NEWSWEEK, AUGUST 23,1971
THE VERY BEST OF FRIENDS
When Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko flew into New Delhi last week, the local diplomatic corps hardly took notice. Some of the foreign envoys had been assured by Indian officials that nothing very exciting would come from the Gromyko visit, and many of them repaired to the northern hill stations to escape the sweltering summer heat and rain. But only a day after his arrival Russia’s No. I diplomatic troubleshooter made it plain that he had come to India’s capital on urgent and momentous business. Seated at flag-bedecked table in New Delhi’s Foreign Ministry; Gromyko triumphantly set his signature to a precedent-shattering, twenty-year treaty of peace, friendship and co-operation between the Soviet Union and India.
On the face of” it, the treaty was so vaguely worded that, as one Western analyst observed, “ii could mean practically anything.” But the impact of document lay less in what it said than in what it implied. By entering into a formal agreement with another power. India took a long step away from its cherished policy of nonalignmcnt. By coming down solidly in support of India, Russia served up a warning to Pakistan against any rash moves (and thus, for the moment, seemed to reduce the threat of war between the subcontinent’s bitter enemies). In doing this, however. Moscow openly declared its opposition to China, Pakistan’s staunchest backer of late, and abruptly changed the balance of power in South Asia. In the same vein, the treaty reflected America’s plummeting prestige and influence in the region at a time when many Indians have come to view Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as arch villains. And in the sense, that Indo- Soviet pact could be regarded as the most important diplomatic fallout so far from Washington’s current courtship of Peking.
Despite appearances, the treaty was not an instant creation, for Moscow and. New Delhi had batted the idea around for at least two years. Until recently, however, neither government felt a pressing need to pursue the matter further. Then the outbreak of civil war in Pakistan this spring drastically altered the picture. As millions of Bengali refugees poured out of East Pakistan into India, and as border incidents mounted, relation between the two countries reached a flashpoint. Reports circulated that the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, under mounting pressure from right-wingers in Parliament, was on the verge of extending diplomatic relations to the Bangladesh rebels in East Pakistan, a move that Pakistani President Mohammed Yahya Khan warned would be tantamount to a declaration of war. In that emergency, interest in a Moscow-New Delhi agreement suddenly revived. And after secret negotiations in Moscow that lasted less than two weeks, Andrei Gromyko was on his way to New Delhi to do the honors.
Much of the twelve-article treaty devoted itself to innocuous promises of technological cooperation and cultural exchanges. But the key passage. Article IX.
pledged immediate “mutual consultations” in the event of hostile acts against the signatory countries by a third party (publicly, the signers insisted that they did not have any specific third party in mind, but hardly anyone doubted that the description was aimed directly at Pakistan and, just slightly less directly, at China). Despite its vague wording, the article strongly implied that the promised “consultations” would inevitably lead to arms aid. India, said one observer, “wanted to make certain that she would have a supply of guns and ammunition if a war came.”
Price: Bolstered by this reassuring prospect, India slipped into euphoric rejoicing. “This could be a new era for us,” rhapsodized one Indian official. “Japan became a great power because the Americans protected her and she didn’t have to waste her resources on arming herself. The same might happen as we shelter under the Russian umbrella.” But should that be so. will India’s policy of nonalignment be the price? Despite Mrs. Gandhi’s public assurances that India’s neutralist stance would not be affected by the new treaty, the fact remained that for the first time India and a major world power had come to an agreement on a treaty with distinct military overtones. “What is important is that India has always prided itself on being nonaligned,” observed a Western diplomat in New Delhi. “And now that the Russians have made this breakthrough, they might get a lot more new friends around here.”
But clearly. Moscow is not interested solely in India’s goodwill. As Gromyko himself suggested in a speech last week to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, China was a main reason for concluding, the Indo-Soviet treaty. In the opinion of Western diplomats in Moscow, the Russians were taken aback at the Ping Pong diplomacy between China and the U.S., and they were shocked by President Nixon’s plans to visit Peking. It meant that all bets were off in Asia, and. it raised the prospect of Washington-Peking deals that could freeze out the Russians in a region that they have assiduously cultivated. Thus, by going to India’s side in its hour of need, the Russians made their bid to become the dominant power on the subcontinent. Such a move, moreover, will probably help the Soviets to expand their naval penetration into the Indian Ocean.
