Moscow – Success in India, Fear of China – Monday 23 August 1971- Time Magazine

Moscow – Success in India, Fear of China

Monday 23 August 1971

Time Magazine

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THERE is no summer slowdown where some of the world’s more stubborn quarrels are concerned: Catholics and Protestants in Ulster; Arabs and Israelis (and, increasingly, Arabs and Arabs) in the Middle East; Hindus and Moslems (not to mention Bengalis and Punjabis) on the Indian subcontinent. These discords are at once so enduring, so volatile and so impassioned that they sometimes make the quarrels among the superpowers seem rational and readily soluble. Indeed, in a week when the communiqués of conflict bore datelines like Belfast, Beirut and Dacca, it is noteworthy that the Big Four were inching closer to a settlement of the Berlin problem, a hangover from the days of World War II.

The most interesting news to emerge last week, however, involved the intervention of a superpower in the bloodiest and potentially the most dangerous of the world’s atavistic conflicts. Moscow hailed its 20-year treaty of non-aggression and mutual cooperation with New Delhi as a move designed to forestall total warfare between India and Pakistan. It probably is that in part, but the accord, by apparently ending India’s nonalignment, also promises important benefits for the Soviet Union. It gives the Russians influence and status on the Indian subcontinent, perhaps including ports of call and bunkering facilities for the Soviet Union’s growing Indian Ocean fleet. Most important, the treaty was a countermeasure to the stunning U.S. move toward Peking. In the long perspective, most observers would bet on China rather than on India as a major military and industrial power of the future. Nevertheless, in aligning with India, Asia’s second most populous nation, Moscow gains an important ally in its dispute with China—one that could be the springboard for a Soviet treaty system throughout Asia. It is too soon to tell whether a pattern is about to freeze into place—India and Russia lined up against Pakistan, China and the U.S. —but such a chronic confrontation could be dangerous.

Critical Juncture. On balance, the pact is a significant success for Soviet foreign policy at a time when the Kremlin has had a surfeit of diplomatic setbacks. Nor is there any doubt that it was a disturbing defeat for U.S. policy (see box). The treaty was signed less than 24 hours after Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko arrived in New Delhi on a visit that had been announced only 48 hours earlier. Before a cheering crowd estimated at 1,500,000 people on the day of the signing, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi insisted unconvincingly that the treaty does not alter India’s longstanding policy of nonalignment. “We must understand,” she said, “that if we are strong, tens of countries will come to our assistance. If we are weak, none will help us.”

The pact was quickly approved by the Indian Parliament, even winning the support of some of the opposition right-wing parties. A.B. Vajpayee, leader of the archconservative Jana Sangh, spoke for most when he declared that the treaty had found a friend for India at a critical juncture. In the five months since the Pakistani civil war broke out, India’s economy has been seriously set back by an influx of 8,000,000 East Pakistani refugees. The cost of supporting them has already mounted to more than $300 million, of which other nations, led by the U.S., have contributed only $125 million. Two weeks ago, with India feeling the economic strain—and feeling increasingly isolated as well —New Delhi dispatched D.P. Dhar, former Indian ambassador to the Soviet Union, to Moscow. In less than 36 hours the treaty was put together. Dhar brought it back to New Delhi the day before Gromyko arrived.

The nonaggression treaty calls for economic, scientific and technological cooperation. Unlike the NATO pact, it does not commit either nation to an armed response in the event of an attack on the other. Western diplomats said its wording compared more with the CENTO and SEATO treaties. It is only the second of its kind between Moscow and any world capital outside the Communist camp, the other being a 15-year treaty signed with Egypt in May.

The Soviet-Indian pact seems to have been inspired by Leonid Brezhnev’s call at the World Communist Party Conference in Moscow in 1969 for a “system of collective security in Asia,” a statement reflecting the Russians’ growing concern over what they called Chinese “imperialism.” Actually, Moscow’s influence on the subcontinent has been growing steadily. Since 1955, India has received $1.4 billion in Soviet aid. Some estimates are that 70% to 80% of India’s industrial defense capacity has been supplied by the Soviet Union.

Grave Consequence. If Pakistan’s threats of war provided the impetus for India’s action, Richard Nixon’s sudden decision to visit Peking continued to worry the Russians. One sign of nervousness: four major articles on China appeared in the Soviet press last week alone. The most important one, titled “Questions Calling for a Practical Answer,” was written by Georgy Arbatov, director of Moscow’s U.S.A. Research Institute and widely regarded as the Kremlin’s foremost Americanologist. It described the Nixon trip as “a matter of grave consequence for the Soviet people, for world socialism, for the entire international situation, for world peace.”

Burden of Accommodation. Demonstrating considerable sophistication about the U.S., Arbatov noted that not “all Americans who favor an improvement in U.S.-China relations are motivated by hostility toward other socialist countries,” meaning Soviet Russia. But some of the U.S. champions of a rapprochement with Peking are also “rabid haters of the Soviet Union,” added Arbatov, and that “cannot but make one think.” He noted the widespread antiwar feeling in the U.S. and the desire for international relaxation, but added that Moscow ought to take “the statements about Washington’s peace-loving intentions and good will seriously” only if they are combined with U.S. accommodation on Viet Nam, the Middle East, the arms race and the European security treaty. Arbatov reached a semipessimistic conclusion suggesting that “events will develop in another direction,” with U.S. policy unchanged on everything except China. All this seemed to place too much of the burden of accommodation on the U.S. Nevertheless, the article seemed in some ways to constitute a plea for U.S.-Soviet cooperation and a warning against an anti-Soviet coalition between Washington and Peking.

The matter is also believed to have been discussed at the hastily called Crimean summit conference two weeks ago attended by all Soviet bloc countries except Rumania. In what was read by observers as an outgrowth of that conference, Literaturnaya Gazeta, a leading Soviet weekly, last week reprinted a Polish article rebuking Rumania for taking a neutral position in the Chinese-Soviet dispute. In an even harsher tone-the official Hungarian daily Magyar Hirlap reported that Chinese Premier Chou En-lai would visit Albania, Yugoslavia and Rumania this fall. Since all three nations have asserted varying degrees of independence from Moscow, the Budapest paper warned that Chou’s junket “has an anti-Soviet edge.” For the first time, the paper also spoke of a “Tirana-Belgrade-Bucharest” axis.

Countering China. Oddly enough, China’s Chou, in his interview with New York Timesman James Reston, expressed a parallel concern (see THE PRESS). His government, he indicated, was worried about what they feel are Japanese aggressive designs for a Tokyo-Taipei-Seoul linkup. At one point during the interview, in fact, Reston told the Premier: “Nothing has surprised me quite as much since coming here as the vehemence of your feeling about Japan.” Obviously, however, Peking’s principal preoccupation is with its conflict with the Soviet Union.

Peking’s fears are reciprocated by the Russians. Even before a Nixon trip to Peking was in the offing, observers felt that the Soviet preoccupation with China was a principal reason the Russians were eager to stabilize and formalize the status quo on their western flank. In recent months the Soviets have moved for a settlement on Berlin, reiterated their desire for a European Security Conference aimed at recognition of the existing borders of Eastern Europe, and cooperated with West Germany’s Willy Brandt in negotiating the Treaties of Moscow and Warsaw, both of which formalize existing boundaries. Thus, while the Indian treaty in some ways represents a bold Soviet foreign policy initiative, it can also be seen as one more move by Moscow to counter China.