BEYOND COLD WAR POLITICS:
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRESIDENT EISENHOWER AND PRIME MINISTER NEHRU
Kaydee Mueller
History 412
Eisenhower and His Times
December 8, 2008
Mueller 1
On December 9, 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in New Delhi, India as part of twenty day tour of eleven nations throughout the Middle East, Europe and Africa. After his arrival, the President, along with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indian President Rajendra Prasad attempted to drive from the airport Presidents house, but the immeasurable crowds of local spectators made this nearly impossible, even bringing the motorcade to a complete standstill mere miles from their destination. This crowd, like others Eisenhower drew during his short trip to India, wasnumbered upwards of one hundred thousand people, andwas some of the largest crowds ever drawn by a foreign dignitary. An on-site National Geographic reporter described the near hysteric crowd—“Friendly crowds, shouting hysterically, surrounded the leaders. Greeters shoved forward to touch Mr. Eisenhower or just his automobile. They crushed fenders, stove in the trunk, and snapped off the radio antenna.”[1]Eisenhower was no stranger to attracting large crowds especially after he became an international hero following his World War Two service, but few crowds can compare to those formed by the thousands of Indian citizens who gathered to enthusiastically greet the President of the United States. It is interesting to note that so many of the people of India, a relativelynewindependent country with strong anti-imperialist sentiments were so enthusiastic in their greetings of the President—a man who maintained a close, personal relationship with the once imperial rulers of India, the British.[2] This trip marked an impressive end to a two-term presidency that has left behind many unanswered questions pertaining to his leadership style, his effectiveness as a president, and more specifically, the strange relationship with Prime Minister Nehru, a strict non-alignment proponent whose political views were in strong contrast to the goals of the United States during the Cold War.
The eight years during which Dwight D. Eisenhower served as the United States President were a time of unwilling co-existence—democracy and communism, free-trade and controlled economics, Eisenhower and Khrushchev. Both men, like the countries they presided over, lived in a world seemingly divided into two camps, the communist camp and the democratic camp, or to be more specific, the Soviet camp of the U.S.S.R and the Western camp controlled by the Americans. But what many forget to recognize was that a third option very much existed during the Cold War, and it was most often the choice of developing countries recently freed from the constraints of colonial powers. This camp played host to third world countries which chose to focus on national development and thus refused to limit themselves by aligning with only one side of the Cold War. In 1955, non-aligned leaders gained international recognition when, with the help of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Achmed Sukarno of Indonesia, Prime Minister Nehru presented the policy of non-alignment to a coalition of third world countries at the Bandung Conference of Asian and African Nations in Indonesia.[3] Unlike his predecessors in the Oval Office, Eisenhower’s presidency was one of constant interaction with the Third World, and as this region consisted of a large proportion of the world population, swaying these non-aligned countries to a western oriented point of view became an essential goal of the Eisenhower administration.
Prime Minister Nehru was one of the most important leaders in the Third World, and therefore gained a lot of attention from President Eisenhower, his cabinet and advisors.[4] Communications with and discussions of the Prime Minister take up a large percentage of the papers detailing the United States foreign relations, and a significant portion of foreign aid was earmarked for his nation. The Eisenhower Administration also had a special interest in India because it was a budding democracy which shared thousands of miles of border with the recently declared People’s Republic of China, a domino fallen into Communist hands. Prime Minister Nehru, on the other hand, recognized that both the Americans and the Soviets would be willing to lend millions, if not billions of dollars of aid with the hopes of wooing India into their respective camps. While his policy did encourage both sides of the Cold War to grant aid and encourage investment in India, this was not an ulterior motive. Though it is easy to see that the Americans and the Soviets both recognized India’s strategic importance and hoped to use aid and investment to convince Nehru to join their bloc, Nehru was not claiming non-alignment to encourage more funding. In fact he often opted to go to the United Nations or to request a loan, in place of direct economic aid or assistance. Nehru, therefore, could not be wooed with the financial prowess of the United States, and it would take much more for President Eisenhower to convince the Prime Minister to lean to the West during the Cold War. The United States and India, as well as their respective leaders did share more than they would often admit though, and democracy, a dislike for Soviet aggression, and a genuine hope for world peace allowed the two countries, and their leaders to come together and form a working relationship during Eisenhower’s time in the Oval Office.
