Peking, New Delhi and Moscow

...There was the prospect of a "package deal" whereby (1) there would be some kind of balance between pro-Western and anti-Western elements in the group to be added to the Security Council...

...Russian initiative in elevating India to membership in the Big Five could not fail to be highly gratifying to Indians...

...But however private and informal the gatherings of the heads of government of the Great Powers, the hundreds of watching journalists would know of them and they would make the headlines of the world's press...

...It is certainly in the interest of the whole Communist camp that Indian neutralism should be encouraged and that the Indian intelligentsia should look to the lands of Marxist-Leninist faith, rather than to the democratic West, for inspiration in the modernization of their country...

...In the first case, London and Paris knew that the U.S...

...His letter referred to the presence of the delegate of Nationalist China as one of the reasons why the Security Council was unfit to deal with the Middle East situation...

...If the Western powers, on Russia's demand, were to accept India as the representative of Asia in an exclusive conference when India had not previously been accorded any such Great Power status, it could only appear to the Baghdad Pact countries as an act of appeasement at their expense...

...political commentators assumed that he had yielded to Chinese Communist resentment of the idea that Khrushchev might sit at the same table with a delegate of the Taipeh Government...

...Of course, the composition of the latter subsequently gave Khrushchev the excuse he required to cancel the whole project without giving any offense to India...

...Government would object...

...2. Khrushchev could reasonably expect that India would, in all essentials, be on his side at this kind of conference, not only because of the special ties between Moscow and New Delhi created by Russia's support for India over Kashmir, but also because of India's wholehearted support for the Arab nationalism of President Gamal Abdel Nasser...

...perhaps fortunately, the skill of Western diplomacy was never put to the test...

...The Security Council already had 11 members, and the invitations to states regarded as specially concerned with the Middle East crisis could easily raise the number to 20...

...So were Khrushchev's motives for wanting it...

...Khrushchev could thus expect to gain either way: If the Western powers refused to have India at the conference, it would provoke Indian resentment...

...For Britain, which sets great value on the maintenance of the Commonwealth link with India, a flat rejection of Indian participation in the proposed conference was virtually out of the question...

...the idea that a Security Council meeting could be a genuine "summit" conference meant exactly this...

...India, on the other hand, was not even a sovereign state at the time of the founding of the United Nations, and when it finally gained full independence (minus Pakistan) in 1947, it became an ordinary member of the United Nations with no special status as a Great Power...

...Thus, Britain and France did not consult the United States when they took action against Egypt in 1956, and the United States and Britain did not consult France over their recent landings in Lebanon and Jordan...

...China was, indeed, advanced to this status before France had been restored to it...

...in the second, Washington and London anticipated that France would want to take part in any action in Lebanon...

...It was in the interest of the Chinese Communists, claiming to represent China as the only Asian Great Power, that if they were prevented from playing this part in major international conferences, no other Asian nation should play it instead of them...

...But the elevation of India to Great Power rank in place of China could not leave Peking unaffected, for Peking also was China...

...This situation, however galling it might be for both Peking and Taipeh, was not critical for either as long as select Great Power conferences, whether of heads of governments or of foreign ministers, were in effect limited to European affairs and no Asian power other than China took part in them...

...The Geneva conference of 1954, which terminated the Indo-Chinese war, was one of all interested parties, with both large and small nations participating...

...Similarly, if Khrushchev did not seek China's consent to his surprise proposal for a five-power summit conference on the Middle East, it was certainly because he had a very good idea that Peking would not like the project at all...

...In 1955, when the rulers of the Soviet Union attended the first full summit conference since Potsdam, the absence of China was taken for granted...

...Soviet Premier Khrushchev's original proposal for a five-power conference including India on the Middle East was greeted with an embarrassed silence in Peking—a silence which definitely indicated that Communist China's consent to this proposal had not been obtained in advance...

...if they were willing, it would be a deadly blow at the Baghdad Pact...

...Such a development would risk producing either a disastrous Indo-British quarrel or else a British endeavor to conciliate India at the expense of a common front with the United States...

...Pakistan, though it had no direct territorial contact with the Arab world, was a Moslem nation and geographically nearer than India...

...There can, of course, be no doubt that a summit meeting in the Security Council would have sharpened Peking's sense of humiliation at being excluded from that body, where the nominee of Chiang Kai-shek continued to represent China...

...In demanding a summit conference with India on the situation in the Arab world, Khrushchev aimed at gaining three distinct advantages for Soviet policy: 1. He must have hoped to increase the influence on Indian Government and public opinion which he had gained by his tour of India in the autumn of 1955 and greatly strengthened by Russia's championship of India's cause on Kashmir in the UN Security Council...

...Khrushchev accepted the Security Council setting for a summit conference on condition that India was allowed to attend, and by this he meant Indian membership in a privileged inner ring which was to be identical with the Big Five as he had originally proposed it...

