INDIA AND THE COLD WAR
In the past few years, the ministry of external affairs has declassified a considerable collection of files now available to researchers in the National Archives of India. Though much more remains to be done, the material available on Indian foreign policy in the Archives and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library has, at last, attained a critical mass. Making full use of these resources, Zorawar Daulet Singh has made an outstanding contribution to diplomatic history.
The core of Power and Diplomacy: India’s Foreign Policies during the Cold War consists of six thoroughly researched case studies related to Indian foreign policy in the Cold War era. Three of these—the Indo-Pakistan crisis of 1950; the response to US military pacts in Asia and the arrival of the Cold War at India’s doorstep (1954); and Indian initiatives to prevent a Sino-US clash (1955)—date to the Nehru years. The three other case studies—concerning the shift in India’s position on the Vietnam War in 1966, the liberation of Bangladesh and the integration of Sikkim—relate to the Indira Gandhi period. The book throws new light on India’s foreign policy, including a full account of the internal debates on policy options within the foreign policy establishment.
Daulet Singh provides not only an empirical narrative of events but also a theoretical analysis of the factors determining policy choices. He argues that the key variable factor was the image or role that policy-makers envisaged for India, rather than changes in the external environment or domestic compulsions. Nehru eschewed a balance of power approach, seeking the role of peacemaker for India in the Asian continent. This was not based on woolly idealism. In Nehru’s own words, he did not strive for “merely a world where war is kept in check by a balancing of armed forces…[but] a world from which the major causes of war have been removed”. Daulet Singh argues that “Nehru rejected a narrow balance of power approach to security in favour of an ambitious quest to stabilise the geopolitical status quo by promoting an area of agreement around India’s neighbourhood.” The prime minister viewed the intensification of great power competition in Asia as a destabilising factor for India’s security; therefore, his aim was to create a non-aligned “area of peace” in India’s neighbourhood.
“Such an order was predicated on bringing China into the regional and international system,” observes Daulet Singh. It is in this context that he presents Nehru’s advocacy of the Panchsheel Treaty and his initiatives to prevent a Sino-US clash over Taiwan in 1955. In the latter case, Indian diplomacy “emerged not from a perceived threat to its own security interests—for Formosa was several thousand miles away from the subcontinent—but from Nehru’s peace area image and his approach to Asia’s security order”.
Indira Gandhi had a very different view of India’s security. In her perception, “sheer power seemingly prevails over principle… those who have attempted to eschew the use of force have had to pay the price of restraint”. Daulet Singh observes, “Nehru’s conception of India’s role as a bridgebuilder vis-à-vis the East-West divide in Asia was displaced by an alternative security seeker role that sought to leverage extra regional conflicts to provide security in a narrower geopolitical realm.” He writes about how this power-based approach to national security was reflected in Indian foreign policy in each of the three case studies pertaining to Indira Gandhi’s years in office.
This meticulously researched book is essential reading for anyone interested in India’s foreign policy.
The author argues that the key variable factor determining India’s policy choices was the image that policy-makers envisaged for India