Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0169/01696.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 35KB | 531 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01696}
$Pretitle{221}
$Title{India
Chapter 9C.   Relations with the Super Powers}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Surjit Mansingh}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{soviet
india
united
states
india's
indian
union
relations
foreign
military}
$Date{1985}
$Log{Zubin Mehta*0169601.scf
}
Country:     India
Book:        India, A Country Study
Author:      Surjit Mansingh
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1985

Chapter 9C.   Relations with the Super Powers

The United States

     Observers of Indo-American relations have frequently commented on the
fluctuations of warmth and coolness that characterized them. Expectations of
mutuality in national interests have been generated by many similarities
between the two countries, such as democratic political systems, pluralistic
societies, and similar legal traditions. Many disappointments have resulted
from the fact that although the long-term objectives of both states in world
peace, prosperity, and stability were the same, they have seldom agreed on how
to pursue these ends in specific areas or in a given time frame. Although a
search for commonality continued in the mid-1980s, their diplomacy remained
one of misunderstanding and missed opportunities. The world's two largest
democracies were separated geographically, were at different stages of
economic and political development, and were strongly asymmetrical in terms of
power and immediate salience to each other. Both were given to viewing their
acts as moral and the acts of those who differed, immoral.

     Most Americans were ignorant of and indifferent to the nationalist
struggle in India, and the image they received of Mahatma Gandhi was a
confused one. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to persuade Britain to
accelerate movement on Indian independence were frustrated by Winston
Churchill's obduracy on the subject, thus producing both goodwill and
bitterness among Indians. The contrasting experiences of the United States and
India in the twentieth century gave the leaders of the two countries after
World War II very different perceptions on major issues confronting the
contemporary world.

     The United States stood as head of a victorious but rapidly crumbling
alliance, and India stood as the largest and most populist nation to emerge
from colonial dependency. Divergent perceptions could have been expected from
their leaders, but these were often described as misunderstandings or
wrong-headedness. Each side endeavored, but without success, to convert the
other to its own way of thinking. Each adopted a style of making commentaries
on the other's foreign policies in a tone of moralistic and self-righteous
criticism. Moreover, key decision-makers in the two countries frequently found
their counterparts personally difficult to deal with. The antagonisms aroused
in the 1950s by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in India and Defense
Minister Krishna Menon in the United States, for example, were strong and
long-lasting. In contrast, the exceptionally cordial meetings between
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Prime Minister Nehru in 1956 and 1959 and
between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981 and
1982 did much to mitigate outstanding problems of the times.

     Generally speaking, major problems in Indo-American bilateral relations
have arisen from different attitudes on the issues of greatest concern to
them: communism, colonialism, economic development, and international order.
At no time did India subscribe to United States strategies of containing
communism through military alliances or security arrangements. In Nehru's
view, Asian nationalism was a sufficient antidote. India's policy of
nonalignment precluded it from forming military alliances and was the basis
of its brief friendship with China and enduring ties with the Soviet Union.
Moreover, Pakistan's inclusion in American security arrangements had severe
repercussions on India not only because external military assistance was
perceived as encouraging Pakistan's leaders in adventurism on the subcontinent
but also because the regional imperatives of South Asia tended to be
overlooked by Washington's policymakers, who were preoccupied with global
strategies. On the issue of European colonialism, the United States did not
support India's anticolonial stands in international forums, was closely
identified with West European allies, and reacted sharply to India's military
takeover of the vestigial Portuguese colony of Goa in 1961. A common concern
with promoting economic development drew India and the United States into a
closer relationship based on aid in the 1950s and 1960s (see Foreign Aid;
Foreign Trade; Balance of Payments, ch. 6). However, their prescriptions for
developmental strategy and international economic cooperation varied, and
since 1971 direct United States aid to India has been negligible. Underlying
issues of international order surfaced in the 1970s on questions relating to
multilateral financial institutions and, with equal or greater cogency, on
questions of nuclear nonproliferation. They remained pertinent in 1985.

     India's refusal after independence to commit itself to either side in the
Cold War had a dual effect on United States policies in South Asia. On the one
hand, consideration of India's importance and potential power called forth
tangible American support for its economic and political stability, partly to
counteract the appeal of communism and the influence of the Soviet Union. On
the other hand, India's nonalignment made it difficult for United States
officials to justify such support within their own competitive decisionmaking
process and led many of them to prefer countries such as Pakistan, Iran, and
Turkey, which appeared to support Western security interests. One result of
this duality was the United States-Pakistan alliance of 1954, renewed in 1959
with accompanying assurances from Eisenhower to Nehru that the arms supplied
to Pakistan would not be used in any aggressive war. When Pakistan and India
went to war in 1965, the United States government refused to support India but
suspended military transfers to both countries. The United States-Pakistan
alliance had an adverse effect on the peace of the subcontinent and on United
States influence, which declined sharply in both countries after 1965.

     An exhaustive literature exists on the intertwining of great power
rivalries and Indo-Pakistani conflicts. The events of 1971 provide a classic
example of how this intertwining dragged Indo-United States relations to their
nadir. United States leaders were preoccupied with their initiation of a new
relationship with China. They became involved in a crisis they had not
anticipated on the side of Pakistan's military regime, which was using brutal
measures against its own people, and against the stronger and more democratic
power in the region, which was backed by the Soviet Union. India launched a
successful campaign from April to November to raise international
consciousness on the plight of people in East Pakistan and the pressures on
India created by the presence of 10 million refugees who had fled East
Pakistan. A succession of official and nonofficial dignitaries pleaded with
the United States not to send more arms to Pakistan but to persuade the
generals to reach a political settlement with East Pakistan's chosen leaders,
thus allowing refugees to return home. Disputed quantities of arms continued
to enter Pakistan despite assurances from the United States to the contrary
and over the objections of various United States legislators and
administration officials.

[See Zubin Mehta: Zubin Mehta conducting New York Philharmonic Orchestra,
September 1984 Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington]

     In November 1971 Gandhi visited Washington. She praised the press,
restated the Bangladesh case, and decried that "once again, we see the old
habit of underestimating the power of nationalism in Asia." Her two meetings
with President Rich