to recall the rearmament of West Germany.
We have to function within the parameters so defined, however distasteful we may find them. Certain conclusions follow, the most important being that if we wish to function as a regional power, we can do so only with the approval, if not support, of one of the two superpowers. Indeed, that also is a euphemism. The harsh reality has been and is that in our part of the world, the Soviet Union has never been in a position to enable us or anyone else to play such a role. In plain terms, therefore, a regional role for us has been and remains dependent on American goodwill. This was so even before the Sino-Soviet split. Inevitably it has become much more so since. And there is a big catch in this proposition as well.
There have been differences of opinion on whether Nehru was justified in turning down the US offer of military assistance and seek the friendship of China which he should have known would not be available to him, especially after Chinese troops moved into Tibet in 1950. But what if he were differently predisposed and had accepted the US offer? The answer should be obvious. It would almost certainly have facilitated the American decision to arm Pakistan – Pakistan has been central to the US policy in the Gulf – and exposed India to enormous pressure on the question of Jammu and Kashmir; remember the manner in which the US and Britain tried to twist our arm in 1962 when we turned to them for weapons after the Chinese attack on us. And in return for what? Some arms? Yes. But we would have been forced to join an anti-communist crusade. And even then, a worthwhile regional role would have remained elusive for us.
Pakistan’s example should not misguide us. Pakistan is a Muslim country; it commands a measure of acceptability in the surrounding Muslim world on that count; its relationship with the US is important but it is not without a leverage of its own among fellow Muslims; the Arabs would not have turned to us for military personnel even if we were America’s ally. Like the South Koreans, we could, of course, have sent troops to fight the Vietnamese alongside the Americans. But what that would have done to our politics would beggar description. As America’s ally, we would have lacked even the fig leaf which Islam provides Pakistan. Above all, the possibility cannot be ruled out that Pakistan could have gone radical and sought and secured Soviet military assistance. Such a Pakistan could have caused us much greater headache than a pro-US one has.
Tamil Tigers
The situation has been equally bizarre since 1981 when, in response to the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan, the US decided to revive military aid to Pakistan. In the circumstances, we have had no choice but to protest against the American decision, impinging as it does on our security. But can we seriously believe that our interests would have been better served if the Americans had not paid the price of using Pakistan as a conduit for weapons for the Afghan Mujahideen and thereby acquiesced in the consolidation of the Soviet power in Afghanistan and its likely spillover into Pakistan? We live in a topsy-turvy world where one copes with a situation created by others as best one can, knowing that it is idle to think of a scene where one can relax. In such a world, anti-Americanism, pro-Americanism, anti-Sovietism and pro-Sovietism are all exercises either in expediency, or in naivety, or in self-deception.
There can, of course, be convergence of interests between us and one of the two superpowers, and in fact on occasions both, as there was on the question of China between 1956 when Khrushchev and Bulganin visited India and 1971 when Kissinger managed to open a serious dialogue with the Chinese. There is presently such a convergence between New Delhi and Washington on the issue of Sri Lanka.
Apparently the Americans realised before most of us did that the Tamil Tigers were too well armed and too well entrenched in the Jaffna peninsula to be defeated by the Sri Lankan army without very substantial external assistance which no country could have provided in the face of the inevitable Indian opposition. It was, therefore, logical for them first to back India’s mediatory efforts even if they knew that these would fail, and then to encourage President Jayewardene to seek India’s military assistance in the only way it could possibly have been available – that is by signing the kind of accord he did with Mr Rajiv Gandhi.
As the accord was unexpectedly concluded and signed, I for one had no doubt that this could not have come about without the US endorsement and possibly initiative, though, of course, I was not in possession of any evidence to that effect. Subsequent events have validated that first impression. The Americans have not hidden their pleasure that India has now taken on the responsibility of keeping Sri Lanka one whole. That does not persuade me to change my position on Mr Gandhi’s decision. I remain convinced that India had to do what it has done in its own interest. But we cannot possibly be grateful to the Americans for not trying to obstruct what their own interests so clearly demand – an Indian military intervention on behalf of Sri Lanka’s integrity. Surely Mr Gandhi cannot have Sri Lanka in mind when he talks of the American recognition of a larger role for India in the region and beyond. And pray, larger than what? And what is the region he is speaking about. If vagueness has its merits, it has its dangers as well.
US Recognition
The Prime Minister has also spoken of America’s concern over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. This cannot surprise even the dumbest of us all. For most leaks about the programme’s progress have come from the United States and through the US intelligence agencies. The pertinent question now is not whether they can stop Islamabad in its tracks – it is already too late for that – but whether they can punish it for its impudence in defying the big brother in Washington. We should wait for an answer. Going by the past record, the answer is likely to be in the negative. Pakistan appears to us to be too valuable a strategic asset for the Americans to throw away on the ground of just a bomb in the basement. But if Mr Gandhi wants us to give his American friends the benefit of the doubt, he should also be willing to wait for the issue to be clinched.
Finally, the US can, if it so desires help us cope with the drought as no other country can. If it does, we shall have good reason to be grateful. Democratic India can neither allow millions to die as China under Mao could, nor can it accept the level of inflation which paved the way for the emergency in 1975. The margins on which democracy survives in this country is uncomfortably small. But surely that is very different proposition altogether. Indeed, Mr Gandhi will be well advised to take the country into confidence on the question of its need for U. aid and not try to sell it the lollipop of US acceptance of India as a great power. The Indian people are among the world’s grimmest realists.
The Times of India, 31 October 1987