Loser: With the Soviet Union the big winner last week, the U.S. was looking more and more like a loser. India was driven toward the Russian camp partly by the recent U.S. moves to improve its relations with China. Noting that Kissinger had stopped off in India last month before his secret mission to Peking, one New Delhi official complained: “We thought that he had come to the area to look at the gravest crisis this subcontinent has faced since independence. He listened carefully to what we said. But all the time he had China on his mind. His very trip here was a ruse.”
In addition, continuing U.S. aid and arms deliveries to Pakistan have stirred fury in India. “If you want to know why the treaty was signed,” said an Indian diplomat in Moscow, “I’ll tell you: the Americans drove us to it with their arms shipments.” Indeed, India figures less importantly than Pakistan in current U.S. strategic calculations. But although the Nixon Administration has gone out of its way to stay on speaking terms with Yahya Khan, the Pakistani President is obviously not an attentive listener.
Despite U.S. urging to postpone or forgo the trial of Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Yahya last week went ahead with a secret trial before a three man military court in a prison complex near the textile town of Lyallpur in southern Punjab. Yahya has already stated in public that Mujib is guilty of treason. “When the man who holds the post of President and chief martial-law administrator says that someone is guilty, you can hardly expect a group of army officers to find him innocent; remarked a Pakistani editor. It is widely assumed that the court will condemn Mujib to death, giving Yahya the option of letting the sentence stand or magnanimously sparing his rival.
But Mujib’s sympathizers were not optimistic. “It would be reasonable not to execute this man-to keep him around in case there’s a change of heart,” said a Western diplomat in Islamabad. “But it also would have been reasonable not to bring him to trial. And it would have been, reasonable not to have arrested him in the first place. But this government has shown a remarkable ability for rejecting the logical, reasonable option, and it may very well do so again.”
Yahya’s course of action prompted one U.S. diplomat to fume: “Yahya is a god dam fool!” Still reportedly on order from the White House, the U.S. has decided to stick to its present course come what may. “We are the only Western government with any hope of influencing Yahya,” argues one State Department official, “and frankly, I think we have a pretty sophisticated policy for a change.” Then he added ruefully: “But it sure is hard to live with.”
NEWSWEEK, AUGUST23,1971
THE VERY BEST OF FRIENDS
When Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko flew into New Delhi last week, the local diplomatic corps hardly took notice. Some of the foreign envoys had been assured by Indian officials that nothing very exciting would come from the Gromyko visit, and many of them repaired to the northern hill stations to escape the sweltering summer heat and rain. But only a day after his arrival Russia’s No. I diplomatic troubleshooter made it plain that he had come to India’s capital on urgent and momentous business. Seated at flag-bedecked table in New Delhi’s Foreign Ministry; Gromyko triumphantly set his signature to a precedent-shattering, twenty-year treaty of peace, friendship and co-operation between the Soviet Union and India.
On the face of” it, the treaty was so vaguely worded that, as one Western analyst observed, “ii could mean practically anything.” But the impact of document lay less in what it said than in what it implied. By entering into a formal agreement with another power. India took a long step away from its cherished policy of nonalignmcnt. By coming down solidly in support of India, Russia served up a warning to Pakistan against any rash moves (and thus, for the moment, seemed to reduce the threat of war between the subcontinent’s bitter enemies). In doing this, however. Moscow openly declared its opposition to China, Pakistan’s staunchest backer of late, and abruptly changed the balance of power in South Asia. In the same vein, the treaty reflected America’s plummeting prestige and influence in the region at a time when many Indians have come to view Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as arch villains. And in the sense, that Indo- Soviet pact could be regarded as the most important diplomatic fallout so far from Washington’s current courtship of Peking.
Despite appearances, the treaty was not an instant creation, for Moscow and. New Delhi had batted the idea around for at least two years. Until recently, however, neither government felt a pressing need to pursue the matter further. Then the outbreak of civil war in Pakistan this spring drastically altered the picture. As millions of Bengali refugees poured out of East Pakistan into India, and as border incidents mounted, relation between the two countries reached a flashpoint. Reports circulated that the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, under mounting pressure from right-wingers in Parliament, was on the verge of extending diplomatic relations to the Bangladesh rebels in East Pakistan, a move that Pakistani President Mohammed Yahya Khan warned would be tantamount to a declaration of war. In that emergency, interest in a Moscow-New Delhi agreement suddenly revived. And after secret negotiations in Moscow that lasted less than two weeks, Andrei Gromyko was on his way to New Delhi to do the honors.
