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HomeOpinionNehru's 1962 mistake was that he didn't understand force-diplomacy relationship

Nehru’s 1962 mistake was that he didn’t understand force-diplomacy relationship

1962 was a war of choice by Mao. Blaming India's forward policy is a mistake that analysts and scholars should avoid because it masks China's responsibility for the war.

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It is probably more important to study failures than successes in foreign policy because the consequences are far greater. The 1962 War thus holds many lessons, which are as relevant today as they were back then.

But before we get to these lessons, it is also important to challenge some of the myths of the 1962 War, such as the consequences of the ‘forward policy’. Much of the retelling of the war continues to follow British journalist-scholar Neville Maxwell’s unsubstantiated charge that the forward policy had ‘loaded the guns’ and ‘triggered the border war’. As K. Subrahmanyam wrote in his review of Maxwell’s 1970 book India’s China War, this charge does not follow even from the evidence that Maxwell himself presents, a consistent problem in Maxwell’s work. The forward policy, despite its name, was a defensive effort that sought to prevent China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from moving steadily into disputed territory by putting up Indian military posts to prevent Chinese forces from moving forward. It mimicked China’s efforts to claim territory by advancing Chinese forces into disputed territory. Of course, unlike the well-supported Chinese forces, India’s forward posts were incapable of either adequately defending themselves or from being supported if they were attacked. Moreover, even if China was not aware of the logic or purpose of the forward policy, they surely knew that Indian forces were too weak to represent any threat to the PLA. This was a war of choice by Mao, and blaming the forward policy for starting the war is a mistake that analysts and scholars should avoid because it masks Chinese responsibility for the war.


Mistakes made in 1962

This does not mean that Nehru was blameless. The forward policy, and India’s strategic and defense policies of the previous decade more generally, were responsible for India’s defeat and its consequences. The fundamental error that led to this was Nehru’s grand strategy, his understanding of the relationship between diplomacy and force. He was convinced that there would be no war because any India-China war would become a world war. The logic of this belief is still unclear, and it of course proved to be grossly mistaken, but this belief that there would be no war allowed Nehru to push a military strategy that was unsound and led to disaster for India.

Indian spending on its defense in the 1950s was only part of the problem. A more serious problem was that much of the spending was focused on Pakistan rather than on China. Although Pakistan could not be ignored, it was unwise to focus so much attention on the weaker threat. China was not much stronger than India in 1962, at least based on crude measures of economic capability, but its military was an experienced combat force that had managed to stop the world’s strongest power in the Korean War. That alone should have made it worthy of more serious consideration in India’s military plans than what it actually received. The lesson is simple: focus on the military strength of your strongest neighbours because they are the ones who can do you the most harm.

Equally, Indian policy has always emphasised using its own military resources to deal with its own problems, rather than seeking external military partners. This is a generally understandable choice as India has been a reasonably strong power, especially in relation to its neighbours. However, in both 1962 and in 1971, India realised that these were not sufficient. In the 1962 War, this mistake cost India dearly. A decade later, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was able to corral the Soviets into a hasty treaty that was not tested fully because India was dealing with a much weaker adversary in the 1971 Bangladesh war, which was easily disposed of.

Underlying Nehru’s mistake was a more fundamental misperception of India’s power. Nehru assumed that India was strong enough and important enough to others that it would come to no harm. But India’s power was more of potential than actual, realised power, as it is still today. It is not clear that New Delhi has entirely overcome its belief in its own importance and indispensability to focus on the unavoidable task of securing itself.


Also read: A ‘normal’ LAC won’t end troubles for India. Shift focus to China’s dominance in Asia


Partnership needs security interests to align  

Political and diplomatic partnerships are necessary but they are insufficient by themselves in meeting threats. So, non-alignment, or ‘strategic autonomy’ as it is known today, will be of little help when the chips are down. India’s ‘friends’ in the third world abandoned it in 1962—as they would do again in the Bangladesh war—mouthing empty slogans about peace, as India itself does frequently. Slogans don’t hurt, but what did hurt was the Soviet Union betraying India in those crucial weeks. Nehru had hoped that Moscow would restrain Beijing but China was more important to them. The Cuban missile crisis required socialist unity and India was a price Moscow had little qualms in paying. It is useful to remember this history too because sentimentality has little place in international politics. New Delhi should heed an unsettling similarity to contemporary events: though India is not unimportant to Russia today, China is far more important and likely to remain so.

The obverse is that the only true friends in international politics are those whose security interests align. ‘Security interests’ is the key here: while countries could have larger interests, such as the global order or status, nothing else is possible if external security is compromised. This seems obvious, except that New Delhi has often focused on global order and status questions to the detriment of its security. India’s position in the global order is an important objective but it must perforce give way to the more critical objective of securing India. India’s defeat in 1962, in addition to its other effects, damaged India’s standing in global councils. A country that cannot secure itself can pursue few other objectives. India rightly argues that the contemporary global order needs to be revised to reflect contemporary realities, but it should focus more on the realities at its border.

New Delhi is continuing to focus on a diplomatic and political strategy to meet today’s China threat, frantically building partnerships through minilaterals with many combinations of countries. These are not by themselves a problem and may even be necessary but they are not a substitute for security partnerships. Indeed, even security partnerships will not be effective if they are not fully exploited. That is why the failure of the Quad to do much more on the security agenda is a problem. Though it is unclear which of the four Quad countries is hesitant, it is a reasonable guess that it is India applying the brakes since the other three are already engaged in security cooperation. And they are further enhancing these ties with additional agreements such as AUKUS and the recent Australia-Japan security agreement. If it is India that is dragging its feet on the Quad’s security agenda, it would be unfortunate. Partners would not be able to help India after a war begins. Nehru’s appeal for American help in 1962 should be instructive: though the US was willing, there was little it could do at such short notice. As Ashley Tellis has pointed out, expecting that the US (or the Quad, for that matter) would be able to help after a crisis begins is a highly risky gamble.

China is a much more powerful adversary today than it was in 1962. New Delhi does appear to take it more seriously too. Unfortunately, many of the underlying tendencies in India’s approach to security—its emphasis on its own strength and unilateralism or its belief in its own importance—appear to continue. That’s a cause for concern.  

The author is a professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He tweets @RRajagopalanJNU. Views are personal.

This article is part of the Remembering 1962 series on the India-China war. You can read all the articles here.

(Edited by Prashant)

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