STRATEGIC AFFAIRS

Cold War 2.0

SinoUS Strife and India
Atul Bhardwaj

Despite professing Non-Alignment,

India effectively became a pawn
in the hands of the Western
powers as it walked into the trap
of the 1962 SinoIndian war. As a
new Cold War builds up between
China and the United States,
would India be able to avoid its
past mistakes?

Atul Bhardwaj (atul.beret@gmail.com) is a

former officer of the Indian Navy and currently
an ICSSR senior fellow at the Institute of
Chinese Studies, New Delhi.

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he Cold War was as much about

ideology as it was about money. It
began after Stalin refused to be a
part of the United States (US)-led Bretton Woods system. Russia created its
own sphere of influence where the dollar
was not required for intra-bloc trade.
China is the new Russia in the latest avatar
of the Cold War. It is creating its own
space on the global map where it can possibly defy the dollars hegemony. The
major difference, however, is that Russia
used political tools to enhance its influence whereas China is using financial
instruments to fuel its expansion.
Russian advancement was considered
inimical to the sustainability of the Anglo
Saxon banking order. This challenge was
met by creating a wedge in the communist
world by keeping Russia and China
apart. The 1962 IndoChina war played a
big role in the SinoSoviet split. In the
Opium War and other imperial wars,
India did not enjoy freedom to decide its
participation. The IndoChina war in
1962 was the first war where the Indian
leadership had a modicum of choice. Yet it
was easily drawn into the war because its
right-wing political and business groups
were inclined towards sustaining Western
dominance. The Indian left, with its roots
in Fabian socialism and American civil
rights movements, too was more amiable
to fulfilling American strategic aims.
Today, we are on the cusp of a new
Cold War. There is little doubt that the
transatlantic world will play its old game
to keep the Eurasian world apart. It is
already creating a discourse to maintain
complete control over global trade. Will
India once again be used by the West to
fulfil its wishes? India needs to evaluate
the impact of participating in wars, at
the Wests behest, on its development.
More importantly, has India developed
the requisite strategic competence to
comprehend the nuances of the game?

Nehrus Naivet
In the 1960s India had imagined an isolated China abandoned by its ideological
ally and shunned by the US and Europe.
Nehru had probably felt confident of
launching the forward policy based on
the calculation that the world was at
Indias feet. However, the reality that
revealed itself in the aftermath of the
war was completely different.
The Peking Daily of 19 February 1964
carried two interesting stories. It reported
that Chinese Premier Chou-En-lai cabled
regards to Nehru when passing
through Indian airspace on his way to
Karachi. The second story, US Policy
towards China Which Is Roaming in a
Blind Alley referred to the prepared
text of President Kennedys speech that
remained undelivered due to his assassination. The speech was about using
countries on the periphery of the Communist world and infusing 3.5 million
allied troops along the Communist frontier at one-tenth the cost of maintaining
a comparable number of American soldiers (Kennedy 2013).
Of the nine countries where 70% of the
US military assistance was focused, eight
were located in Asia and this, according
to Peking Daily, was US imperialisms
naked confession of its plot of carrying
on aggression in Asia. Speaking specifically of American penetration of India,
the story said that Americans were providing India a protective umbrella in
order to expand their control over it. The
issue of the US, Britain and other Western
countries providing Air Umbrella to
India in case of a repeat attack by China
had become a contentious issue in the
Indian media. In response to Nehrus
secret letters to Kennedy on 19 November 1962 asking for American air support, the Americans sent a team to study
Indias air capabilities in February 1963
(Hindustan Times 1963). The communists
were up in arms against the government
for letting the Americans in and handing
over Indias defence needs to them. The
American Ambassador John K Galbraith
made it abundantly clear that they were
in only because of Indias request and
were neither interested in military alliance

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vol l no 34

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Economic & Political Weekly

STRATEGIC AFFAIRS

with India nor in the market for military

bases (USIS 1963).
Chou-En-lais courtesy message, combined with Kennedys speech, mocked at the
naivet of Nehrus Non-Alignment. Almost
one year after the 1962 war, the Americans and Europeans were knocking at the
Chinese door to resume trade while India
had severed all trade links with China.
Fattening the Chinese
The west coast of America raised the
demand for increased trade with China.
On 13 December 1963 Roger Hilsman,
Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, delivered a speech at the
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco
that was reported by Max Frankel in the
New York Times the following day. Hilsman advocated the continuation of the
Kennedy administrations approach to
dealing with China. The approach was
to exploit the growing SinoSoviet
differences aggravated by the 1962 war.
Hilsman referred to the Open Door
policy on China. He basically said that
America should wait for China to change
as had post-Stalin Russia (Dar 1963).
According to a 5 March 1964 report of
P N Menon of the Consulate General of
India at San Francisco, the members of
the World Trade Association belonging
to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce voted overwhelmingly to set up a
five-member committee to study US policy
on trade with mainland China. The president of the association, Jack Gomperts,
announced, We in San Francisco have a
historic role as the gateway to the
Pacific. The San Francisco Examiner of
1 March 1964 reported Gomperts prophetic words (Dar 1963) explaining his
long-term vision of trading with China:
Lets say that 10 years from now there is just the
slightest increase in the Chinese standard of
living. The result could be great demand for
material goods We should establish relations now; however, I dont think the chances
of doing business are anything at all at the
moment. The Chinese have no money to pay
for the goods and no American businessman
is likely to extend credit. We might send raw
materials, certainly no processed goods.