Much of the twelve-article treaty devoted itself to innocuous promises of technological cooperation and cultural exchanges. But the key passage. Article IX.
pledged immediate “mutual consultations” in the event of hostile acts against the signatory countries by a third party (publicly, the signers insisted that they did not have any specific third party in mind, but hardly anyone doubted that the description was aimed directly at Pakistan and, just slightly less directly, at China). Despite its vague wording, the article strongly implied that the promised “consultations” would inevitably lead to arms aid. India, said one observer, “wanted to make certain that she would have a supply of guns and ammunition if a war came.”
Price: Bolstered by this reassuring prospect, India slipped into euphoric rejoicing. “This could be a new era for us,” rhapsodized one Indian official. “Japan became a great power because the Americans protected her and she didn’t have to waste her resources on arming herself. The same might happen as we shelter under the Russian umbrella.” But should that be so. will India’s policy of nonalignment be the price? Despite Mrs. Gandhi’s public assurances that India’s neutralist stance would not be affected by the new treaty, the fact remained that for the first time India and a major world power had come to an agreement on a treaty with distinct military overtones. “What is important is that India has always prided itself on being nonaligned,” observed a Western diplomat in New Delhi. “And now that the Russians have made this breakthrough, they might get a lot more new friends around here.”
But clearly. Moscow is not interested solely in India’s goodwill. As Gromyko himself suggested in a speech last week to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, China was a main reason for concluding, the Indo-Soviet treaty. In the opinion of Western diplomats in Moscow, the Russians were taken aback at the Ping Pong diplomacy between China and the U.S., and they were shocked by President Nixon’s plans to visit Peking. It meant that all bets were off in Asia, and. it raised the prospect of Washington-Peking deals that could freeze out the Russians in a region that they have assiduously cultivated. Thus, by going to India’s side in its hour of need, the Russians made their bid to become the dominant power on the subcontinent. Such a move, moreover, will probably help the Soviets to expand their naval penetration into the Indian Ocean.
Loser: With the Soviet Union the big winner last week, the U.S. was looking more and more like a loser. India was driven toward the Russian camp partly by the recent U.S. moves to improve its relations with China. Noting that Kissinger had stopped off in India last month before his secret mission to Peking, one New Delhi official complained: “We thought that he had come to the area to look at the gravest crisis this subcontinent has faced since independence. He listened carefully to what we said. But all the time he had China on his mind. His very trip here was a ruse.”
In addition, continuing U.S. aid and arms deliveries to Pakistan have stirred fury in India. “If you want to know why the treaty was signed,” said an Indian diplomat in Moscow, “I’ll tell you: the Americans drove us to it with their arms shipments.” Indeed, India figures less importantly than Pakistan in current U.S. strategic calculations. But although the Nixon Administration has gone out of its way to stay on speaking terms with Yahya Khan, the Pakistani President is obviously not an attentive listener.
Despite U.S. urging to postpone or forgo the trial of Bengali leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Yahya last week went ahead with a secret trial before a three man military court in a prison complex near the textile town of Lyallpur in southern Punjab. Yahya has already stated in public that Mujib is guilty of treason. “When the man who holds the post of President and chief martial-law administrator says that someone is guilty, you can hardly expect a group of army officers to find him innocent; remarked a Pakistani editor. It is widely assumed that the court will condemn Mujib to death, giving Yahya the option of letting the sentence stand or magnanimously sparing his rival.
But Mujib’s sympathizers were not optimistic. “It would be reasonable not to execute this man-to keep him around in case there’s a change of heart,” said a Western diplomat in Islamabad. “But it also would have been reasonable not to bring him to trial. And it would have been, reasonable not to have arrested him in the first place. But this government has shown a remarkable ability for rejecting the logical, reasonable option, and it may very well do so again.”
Yahya’s course of action prompted one U.S. diplomat to fume: “Yahya is a god dam fool!” Still reportedly on order from the White House, the U.S. has decided to stick to its present course come what may. “We are the only Western government with any hope of influencing Yahya,” argues one State Department official, “and frankly, I think we have a pretty sophisticated policy for a change.” Then he added ruefully: “But it sure is hard to live with.”