LAUSR

T he Indo-Soviet treaty signed on August 9, 1971 has been the subject of current analysis in this country and understandably the analysis tends to be Indo-centric. This is to be expected. The treaty being a contract between two parties, its full understanding would necessitate going into the motivations of both parties. This is also desirable if India is to optimize its gains out of this treaty. In no contract—not even in a marriage—do both parties have identical expectations and analogous motivations. The party which has a better understanding of its own situation and motivations (both conscious and possibly even subconscious), as well as those of the other party, is likely to get more out of the contract than the party which does nothing to gain such an understanding. A treaty of this type is just the beginning of a new relationship and not a concretization of an existing relationship as has been suggested in some quarters. The fact of a written treaty itself is a qualitative change in the earlier relationship. I happen to be one of those who foresaw the Soviet compulsion in 1967 to come closer to India. But I could not predict that a treaty of this type would be signed between the USSR and India. It is not my purpose here to analyse why India signed this treaty. Some of the reasons are obvious. The more obscure ones are better explained by Government spokesmen either voluntarily or when provoked by criticism. I propose to explore those compulsions in the Soviet Union which are likely to have led to this treaty. We can only speculate since neither Soviet pronouncements nor writings in their press help us significantly in such an analysis. I shall also deal with some of the problems that may arise in managing this treaty to our advantage. It has been officially stated that this treaty has been under discussion for well over two years. Those in the know of things claim that the initiative for the treaty came from the Soviet Union. Let us accept this as a premise and analyse its implications. It would then appear that the treaty was offered in the wake of China’s Ninth Party Congress, and perhaps around the time of the 1969 Moscow Conference of World Communist Parties where Brezhnev first mooted his proposal for an Asian Collective Security system. It may also be recalled that this was the period following the Ussuri clash and a series of other major Sino-Soviet armed clashes at Dzungaria. It was after these clashes that Premier Kosygin had a conference with Premier Chou En-lai at Peking airport, which resulted in the resumption of border talks between China and the Soviet Union.