Читать книгу Fateful Triangle - Tanvi Madan - Страница 22

The Korean War was the most urgent problem facing Eisenhower when he came to office.⁴ The president and Dulles wanted to end the war that was consuming American resources and concerning US allies. At the start of the administration, to bring Beijing to the negotiating table on US terms, they increased the pressure on China and North Korea. Policymakers even considered the use of nuclear weapons to end the war. Then, suddenly, in the aftermath of Stalin’s death in March 1953, China offered to exchange sick and wounded prisoners—as Delhi had proposed in 1952 and Washington had suggested the month before—and to move toward a settlement.

Eisenhower and Dulles debated whether the offer was a genuine attempt toward peace or a stalling tactic,⁵ but Nehru believed the new Soviet leadership wanted to ease global tension.⁶ While he often demurred from assessing the extent of Soviet sway over Chinese decisionmaking⁷ and sometimes even rejected that Moscow had any influence, Nehru believed that the Chinese offer had to have had Soviet approval.⁸ He did not know the precise reasons behind the change in Beijing’s and Moscow’s attitudes, but he welcomed it. He also appreciated Eisenhower’s Chance for Peace speech in April. Nehru thought it was “a great improvement” from the first few months of the administration, when escalation seemed to be the chosen US approach in East Asia—an approach he had publicly criticized. But he feared that continuing American suspicion of the communist countries would prevent a settlement.⁹ And, as he told Dulles that May in Delhi, the likely alternative was war on a “much wider and more intensive scale”—as the secretary of state had himself indicated.¹⁰

While Nehru thought the US was too suspicious, the administration thought he was not suspicious enough of China and the Soviet Union. This shaped its attitude on aid for India. Dulles told Congress that the Indian prime minister was “quite naïve” and not “fully grounded as to facts” on certain matters.¹¹ It was worth supporting India to ensure it did not lose the China-India race, but only on a limited basis—and not to the extent of $200 million, as the Truman administration had recommended for FY1954.¹² Still, Cold War logic meant a $110 million request, of which $90 million was authorized amid grumbling in Congress that India was not on the US side and Nehru had not been “playing fair with [the US] all along.”¹³

Nehru’s attitude also contributed to the Eisenhower administration’s doubts about India’s involvement as an intermediary between China and the US. Washington used India as a channel to China—Dulles, for example, sought to warn Beijing through Delhi that, if necessary, the US would “extend the area of conflict.”¹⁴ But, more often than not, the administration tried to eliminate or limit Indian involvement as a mediator—during the Korean crisis and after. Most of these efforts failed, however, and American attempts to exclude India only exacerbated the strain between the two countries.

In the waning stages of the Korean War, as settlement proposals flew back and forth, the US unsuccessfully tried to prevent India from being chosen as the neutral state in charge of postwar prisoner of war (POW) repatriation. U. Alexis Johnson, in the State Department Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs (FEA), outlined the reason: India seemed to be “‘more neutral’ toward the Chinese Communists than toward the UN.”¹⁵ For General Mark Clark, commander of the UN forces, India’s neutrality was not “as well defined” as that of some other candidates.¹⁶ Dulles thought India would be acceptable, if necessary, as long as the operating guidelines were set out firmly.¹⁷ On Capitol Hill, Senator Knowland expressed opposition since, on Korea, India had “perhaps 80 percent of the time voted with the Chinese Communists.”¹⁸ FEA chief Walter Robertson then suggested that if the communists insisted on India as a neutral, the US could insist that it play that role with Switzerland or Sweden. But General J. Lawton Collins, US Army chief of staff, said a two-nation commission was impractical, and he favored India as a neutral, capable Asian state.¹⁹

The US soon found its hands tied. A communist proposal on May 7 envisioned a Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission (NNRC) with Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, as well as India as the chair. Despite pressure from South Korean leader Syngman Rhee to exclude India and Clark’s concerns about it having the swing vote, Robertson realized the US had been put in a spot—the communists would use any US exclusion of India for propaganda purposes. Along with pressure from NATO allies, especially Britain, this left the administration with little choice but to accept Indian chairmanship of the commission.²⁰

