Fateful triangle: how China shaped US–India relations during the Cold War

Extract

The story of how the growing power and unclear intentions of the People's Republic of China (PRC) have brought about a remarkable rapprochement between the United States and India over the past 20 years is now well known. What is less well appreciated, Tanvi Madan argues, is the fact that China has long played a key role in shaping the relationship between the two states. For four decades, from the late 1940s until the late 1970s, the approaches Washington and New Delhi each employed for managing relations with the communist state alternately animated and burdened the ties they had with one another. Convergences of view energized bilateral diplomacy and grounded mutually reinforcing strategies; differences caused fallings out with much wider ramifications. Linkages abound, in other words, in a story of concord and dissonance, unintended consequences and miscalculation.

Madan tells this tale––persuasively, drawing deeply from the archives––in four parts. In the first, she recounts how stark differences between US and Indian policy towards the PRC in the aftermath of Mao Zedong's victory in 1949 pushed the two apart until the mid-1950s. Stung by the ‘fall’ of China, Washington sought to ostracize the new regime and build a partnership with India to help contain it. Convinced that a show of goodwill might dissuade Mao from adventurism, and keen for a period of peace that might enable India to focus on economic and social development, New Delhi by contrast urged diplomatic recognition and engagement. Strained ties resulted, exacerbated by differences over the invasion of Tibet, China's involvement in the Korean War, and the fate of Indochina. A complete break did not occur, however, as Washington was worried that India might itself fall to communism if the US walked away, and New Delhi remained attached to American aid and assistance.