When Nehru Looked East
Studies about the estrangement between India and the United States during the Cold War are written from the Western perspective of a bipolar world and relegate policies toward India and South Asia to a regional derivative of the struggle between the superpowers. A deeper understanding of India as a subject in world affairs is revealed in this work, the first able to draw upon the Nehru Papers, 1947–64, which span the period when the guiding principles of India’s foreign policy, nonalignment and Asianism, were formulated. Nehru’s certainty of India’s great power destiny and claim to be spokesman of Asia collided with the US role as leader of the free world, especially in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, viewed as India’s area of influence. Nehru’s “area of peace” excluding US-led collective security alliances brought the national interests of both countries into direct conflict. Nehru’s assumption that India’s friendly approach to China would result in a peaceful solution of their border dispute and allow the two countries to operate informally as protection against American interference in Asia proved to be a miscalculation of historic importance. The 1962 India-China war toppled the foundations of Asianism and nonalignment.