Nehru[5]
By the time Eisenhower entered the Oval Office in January of 1953, India had been an independent Republic for just three years. After spending many years as a colony of the British Empire, India was attempting the near impossible feat of creating a government while simultaneously eliminating the barriers to development such as religious conflict between Muslims and Hindus, territorial disputes with China and Pakistan, as well as the limits to social interaction controlled by the recently eliminatedcaste system. In 1946, the Provisional Indian government was sworn in with Nehru as Provisional Prime Minister. The hope of both the British and the Indians was that a provisional government would make the transition of power as smooth as possible. Once India declared official independence in 1950, Nehru was elected to the position of Prime Minister and would serve at this post until his death in 1964. The accomplishments of the Prime Minister are great: he created the world’s largest democracy, instituted plans for economic and industrial development that would make India a leading example for decolonized countries throughout the third world, and he maintained a position of strict non-alignment in the polarized world of the Cold War.[6] As the focus of this paper is the policy of non-alignment and the relationship between Prime Minister Nehru and the leader of those with whom he would not align, President Eisenhower, it is important to define non-alignment, what it meant to the Prime Minister and how he developed and applied this policy.
The Development of Non-Alignment
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Jawaharlal Nehru was building an international reputation as an accomplished statesman and negotiator. He was an early and outspoken anti-colonialist, and became an inspirational leader for Third World countries struggling to gain independence from colonial powers.[7]After spending seven years in England, earning a degree from Cambridge and passing the Bar Exam, Nehru returned to India just before the outbreak of World War I. Though the country experienced a few small movements for independence from the Crown, none were nation-wide. The need for independence did not sweep the nation until Gandhi began to lead large, public, peaceful protests against the imperial government. An agrarian movement against the British government had begun, but no one in the cities or the Congress was actually aware of it. It was only with Gandhi’s non-cooperation Movement that “peasants were able to link up with and claim the authority of Gandhi,” and this alliance enabled the movement to become a national phenomenon.[8] The influence of Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement on the Indian people, the quest for independence, and, individually on Nehru can not be underestimated. It was also during his time as a young Gandhian that Nehru, like many of India’s educated youth, was “forced to discover and confront the nakedness of exploitation and poverty in India.”[9]The realization that India was an impressively poor country with a large number of the population illiterate and close to starvation forced the future Prime Minister to realize the countries desperate need for economic and industrial development. This realization would stick with the future Prime Minister, molding his political and social policies for years to come.
The Great Depression and World War II marked a period of transition for both India and Nehru. National independence was still the end-goal, but with the distraction of economic crisis and world war, the Britons shelved any possibility of granting Indian independence because the colony provided an ideal market for finished goods, a surplus of raw materials, and an allied front during the War. Finally, in the Post War world, Great Britain was unable to maintain an imperial government and simultaneously rebuild from the damage of World War II, so it was on August 15, 1947 that the viceroy of British India officially left, and the provisional government, with Nehru at it’s head, stepped in.
As the Prime Minister of India, Nehru recognized the special role the India would play in the international community. During his tenure in office Nehru experienced the formation of Israel and Pakistan, the decolonization of much of the Middle East, Asia and Africa, the Korean War, the reconstruction of Western Europe, the formation of military alliances such as NATO, SEATO, and the Baghdad Pact, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Kashmir conflict, and the overarching fluctuation of tensions between the Soviet Union and the Western World. By the time Nehru was chosen as India’s first Prime Minister, his reputation, prestige, and importance as a leader in the third world made India an important strategic goal for both Cold War camps. Though many countries were choosing to align with one side in the Cold War, a select collection of leaders in the Third World choose to follow Nehru’s example and remain uncommitted to either side, choosing instead to focus on national development. When Nehru recognized the desperate poverty, exploitation, and underdeveloped state of his country so many years before, he had inadvertently developed the policy that would influence India’s foreign relations throughout his term.
