[PEN-L:11169] Re: interimperialist rivalries (IV)

["James Michael Craven" <CRAVJM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine wrote:

> In the cold war era, a country like India could get the US and USSR
> competing with each other, getting some aid from both. The USSR also seemed
> to give a certain amount of breathing room to anti-capitalist or
> anti-colonial movements: for example, Cuba could escape US domination by
> appealing to the USSR for help (though after a few years that meant
> subordination to the USSR). The USSR meddled in the US sphere of influence
> (just as the US meddled in the USSR sphere), giving encouragement to such
> movements. (Of course, USSR-supported movements were pushed to be top-down,
> bureaucratic, and extremely pro-USSR in their focus, just as the US pushed
> their "friends" (e.g., Solidarity in Poland) to be pro-US and
> pro-capitalist.

Response: With all due respect to Jim Devine who provides so many
valuable insights through this medium, the notion that the
governments of India have been in any position to leverage U.S. vs
USSR rivalries for the benefit of India is simply not in accordance
with the known historical facts. India was more or less pressured
into the China-India Border War by JFK's Administration through
threats of various types of embargoes, use of food as a weapon and
denial of transfers of critical technologies/foreign investment/IMF
credit--which continues even today. In his famous speech to the U.N.
on the ugly machinations of U.S. Imperialism, the Defense Minister
Krishna Menon (friend of both Nehru and Chou En-Lai) alluded to the
behind-the-scenes machinations going on of which India was an
unwilling participant (the slogan in India right before the border
war was "Hindi-Chini Pai Pai".

With the increasing divisions between China and the USSR and India's
increasing isolation from global markets, sources of foreign
investment and credit, the Indian Government increasingly sided with
the USSR for technology, defense, foreign investment and credit
purposes yet also was also increasingly involved in the formation of
the so-called "Non-Alligned" Movement. The irony is that while the
Cold War rhetoric and machinations were escalating, U.S. Banks loaned
over $25 billion to the USSR while maintaining an effective
credit/investment embargo on India--the exception was in agriculture
where India served as a market for U.S. fertilizers/pesticides/farm
capital which were, by the way, only marginally useful due to the
land tenure system of India.

During the 1980s, States such as Iraq and Iran--declared "terrorist
States" by the U.S. (analagous to Ted Bundy chastizing someone for
being a "wife beater")--were receiving technologies, credit, military
assistance (including sensitive intelligence) and foreign investment
formally denied to India--that remain denied to India. In fact, the
U.S. Government was far more hostile to India--and declared more
formal and informal sanctions against India--as a result of India's
role in the Non-Alligned Movement than as a result of India's
"special relationship" with the USSR. Interestingly, since the late
1960s, the notion of the USSR as a "Social Imperialist" formation has
been very widespread in India and many Indians denounced the
relations with the USSR as being equivalent in nature and impact as
those with the British in the past and Americans and others in the
present.

Today in India, the U.S. embassy in Madras City as well as in New
Delhi are hotbeds of CIA machinations in India. The Tamil Tigers, for
example, involved in the assassination of Rajiv Ghandi, were trained
on bases in Israel (on the same bases as their enemies the Sinhalese--
see Victor Ostravsky) and armed by the U.S. and Israel through
cutouts and proxies. Today, all Americans who go anywhere in the
south of India are under continual CBI suveillance--and for good
reason. In India, there is among the common people a spirit (in
Sanscrit the word is "Altmaapeemannum" or self-respect and the U.S.
imperialists regard this spirit--which includes being willing to do
without foreign investment, technologies and credit if the price of
receiving such as more U.S. penentration/domination--as extremely
dangerous to U.S. interests/postures and potentially infectious to
other regions as well. The arming of Pakistan and so-many other
machinations in the region (divide-and-rule donations to
various political parties, arming groups like the Tamil
Tigers, social systems engineering through culture/technology
transfers etc) suggest that India- - like Vietnam-- is regarded still
as an enemy and potential threat from the "demonstration effect"
point of view.

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