...3. The most important advantage of bringing India into a summit conference was the effect to be anticipated on the Asian members of the Baghdad Pact...

...Khrushchev might even be able to sit back in his chair and allow the case against the Western powers to be presented by India's high-minded, English-educated Prime Minister...

...The diplomatic support which the Chinese Communist regime has had from New Delhi over the question of international recognition does not make it any the more willing to renounce China's privileged position as one of the postwar Big Five in favor of India...

...If, on the other hand, the Western powers were to make objections, the inevitable Indian resentment would work still more to Russia's advantage...

...When a government takes a major decision in foreign policy without consulting an ally, the excuse is always that the situation is too urgent to allow discussion...

...Although a permanent member of the Council with the legal right to attend all its formal meetings, the Nationalist Chinese delegate—even if Chiang Kai-shek had come in person—would certainly not have been invited to any of the informal conversations between the Western powers and Russia which would have been the really important part of the gathering...

...Until a month ago, there was no question of putting some other nation in China's place...

...The dilemma had, nevertheless, not been finally solved: There remained the question of who was to take part in the "informal conversations" which were promised within the "framework" of the Security Council meeting...

...The Nationalist Government, on the other hand, though retaining the formal rights of China in the United Nations, would not be admitted to any inner-circle Great Power discussions, partly because of the smallness of its residual territory and population and partly because Britain and Russia, having recognized the Peking Government, would not have any dealings with Taipeh...

...China remained one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, but its representative there was the delegate of the Nationalist Government whose effective jurisdiction was now limited to the island of Formosa...

...But the real reason is usually that the government in question has good reason to expect that the ally will not agree to the proposed action, or will at least urge some unacceptable modification of it...

...If there had been no thought in Peking for anything but their discomfiture, the best course would have been to encourage Khrushchev to go ahead with his scheme...

...In making this move, Washington and London were certainly acting in accordance with their known dislike of any summit conference held without proper diplomatic preparation, as well as their desire to maintain the formal authority of the UN in a dispute which had already been referred to it...

...No Panch Shila (five principles of co-existence) can alter the fact that China and India are rivals for leadership in Asia...

...If the Western powers were to fall in with the proposal, the credit for making it would still be Russia's...

...Khrushchev went to Peking and immediately afterward dropped the whole idea of a summit conference on the Middle East like a hot brick...

...But Peking's lack of public support for Khrushchev's original proposal for a Mideast summit conference makes it probable that Mao's rebuke to Khrushchev was at least as much for his attempt to bring in India as for his agreement to have the summit meeting in the Security Council...

...In addition, Pakistan, involved in seemingly insoluble conflict with India over Kashmir and the Punjab irrigation system, could only regard the selective promotion of India to take part in Great Power deliberations on the Middle East as an intolerable affront and humiliation to itself...

...But the fact that Khrushchev, in announcing this reversal, pleaded the grounds of the unsuitable composition of the Security Council diverted attention from what was really the principal issue at stake: the promotion of India to Great Power status through membership in a Big Five conference at which Communist China would not be represented...

...It must have been evident to a politician of Mao's intelligence that the attendance of heads of governments of the Great Powers at a session of the Security Council, far from enhancing the prestige of Nationalist China by magnifying the importance of the Council, would have exposed the Taipeh Government to a very serious loss of face...

...Further, if the Western powers were to object to the presence of Nehru after Khrushchev had proposed it, the objection could only aggravate the already strained relations between the Western powers and New Delhi and push India further toward the Soviet camp...

...But they also undoubtedly had in mind the possibility of evading the embarrassment caused to them by the Soviet demand for the inclusion of India in a Big Five meeting...

...This must make the leaders in Peking more than ever jealous of India and vigilant to prevent India from gaining substantial international advantages from its neutral position...

...Clearly, if India were invited to one conference in the manner he proposed, it would create a prescriptive right for the future, and China would in effect be superseded as the recognized leading power of Asia...

...The Western powers, however, were not entirely without diplomatic resources for coping with this situation...

...The Security Council had the power to invite states which did not belong to it to take part in its proceedings on any question which especially affected their interests: On this basis, not only India and all the Asian Arab states besides Iraq (already a member of the Council) could be invited, but the Baghdad Pact nations and Israel could also be brought in...

...When at the end of 1957 Khrushchev began his diplomatic drive for a new summit meeting, there was again no mention of China...

...It was, therefore, a complete surprise when in response to the Middle East crisis which followed the revolution in Iraq and the Western landings in Lebanon and Jordan, Khrushchev proposed a summit conference including India...

...The question of the composition of a summit conference would thus reappear in a new form...

...The triangular relations between Moscow, Peking and New Delhi are more complex and delicate than perhaps Khrushchev had realized before his recent visit to Mao's capital...

