Fateful Triangle. Tanvi Madan
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that the US would neither defend Taiwan militarily nor significantly increase aid to Jiang’s regime. In a speech on Asia, the secretary of state also laid out a “defensive perimeter” that omitted Taiwan and Korea.
That speech also contained themes about the problems and solutions in Asia that Indian officials would have found familiar. It identified “revulsion” against poverty and foreign domination as the primary factors driving Asians. Furthermore, Acheson emphasized vulnerability to communist subversion as a key threat and the need to look beyond military means as a solution.112
In testimony on Capitol Hill, Acheson also stressed that there was “no easy or early solution” to the China situation—and definitely not a military one. The “real center” of American interest in Asia, he emphasized, must lie in the “crescent of countries” around China, with Japan and India at its crucial ends. He acknowledged, however, that these two “major anchors” were facing significant problems at that stage.113
Both within and outside Congress, there was criticism that the administration did not then seem to have a plan to strengthen countries like India. The administration had not outlined how it was going to contain communism in Asia—nothing “bold,” like a “Marshall Plan for Asia,” was on the table. Senator Styles Bridges (R-NH) said the situation begged the question of whether Americans were “men in Europe and mice in Asia.”114
There was also criticism of India. Nehru had conveyed the hope via K. P. S. Menon that the US “would not take amiss” India’s early recognition.115 But this was wishful thinking. Recognition reinforced the growing sense in Washington that India might not be the hoped-for solution to the China conundrum. Before Indian recognition, a map of Asia in the New York Times outlining the spread and threat of communism had highlighted India as a “non-communist strong point,” with a label that read “West counts on Nehru for support in long run.”116 A month later, postrecognition, in a similar map that statement had become a question: “Will India supply effective anti-communist leadership?”117 Commentators lamented that India “h[eld] the key” to any defense of Asia and yet its attitude was “dangerous.”118
Other episodes in early 1950 only exacerbated the negative feelings toward India in the US. Nehru publicly criticized the American attitude toward China as unnecessarily confrontational.119 At the UN Security Council, where it was then a nonpermanent member, India took the position that the communist regime should hold the Chinese seat.120 It also declined to recognize the Paris and Washington-backed Bao Dai regime in Vietnam (the communists were backing Ho Chi Minh). These developments particularly grated because Delhi’s voice was considered influential with other Asian states. They left the New York Times commenting that Nehru’s views on developments in Asia were “less than wise.”121
Indian policymakers were aware of the consequences of the shift in mood in the US toward India because of Delhi’s China policy. Bajpai tried to assure American officials that India was not appeasing China.122 Privately, he and Pandit, who had moved from Moscow to Washington, discussed the need “to correct the misrepresentation to which India is being subjected.”123 Pandit told Nehru this was critical because India wanted “a charge account” from the US (i.e., aid).124
But Acheson was blunt; aid could only be “forthcoming when there is Indian receptivity and our own ability, and constructive purpose to be served.”125 With the administration’s ability limited and motivation lacking because of India’s unwillingness to play a role in its Asia policy, there was little appetite for aiding India. Pandit conveyed her concern to Bajpai that this American attitude toward assistance and its Asia policy, in turn, were the reasons for growing criticism of the US in India.126
The bigger China-related stumbling block in US-India relations, however, was yet to come. After all, other American friends and even allies such as Britain had also recognized communist China. It was US-India interactions over the Korean War, which intensified the Cold War, that drove home the disconnect between US and Indian perceptions of China, as well as their preferred method of dealing with that country.
The Korean War: Seeing Each Other as Spoilers (1950)
Initially, the Korean War increased India’s importance in the US. This was partly a result of the strategic reconsideration evident in NSC-68. The document represented a more comprehensive view of US strategy, blurring the line between vital and peripheral interests. Drafted in the first half of 1950, it asserted that “a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.” This turned Lovett’s assertion on its head: the US was now opening the door to underwriting the security of the whole world. Threats were now both physical and psychological. A country’s importance flowed not just from its military potential, economic capacity, and geographical position but also from how its loss could affect perceptions of US credibility and prestige, and thus the balance of power.127
At the time that NSC-68 was being drafted, Europe remained the Truman administration’s primary area of focus. Policymakers accepted the potential loss of certain areas outside Europe—indeed Acheson said as much in his January speech. The Soviet Union remained the main threat; China was a secondary one. Fostering a Sino-Soviet split was still under consideration. But NSC-68 envisioned international communism rather than the Soviet Union as the threat, with no short-term possibility of “fragmentation.” Earlier reluctance to oppose a communist takeover of Taiwan (for fear that doing so would push China closer to the Soviet Union) was also revisited. A State Department reassessment of China policy in spring 1950 instead called for estimating the impact of such a takeover on perceptions of the global balance of power.
As John Lewis Gaddis has noted, NSC-68 might have had little impact had it not been for the Korean War. But the outbreak of the war, which eventually involved millions of soldiers and resulted in over 30,000 US combat deaths, “validate[d] several of NSC-68’s most important conclusions.”128 It also turned the spotlight on Asia, including China and India.
Initially, in the aftermath of the North Korean invasion of South Korea on June 25, 1950, the US and India were on the same page. India voted for the US-sponsored UN Security Council resolution demanding the withdrawal of North Korean troops from the south. Two days later, the Indian abstention on a resolution that asked UN members to provide assistance to South Korea did cause consternation in Washington. But Nehru noted publicly that India supported the second resolution;129 Delhi had just not had time to relay instructions to the Indian delegation at the UN.130
Differences between India and the US, however, soon emerged, and they often revolved around China. Washington saw Beijing as hostile; it needed to be confronted. Perhaps influenced by Panikkar’s reporting from China,131 Nehru, however, believed China to be motivated by insecurity—and Washington needed to reassure it, not isolate or provoke it. Fearing an expanded war, he argued that China and the Soviet Union could be—indeed had to be—part of the solution. Indian officials suggested this could be facilitated if the People’s Republic of China got the Chinese seat at the UN, where the issue could be resolved through diplomacy rather than force. American officials, however, thought Beijing was part of the problem and should not be rewarded with a UN seat for its part in the invasion. They resented Delhi’s support for Moscow’s efforts to get Beijing seated at the UN. Moreover, American officials saw this as distracting from the aggression in Korea,132 and they criticized India for linking the latter and Chinese UN representation issues.133
India, in turn, disagreed with the Truman administration’s linkage of Taiwan and Indochina-related issues with the Korean situation. Following the outbreak of the war, despite internal disagreements, the administration had announced an increase in aid to anticommunist forces in Indochina and its intention to defend Taiwan in the event of a communist attack. Indian policymakers thought the Korean War had already disturbed the stability in Asia; linking the additional issues would further destabilize the region. This mattered because they needed time for nation building and, as Nehru had asserted when he had been in Washington, “If there is war in any part of Asia it has some close effect on India.”134