Word: pact
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Critical Juncture. On balance, the pact is a significant success for Soviet foreign policy at a time when the Kremlin has had a surfeit of diplomatic setbacks. Nor is there any doubt that it was a disturbing defeat for U.S. policy (see box). The treaty was signed less than 24 hours after Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko arrived in New Delhi on a visit that had been announced only 48 hours earlier. Before a cheering crowd estimated at 1,500,000 people on the day of the signing, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi insisted unconvincingly that the treaty does not alter...
...pact was quickly approved by the Indian Parliament, even winning the support of some of the opposition right-wing parties. A.B. Vajpayee, leader of the archconservative Jana Sangh, spoke for most when he declared that the treaty had found a friend for India at a critical juncture. In the five months since the Pakistani civil war broke out, India's economy has been seriously set back by an influx of 8,000,000 East Pakistani refugees. The cost of supporting them has already mounted to more than $300 million, of which other nations, led by the U.S., have contributed...
...nonaggression treaty calls for economic, scientific and technological cooperation. Unlike the NATO pact, it does not commit either nation to an armed response in the event of an attack on the other. Western diplomats said its wording compared more with the CENTO and SEATO treaties. It is only the second of its kind between Moscow and any world capital outside the Communist camp, the other being a 15-year treaty signed with Egypt...
...Soviet-Indian pact seems to have been inspired by Leonid Brezhnev's call at the World Communist Party Conference in Moscow in 1969 for a "system of collective security in Asia," a statement reflecting the Russians' growing concern over what they called Chinese "imperialism." Actually, Moscow's influence on the subcontinent has been growing steadily. Since 1955, India has received $1.4 billion in Soviet aid. Some estimates are that 70% to 80% of India's industrial defense capacity has been supplied by the Soviet Union...
...Soviet-Indian friendship treaty caught the Nixon Administration flatfooted. Secretary of State William Rogers broke the official silence over the pact only to comment weakly: "We hope it may have an effect for the good." Indian officials in New Delhi and Washington hastened to assure American policymakers that the document was in no way directed against the U.S. But there was no disguising that Washington was wounded-and that the wound was largely self-inflicted. In its overriding preoccupation with India's two greatest enemies, Pakistan and China, the U.S. simply left New Delhi nowhere to go but Moscow...