What if India joined Western Bloc? Exploring Cold War geopolitics

What if India responded favourably to the multiple American calls made to then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inviting him to be a part of the broader Western bloc, during the Cold War era?

| Updated: 01 June, 2023 6:58 pm IST

From the beginning, the US was clear about its intent in shaping the UN in a manner that was beneficial to the West, and India – given its colonial past – was the candidate of choice

“The more things change, the more they stay the same”.

Let us begin straight with the question that forms the backbone of this article: What if India responded favourably to the multiple American calls made to then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inviting him to be a part of the broader Western bloc, during the Cold War era? How different would the geopolitical landscape of the Eurasian landmass be from what it is today?

It is important, however, to put across a series of disclaimers in advance. One, a small essay on a topic as exhaustive as this can never do justice; what one needs is probably a book. Two, I do not consider myself an expert on finance and economics; this article thus would not venture into the complex world of geo-economics. These two handicaps dictate that this form of exercise tracks, in brief, the major geopolitical angles only from an Indian perspective.

Finally, three, as it is with most mega-plans that come to life, a Eurasia reshaping juggernaut alignment like this would have unleashed scores of variables, and each one of them could reshape hundreds if not thousands of smaller contours and even create entirely new ones. That is something that is not within the bandwidth of an article with word limits. (And here could be an impetus for someone among you to plan a book on the same!)

The China Factor
The unwillingness of India to be an ally of the West got into the records with New Delhi’s refusal to be a UN permanent member. From the beginning, the US was clear about its intent in shaping the United Nations in a manner that was beneficial to the West, and India – given its colonial past – was the candidate of choice. Were India to find itself as a part of the UN core, the one easy inference is that probably the 1962 war with China, and the territorial dispute that persists even today, would probably be non-existent.

As far as Tibet is concerned, the US covert supplies of arms and financial aid to Tibetan rebels during the 50s and 60s would be more brazen; and India would probably be used as a launch pad to catalyse Tibetan independence. The two speculative outcomes of this move could be: a) an independent Tibet and a separatist East Turkestan; or b) a Tibet and East Turkestan rife with chaos and subversive separatism. And both of them would be instrumental in checking Chinese ambition towards its west in central Asia.

The other major windfall could be in the shape of Indian Naval supremacy. The USA, argues John Mearsheimer, if anything, is a naval power. The Navy is how and why the USA has managed – by drawing minimal attention – to project its supremacy so successfully around the globe. Naturally, it would be safe to assume that the Indian Navy – which is still a long way from optimising its potential even in 2023 – would have received a major boost as early as during the 70s and 80s. Subsequent results of the same? The Indian Ocean theatre could be New Delhi’s region of influence as a result; a development that would have contained China’s naval projection significantly, and the ASEAN would perhaps then be an Indo-Japan shared soft-influence zone.

With India as an ally, would the US still preserve the same attitude about China during the 70s? Would Henry Kissinger still be upbeat about Ping Pong Diplomacy? Theoretically yes, given the bad blood between China and the Soviet Union. But practically, with India as a strong ally, the need for yet another Asian landmass as an anchor would probably be redundant. And a China without a permanent UN seat, a China that would have already witnessed an Indo-US collaboration that went against its boundary claims, a China with a conflict zone in Tibet and East Turkestan, and with very little wriggle room towards its east, would be a China that would have second thoughts about an open alliance with the West. In effect, China would be looking at breaking the ice with the Soviet Union.

Since it is a Cold War era speculation, I would avoid the post-90 unipolar era, and major global leaders like the US including China in WTO and deciding to hand over productive-economy hard power to Beijing. The assumption being the US would have gone ahead, given the success of China’s domestic recovery program, and given Washington’s uncontrollable urge to spread liberal world order at the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Pakistan Factor
Contrary to the prevalent narrative about the Partition, I have always considered the creation of Pakistan to be a result of a pure, unadulterated piece of geopolitical manoeuvre, and I have also expressed the same in a two-part essay published by The New Indian. My logic remains grounded on the fact the UP-Bihar-Bengal stretch housed the maximum number of Muslims that favoured a separate nation, yet it was the Indian northwest where Pakistan eventually came to be.

This preference for a slice of geography over another finds its roots in the fallouts of the Industrial Revolution, the Anglo-Russian Great Game, and the birth and evolution of the different geopolitical theories targeting access and control, that notable political pundits like Ratzel, Haushofer, Kjellen, Mackinder or Spykman propounded during the 19th and 20th century.

In terms of global impact, these arguments, concepts, and theories were so intense that they affect the entire Eurasian landmass and influence billions of lives to this date! At this end of the map, Pakistan was conceptualised and executed as a garrison state to cut-off Soviet access to the warm water ports of the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean; the subcontinental Hindu-Muslim feud was a handy catalyst.

Was the INC aware of the impact and the practical scope of the works of Halford Mackinder or Nikolas Spykman? Doubtful, given their preference for vacuous moral posturing over realpolitik during that same period, and their complete cluelessness about the pace with which the Muslim narrative snowballed in the lead-up to the referendum.

So, during the Cold War, Pakistan became an outpost to monitor Soviet Central Asia, and a handy launching pad for the US to contain communist expansion. But an Indo-US Cold War alliance could do well in pointing out that Pakistan had no business being created the way it is.

With India on their side, a Kennan-influenced USA – under the heady impact of Alfred Mahan and Nikolas Spykman – in a bout of containment of ‘Heartland’ power USSR, would have parked themselves in this part of the world.

Let us in a very primary, linear fashion speculate the effects of that. First, access to central Asia. Geographer Halford Mackinder propounded that whoever controlled central Asia and its surroundings would control the affairs of Eurasia. The USSR controlled that region post-WWII. The US goal – as it remained – was to destabilize the region to undermine that control. This could come in the shape of pushing and prodding India to retake Gilgit Baltistan (G-B) with armed US support. G-B is the corridor that provides direct Indian access to Afghanistan, and thus central Asia.

This activity in turn would alter Pakistan’s primacy dramatically in the very first stage, cutting its northeastern limits and severing it from China. With the 1971 and Bangladesh liberation remaining constant – given Punjabi Pakistan’s collective attitude towards Bengali Muslims – it would eventually cause the country to shrink more.

Kashmir on the other hand with its proximity to Tibet, Af-Pak region, and Soviet Central Asia – would become a crucial outpost of the Cold War era. Whether Afghanistan, encouraged by the successive slicing of Pakistan would be in a position to claim the Pashtun-dominated Pakistani NWFP remains debatable, so we would give that a miss. The Baluch movement, however, would perhaps gain a lot of steam in the coming years.

Arindam Mukherjee is a geopolitical analyst and the author of JourneyDog Tales, The Puppeteer, and A Matter of Greed.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are the author’s own