Out of alignment

Tanvi Madan’s Fateful Triangle shows  why Communist China cast a shadow on Indo-US ties after Jawaharlal Nehru’s first official visit to the US in 1949. Washington saw China as a foe, New Delhi as a neighbour with which India must engage. India recognised the communist regime. India and the US perceived China as a geopolitical threat and competitor—and still do. Can they forge closer ties to counter China’s influence in Asia? That outcome  is neither impossible nor inevitable, argues Tanvi Madan.  

The US thought India’s progress was essential to counter China:  India  stressed strong defence forces. Ms Madan rightly points out that India was a low priority for the US during the Cold War. Not even India’s flowering democracy enhanced India’s importance for the US: Washington believed  that America  and its West European allies could prove that democracies and progress were intertwined. But the US rejected Pakistan’s demand to end aid to India and to press it to resolve the Kashmir dispute. American largesse would prevent India from becoming communist. 

Ms Madan confirms America’s dislike of nonalignment but points out that neither Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon wanted India as an ally. An economically weak India would be an additional security burden for the US and for the American taxpayer because, as Eisenhower put it, the US would have to defend “2,000 miles more of active frontier”.   America was not aiming to win India over but to  ensure that it was not lost to the other side. 

In fact, the mistrust between India and the US always complicated their ties. The US wanted trust to precede the transfer of military technology. But India saw offers of military technology — such as those offered by the Soviets — as building trust. The mistrust and suspicion between India and the US persist to this day. 

How did the US administration react when it perceived Nehru to be acting against US interests, for instance, at the Bandung Conference in 1955, when he seemingly placed the Chinese pariah on the world stage?  In general, this reviewer wonders why Ms Madan did not consult the private papers of Presidents Truman and Eisenhower for the first part of the book, especially since she has made good use of the private collections of subsequent American presidents.   

Her evidence reconfirms that Nehru was no admirer of China or the Soviet Union. But Ms Madan is silent on Krishna Menon’s reported influence over Nehru, since he was a reason Washington often took a dim view of nonalignment. Why did Eisenhower, well disposed to India, view him as a menace?   

How much the US helped India hinged on its own relationship with China. India itself tilted towards the US during its 1962 war with China, and towards the Soviet Union in 1971, as the Sino-US entente emerged. 

Nonalignment never prevented India from getting close to either superpower, but mutual interests decided the “tilt”.  

During the 1962 Sino-Indian war the US considered sending an aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal to display to China its support for India. It warned Beijing that it would help India in the event of a Chinese attack. But in 1971, at the time of the Bangladesh war, the US deployed the aircraft carrier Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to show its opposition to India. The US now wanted to cultivate China. And it turned to Pakistan, not India, to be its secret diplomatic conduit to China. Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger regarded the Indo-Soviet Treaty as a bombshell, but he thought that the Soviets could use their influence to restrain India. 

China’s economic rise after 1979 changed its place in the US-India ties. America started looking at it as a major strategic and economic partner and helped it to enhance its economic and strategic profile. But India needed American backing against China. Manmohan Singh broke India’s dependence on Russian arms by deciding on the  purchase of  American weapons. Donald Trump and Narendra Modi have strengthened the defence tie but Ms Madan does not spell out the difference between a strategic partnership and an alliance. 

India is careful not to let its closer ties with the US sour its relationships with China and Russia. Meanwhile, Washington continues to raise questions about India’s ability and capacity to enlarge its role against China. The US thinks in terms of adversaries and allies, India in terms of multiple partners. But could India’s “strategic autonomy” become a rigid doctrine that could work against its own interests? 

America’s appreciation of China’s progress raises the broader question facing Washington and New Delhi. In the face of contemporary India’s economic decline, how much will India contribute to America’s Indo-Pacific? The query is being raised in Washington, if only because strategic ends and economic means are always intertwined. Ms Madan does not quite answer that question. 

In the 21st century Indian and American thinking on, and expectations of, the relationship remain unaligned.  India and the US will have to work hard to further deepen their tie.  That is the sober conclusion of Ms Madan’s timely book. 

The reviewer is a Founding Professor of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution in New Delhi. Website: www.anitaindersingh.com

FATEFUL TRIANGLE: How China Shaped U.S.—India Relations During the Cold War

Author:  Tanvi Madan

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Price: Rs 799