...It was clear that the important negotiations, if there were to be any, would take place in confidential meetings of a small group of the Great Powers...

...Turkey and Iran had common frontiers with Arab countries and were vitally concerned in what was happening immediately to the south of them...

...This would have been a great humiliation for the Nationalist Chinese...

...The negotiations for the armistice in Korea were conducted on a military basis by the United Nations High Command...

...It would be particularly hard for Britain to bear the reproaches of a co-member of the Commonwealth in unison with the taunts and gibes of Khrushchev...

...In other ways, also, it may seem from Peking's point of view that Russia's wooing of India has been overdone...

...If the affairs of Arab Asia were to be discussed, it was difficult to reject the idea that Asia ought to be represented at the conference table...

...Far Eastern affairs, indeed, required in practice some form of Western negotiation with Communist China, but this never took the form of a Big Five Conference including China...

...Either Nehru would be invited to these meetings or he would not...

...The elevation of China— despite its obvious backwardness and weakness at the time—to the special eminence held de facto by the most powerful nations was the result of an energetic American initiative...

...What would have happened if the Security Council summit meeting had taken place can now never be known...

...These three Asian members of the Baghdad Pact had committed themselves as allies of the Western powers and as such had incurred the hostility of neutralist India...

...In itself, the backing which Indian Premier Nehru might give Khrushchev at a summit conference might not be very important: Decisions on such occasions are not taken by voting, and in any case the Western powers would still be three to two at the table...

...For the time, China was simply missing from the Big Five, and Great Power diplomacy meant Russia sitting at a conference table with America, Britain and France...

...But India is, nevertheless, not a Communist country, and too much enthusiasm in Moscow for the new friend can easily provoke in Peking the reflection that the first duty of the Soviet Union abroad, whether in economic aid or diplomacy, is to its Communist partners...

...But whatever may have been the motives for and against Great Power status for China, it was in fact recognized...

...The situation changed with the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war...

...2) the Baghdad Pact countries would not have a sense of outrage at being passed over in favor of neutralist India, and (3) India itself, invited along with a number of other stales on the group of special interest, would not be given any unique status in Asia by the invitation...

...The Western governments were delivered from their embarrassment by intervention from an unexpected quarter...

...the Communist regime in Peking was refused recognition by a majority of nations, including the United States...

...The Soviet Union now proposed that "parity" in a conference between the NATO and Warsaw Pact blocs should be attained by bringing in Poland and Czechoslovakia, but did not press for Chinese or any other Asian representation...

...Khrushchev, in trying to push India into the vacant chair, had given insufficient consideration to Chinese feeling...

...There is reason to believe that the Chinese Communist regime has run into serious difficulties in the endeavor to carry out its ambitious economic policy and is now passing through a period of considerable strain...

...This meant that the Government controlling the mainland of China could not take part either in the proceedings of the Security Council or any select conference of the Big Five outside the United Nations...

...After a careful study of the relevant provisions of the UN Charter, the American and British Governments made a counter-proposal for a special meeting of the Security Council which could be attended by heads of governments and would thus serve the purposes of a summit conference without its exclusive Great Power character...

...China's status as the only Asian Great Power remained, as it were, in abeyance until there would be an agreed international answer to the question of who should represent China...

...This distinction was formally registered by appointment as one of the five permanent members (with -the right of the veto) of the United Nations Security Council...

...The proposal to include India was extremely embarrassing for both the American and British Governments, especially the latter...

...By the end of the Second World War, China had been internationally recognized as one of the five Great Powers of the victorious wartime coalition...

...Yet in official circles in both Washington and London, the disadvantages of a summit conference on this basis were only too apparent...

...After his visit to Peking, Khrushchev withdrew from his initial acceptance of the Anglo-American counter-proposals for a conference "within the framework of the Security Council,' and this withdrawal was universally recognized as a Soviet concession to objections by China's Mao Tse-tung...

...A little reflection should make it clear why it was, indeed, adverse to the prestige and interests of Communist China...

...If, on the other hand, Nehru had been admitted to these talks, India would in effect have replaced China as the Asian member of the Big Five, though not a permanent member of the Council...

...But the Indian statesman, as a non-Communist representing a political democracy, would be morally far more of an embarraccment for the Western powers than any Communist second who would merely echo the Soviet leader's stock phrases from the Marxist-Leninist book...

...Why China balked when Russia proposed India for the Big Five PEKING, NEW DELHI and MOSCOW By G. F. Hudson London FAILURE to consult allies in the making of critical policy decisions is not a shortcoming peculiar to the Western powers...

...in President Roosevelt's original scheme for the ordering of the postwar world, America, Britain, Russia and China were to be the "four policemen" keeping the peace among the nations...

...We have seen this clearly in the recent negotiations over a possible Mideast summit conference...

...Churchill and Stalin were notoriously lacking in enthusiasm for it...