He justified his eagerness to trade

with China using a British saying according to which a fat country is less a threat
to peace than a lean one, and added it
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august 22, 2015

was for business as well as humanitarian

purpose that he would like to see the
Chinese fatter (Dar 1963).
Many other voices clamouring to start
trade with China were also heard in
America. On 28 February 1964, The Daily
Commercial News published a letter sent
to President Lyndon B Johnson by the
International Longshoremens and Warehousemens Union that urged him to look
at commercial dealings with China realistically and without regard to past commitments made to ChiangKaishek in
times of Cold War hysteria (Dar 1963).
However Dean Rusk, the Secretary of
State, felt that the West could not be seen
to be exploiting SinoSoviet differences,
since such a political approach would
hamper direct dealings between individual Western and Eastern European countries. The Europeans argued against the
long-term sustainability of the American
policy that allowed China to economically languish and not be in a position to
inspire the AfroAsians and Latin American countries. The bigger dilemma was
the extent to which the door was to be
opened for China to stem any possibility
of the revival of Stalinist solidarity
between USSR and China.
It is to cause the SinoSoviet rupture
that the West made up its mind to ensure
Chinese entry into the United Nations
and make it a part of the international
disarmament process. Furthermore, the
French with their prolonged experience
in Vietnam suggested to Washington
that no major move could be made
there without the acquiescence of
China (Dar 1963). According to a commentary in the New York Times, on
24 January 1964, James Reston felt that
De Gaulles other reason for pressing for
greater engagement with China was to
prevent it from isolating the Whites of
the world by creating coloured-solidarity among the AfroAsian world.
Eurasias New Avatar
It is important to understand whether the
past will cast its shadow on the ensuing
Cold War in the region. Will Russia, China
and India fear each other and be unsuccessful in forging a common Eurasian
identity? American rhetoric today is no
different than what it was five decades
vol l no 34

ago. Putin is the new Stalin for many

American conservatives (Stokols 2015).
Some sections in the American strategic
community are also talking in terms of the
strategic ramifications of losing Russia
to China. Getting militarily involved with
Russia would entail enhanced defence
expenditures that Europe and the US
can ill afford at this juncture. American
strategy appears to shift focus to South
China Sea and North Korea and make
China the fall guy in the game. However,
what America is probably ignoring is that
Russia and China combined are now in a
better position to challenge Western
hegemony than they were six decades ago.
China has financial and economic strength
and Russia has world-class military
wherewithal. China has amassed $4 trillion reserves and Russia has successfully
jumped from the valve technology that
supported the Soviet era weapon systems to the best chips available in the
market. Americans have to understand
that the world has undergone a change.
Iran is not Iraq and Putin is no Yeltsin.
However, in South Asia, the US is as
strong as it was during the Cold War. The
only difference is that in Cold War 2.0,
India and Pakistan are likely to do a role
reversal. India could be USs new Pakistanthe buyer of American military
equipment and the overt provider of military bases and manpower for American
strategic goals. And Pakistan may wear
the garb of non-alignment vis--vis US
and China the way India did in the 1950s
and the early 1960s.
References
Dar, A K (1963): Letter from A K Dar Indian
Embassy Washington, to B K Sanyal, Director
(West), MEA, 16 December, National Archives
of India/ Ministry of External Affairs /F/101(33)/
WII/1963.
Hindustan Times (1963): The Umbrella Bogey,
23 February.
Kennedy, John F (2013): Full Text: JFKs Neverdelivered Speech from Dallas, Pittsburgh PostGazette, 21 November, available at http://
www. post-gazette.com/news/nation/ 2013 /
11/22/Full-text-JFK-s-never-delivered-speechfrom-Dallas/sto
Stokols, Eli (2015): Jeb Bush, Germany, Makes
Aggressive Charge at Putin, Politico, 9 June,
available at http://www.politico.com/story/
2015/06/jeb-bush-germany-visit-118779.
html#ixzz3ioIeR2rq, accessed on 5 August
2015.
USIS (1963): US Military Aid and Air Defence
Study in Response to Indias Request, States
Galbraith, Press Release, United States Information Service, New Delhi, 20 February.

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