Abstract
The visit by Gorbachev to New Delhi in 1986 had all the hallmarks of the old-style USSR/India relationship. During the visit, Gorbachev remarked that the USSR shared India’s concern for the strengthening of its defences.1 In the wake of Gorbachev’s visit, the normal manifestations of the relationship, such as soft term loans and military sales, continued. Yet even in 1986, a new trend in the Soviet relationship with India was foreshadowed, a trend that is directly attributable to the new directions in Soviet foreign policy launched by Gorbachev.
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Notes
Interview given to Indian journalists, 21 November, 1986, Security in the Asia Pacific Region; The Soviet Approach (Documents and Materials), Novosti, Moscow, 1988, p. 79.
Speech to Activists of the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society, 27 November, 1986, Security in the Asia Pacific Region, pp. 84–85; and Joint News Conference of Mikhail Gorbachev and Rajiv Gandhi, 28 November, 1986, loc. cit, p. 101.
Ibid., p. 101.
V. Kubalkova and A. Cruickshank, Thinking New about Soviet ‘New Thinking’ Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 26–49.
Fedor Burlatskii, Novae myshlenie 2nd edition revised Politizdat, Moscow, 1989, pp. 34–35.
Robert H. Donaldson, The USSR, the Sub-Continent, and the Indian Ocean: Naval Power and Political Influence’ in Lawrence Ziring (Ed.), The Subcontinent in World Politics, Praeger, New York, NY, 1978, p. 168.
A. Kislov, ‘Novoe politicheskoe myshlenie i regional’nye konflikty’, Mirovaia ekonomika i mazhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1988(8), p. 46.
According to Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, India has always been the pre-eminent power, ‘militarily and otherwise’, in the subcontinent. He says this is often forgotten by Western strategic literature when referring to India’s emergence as a regional power. Regional and Security Perspectives of India, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, 1989, p. 5.
K. C. Pant, the former Defence Minister, described the ‘dissonance between India and the countries around her’ as one of the four major factors affecting India’s security perceptions. Speech at the Massachussets Institute of Technology, 1 July,
V. Gol’danskii and V. Davydov, ‘O predotvraschchenii gorizontal’nogo rasprostraneniia iadernogo oruzhiia’, Mezhdunarodnaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1988(8), p. 33.
R. L. Garthoff, Soviet Military Policy, Faber and Faber, London, 1966, p. 98.
Government of India Economic Survey 1988–89, p. 109.
Ibid, p. S77.
Government of India Economic Survey 1988–89, unnumbered pages between pp. 106–107, and 110–111.
L. Zevin, ‘Nekotorye voprosy ekonomicheskogo sotrudnichestva SSSR s razvivaiushchimisia stranami’, Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1988(3), p. 45.
Ibid.
Vietnam has already encountered this problem. As one Vietnamese official noted: ‘We used to receive three parts aid to one part trade. Now it is one-to-one trade’. Far Eastern Economic Review, 1 March, 1990, p. 19.
As one observer noted: ‘After a decade of growth, India’s ambitious defence plans have come to a dangerous pass ... there is just no money to pay for the plans’. India Today, 28 February, 1989, pp. 42–3.
Time, 3 April, 1989, p. 15.
Ibid.
Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Perestroika inquiry, Hansard, 1 December, 1989, pp. 70–71.
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© 1992 Ross Babbage and Sandy Gordon
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Austin, G. (1992). Soviet. Perspectives on India’s Developing Security Posture. In: Babbage, R., Gordon, S. (eds) India’s Strategic Future. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21885-1_8
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