In a twist, the US then backed India for a crucial role that Delhi was reluctant to play. A May 13 UN Command proposal envisioned only India—and not every commission member—as having troops on the ground to supervise the POW repatriation process. For Nehru, the UN Command proposal was “most unhelpful.” Zhou told Indian ambassador to China N. Raghavan it was unacceptable, being too much of a departure from the Chinese proposal.²¹ Nehru did not want India to take on any responsibility that did not also have Beijing’s buy-in.²² The UNC revised its proposal, but, resisting a Chinese demand, still insisted that India have sole military supervisory authority.²³ Nehru did not think China would agree. Its eventual acquiescence led the prime minister to praise Beijing’s “very statesmanlike attitude.”²⁴ He noted publicly that China could now return to nation-building, which had been disrupted by a war in which it had been reluctantly “brought … in” by the fear of US attack.²⁵

Nehru’s tendency to give China credit and the benefit of the doubt created resentment among American officials. But he was not above giving the US the benefit of the doubt at times. When Rhee released North Korean prisoners instead of turning them over to the NNRC—a move that threatened to torpedo the Korean settlement—Nehru told Raghavan that the Eisenhower administration had not incited the move.²⁶ With Zhou accusing the US of being “undependable,” Nehru suggested that Washington take steps to assure Beijing that it could control the situation. Simultaneously, he urged the Chinese premier not to back out of armistice talks.²⁷ In order to prevent this and strengthen Eisenhower’s hand, Nehru pushed for the reconvening of the UN General Assembly as soon as possible. This interjection, however, annoyed Dulles, who believed that bringing more parties into the discussions would only complicate the matter.²⁸

With India as chair of the NNRC, Indian policymakers, as Nehru’s biographer put it, felt they were in a “thankless position” with “both sides accusing India of partisanship.”²⁹ American observers charged that India accepted Chinese and North Korean allegations that Taiwan was instigating anticommunist prisoners to riot, while ignoring US allegations about the communists doing the same.³⁰ Senate majority leader Knowland accused India of giving in to all Chinese demands; in response, Dulles indicated the administration’s displeasure with some of the NNRC’s functioning.³¹ China, on the other hand, criticized India for not using force to coerce Chinese and North Korean POWs to return to their home countries.³² It then vociferously condemned the Indian chair’s announcement that the NNRC would return unrepatriated POWs to their captors by January 22, 1954.³³ Even some in the US who wanted India to release all unrepatriated POWs complained about that step.³⁴ Delhi was not pleased when the US subsequently released them.

The Eisenhower administration’s move to exclude India from the postarmistice political conference also did not win it any friends there. Nehru had expected that India would be asked to participate.³⁵ But, despite Australian, British, and Canadian support, the US refused to endorse Indian participation, largely because of the objections of South Korea, which accused India of “trafficking with the Communists.”³⁶ India critic Knowland told Robertson that India’s “dubious” record should take it out of contention.³⁷ The US subsequently announced that it would vote against extending India an invitation.³⁸ China, on the other hand, supported Indian participation and even suggested Delhi as a possible venue for the conference—thereby scoring propaganda points with India.³⁹

To save face and the conference, Nehru withdrew India from consideration. He stated that the US step was one more example of the West excluding Asians from decisionmaking that affected Asia. Asian countries, he asserted, would no longer be “ignored or bypassed, certainly not sat upon.”⁴⁰ It was around this time that Indian policymakers also started publicly indicating a desire to play a leadership role in Asia.⁴¹ Citing how crucial it was to keep India “out of the communist orbit,” Dulles’s deputy for the political conference had warned about Korea-related anti-India opinion damaging US-India relations.⁴² And he had been proved correct.

In Washington in the aftermath of the Korean War, there was an effort to downplay any Asian leadership role for India and Nehru—a role many in the US had earlier advocated. Knowland, criticizing India for “yielding” to China, dismissed Nehru as the spokesman for all of Asia.⁴³ Dulles told Eisenhower that the US should avoid actions that would “establish Nehru as the leader of all South and Southeast Asia.”⁴⁴ And American diplomats reported with satisfaction when differences between Nehru and other South Asian leaders on communism were apparent.⁴⁵

Even beyond Washington, the Korean War and Delhi’s mediatory role between China and the US took its toll on American public opinion of India. In January 1951, a quarter of those polled had said India could not be counted on to cooperate with the US; by April 1954 this number had climbed to 42 percent. In January 1952, 57 percent of those polled believed that India was neither on the American nor the Russian side; in April 1954, only 28 percent thought India was neutral, with 7 percent believing the Indian government was communist and 26 percent considering it to be pro-communist.⁴⁶