A star and stripes dragon

The Indian strategic community, ecstatic about growing ties with the US, should bear in mind that Washington is too involved with Beijing to give up its embrace of the dragon. The US does not see its relationship with India as a zero sum game

Sanjay Kapoor Delhi

In 1969, the Chinese and Soviet troops fought a short but bloody war near River Ussuri in China's northeast. Although ceasefire was declared after USSR's Premier Kosygin stopped by at Beijing and met with his counterpart, Chou en Lai, there was little love and trust left between the two communist powers. The US, as subsequent events proved, was the clear beneficiary of this rupture as it began to woo China in right earnest. The efforts of the US were helped by the views of Chinese leader Mao Ze Dong who believed that a relationship with Washington would provide security against the enemy at the doorstep (Soviet Union).

The growing mistrust between the USSR and China presented an opportunity to Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon to make a trip to Beijing and shake hands with Mao in 1972. It was a week that changed the world.

This relationship played a major role in limiting the arc of influence of communism in the world and led to the final collapse of Soviet Union. India was a casualty of this historic handshake for 30 long years, until Washington made a strategic shift a few years ago. It was important to recount the River Ussuri face-off between Soviet Union and China to lend perspective to the ties between Beijing and Washington, which run deep and are differently layered. It was this strategic shift by a pragmatic Chinese leadership that helped change the face of their country.

Its phenomenal rise would not have been possible without getting access to its West's technology and its markets. The relationship with US helped China to not only keep Soviet Union at bay, but also prevented regional players like India from realising their own potential.

Washington began to woo the Chinese long before the Ussuri face-off. They allowed the communist State to go nuclear so that they could stand up to the Soviets. After Chinese tested the bomb, they put a freeze on any other country trying to get into the exclusive club thereby denying India to go nuclear. There is plenty of evidence to show that India was peeved at the way Chinese nuclear ambitions were accommodated by Washington spoiling the balance of power in Asia. India had real concerns as they were invaded by the Chinese in 1962 in which they were forced to cede large tracts of land in Aksai Chin.

According to George Perkovich, “From late 1964 through 1967— Indian officials vaguely and ambivalently sought security guarantees, first from the West and then through the United Nations, to protect against possible Chinese nuclear threats. Washington, London and Moscow were unreceptive.” Later, when Indira Gandhi decided to test the 'nuclear device' at Pokhran in 1974 it was an attempt to tell the 'United States, China and the Soviet Union that they could not impinge on India's autonomy'.