Defining Non-Alignment
Once independence was declared India had quite a tumultuous road ahead,filled with nation-building, economic development and industrial expansion. Nehru knew that non-alignment was the best way to focus on national development, avoid military conflict and to create a good reputation for India in the international community. Though many grumbled about his policy at first, the people of India and eventually leaders throughout the Western world would come to realize the necessity of a stance of non-commitment. If Nehru was to get the people of India out of abject poverty he would need the financial support of the international community. Throughout his time as Prime Minister, Nehru consistently preferred the help of the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to direct aid from the United States or the Soviet Union, but this did not mean he was willing to refuse offers of trade, aid, and agricultural or military tools from independent nations. He also recognized the weakness of the Indian Army, especially when compared with the militaries of the world’s superpowers, and therefore used non-alignment as a means of avoiding military conflict.[10]The Prime Minister was determined to achieve political and economic independence as well as social equality for all Indian people. He recognized that the key problems preventing India’s successful development was the economic distribution of wealth and was therefore willing to combing government planning with private investments and capitalistic endeavors, creating a combination of socialist and capitalistic economic policies. He recognized the importance of economics in maintaining the democratic government and understood that if his plans for India’s development failed, the already strong Communist Party of India (CPI) could make significant political gains, and the “Unprecedented Experiment in Democracy” could fail.[11]
It was from a past of colonial exploitation, the need for development and international support, the desire to avoid of military conflict, and an overall hope for peace that Nehru created non-alignment. In 1965 Krishna Menondescribed the policy as based on—
“(a)non-alignment, (b)support of the freedom of the colonial peoples and (c) opposition to racism,” but they do not fully explain the conduct of contribution of India in world affairs. World peace and co-existence as goals for motivating factors more fully explain a great part of it. Ours is a world in which strife, war and conflict are inherent in the relations between nations. The foreign policy of India does not exclude the use of force or the threat of it…Nationalism plays both a key and conclusive role in our motivations and conduct. Nonalignment is…the policy of independence. It reserves and stoutly maintains that India will make its own decisions in her national interest and in conformity with her ideas of what is good in world interests. It is also a policy based on self-reliance and national dignity.[12]
He then outlines the Five Principles on which Nehru ideologically based non-alignment
The Five Principles are ‘self-interest’ formulations. They are mutual respect, mutual interests, non interference in others’ internal affairs and reciprocity. The very idea or ‘mutuality’ is based on self-respect and self-interest. Not only does respect which is not ‘mutual’ become subservience, but it fails to insure the respect for oneself in which mutuality rest.[13]
Menon, like many in the Indian government, was an ardent supporter of the Nehruvian model and was even often viewed as an overly enthusiastic enforcer of non-alignment by foreign governments. His reputation among American politicians was not favorable, as he was prone to much harsher and dramatic statements than those made by the Prime Minister. By 1955, with his government and international reputation more firmly secured than ever, the Prime Minister met with other Third World leaders in Bandung, Indonesia to discuss the development and effective use of non-alignment. India became an example for countries struggling to shake free of colonial powers, as well as those trying to develop politically, socially and economically independent of previous imperialist rulers.[14]It is also important to understand that though the Indian government refused to align with one superpower or another, it was by no mean neutral. As Nehru explained “I dislike the world neutrality, because there is a certain passivity about it and out policy is not passive….It [is] a policy which flowed from out past history, from our recent past and from our National Movement and from various ideas that we have proclaimed.”[15] Nehru instead remained non-aligned with a particular foreign power so he could interpret each situation as it occurred and respond as best as possible. The Prime Minister believed that by being aligned with a certain power, he would also be limited in his ability to negotiate with others, and that his ultimate goal of world peace would be in jeopardy.[16]By 1955, the Indian government was a secure democracy. Nehru had effectively stabilized the state, rationally calmed sectarian forces into coexistence, assumed control over the party, achieved legitimacy for his democratic government and successfully made India the model colony for independent, but struggling, nations within the third world who hoped to develop non-alignment as their foreign policy.[17]
Eisenhower’s Third World Policy
Before Eisenhower actually took office, the fear of Communism was rapidly spreading throughout the Western world, especially the United States. The Truman Doctrine guaranteed American support, especially militarily, to any country attempting to fight against Communist imperialism. By the time Eisenhower took his position as Commander in Chief, the United States was firmly entrenched in the Cold War, and was currently fighting both Korean and Chinese Communist in the Korean War.[18]In keeping with his campaign promise to “Go to Korea”, Eisenhower did negotiate an armistice ending the conflict in 1953.[19] Peace was not only a term Eisenhower used to win the 1952 election, but it was a goal that was woven throughout his eight years in office. Though he was no stranger to using militaristic means to influence other governments as Zachary Karabell effectively demonstrates in his Architects of Intervention, he does not examine, in detail, the fact that Eisenhower also believed that psychological warfare, financial aid, American investment in foreign nations, and personal diplomacy could convince both foreign leaders and the general public that the United States had their best interest at heart, unlike the evil soviets.[20]