What if India was allied with the US during the Cold War?

[LETHALFORCE]

Everyone worships or salute rising sun. India is on rise and will be very useful for USA in future to contain Chinese Influence in Asia.
In politics no one is permanent friend or enemy. so I would expect India to get best possible deals for its former or current allies. Look at the price we are paying to Russians for recent Defence purchases.

After China it will be India's turn, we have to be careful playing this game.

 

[SHASH2K2]

Simple, If we were US Allies, Pakistan Would be the Worlds Next Superpower, and would have taken over the India is holding today!

USA Chose Pakistan, because Pakistan was basically willing to do all the dirty work. India Wasnt!

India, would have been split into many pieces now, if we were US Allies I believe, because to be an ally, we would have had to train Mujahideen, and remember, it is these very Mujahideen striking Pakistan now! Just think, If we had fed these snakes, would even one of our Temples or Mosques be Safe now?

To Get even with us the USSR, would have fed other insurgent groups in India, and like I said, all this will make Pakistan peaceful, and they would have taken over the Place we are holding now!

Thank God, for Us not being US Allies during Cold War! God Speed

Pakistan was chosen to do the dirty work of training Mujahideens for USA as it was neighbour of Afganistan.India is not an neighbour of Afganistan and would not have been chosen to do that dirty Job in Afganistan.

Fate of country can be chosen only by leaders of that country. Pakistan always had hardline and fanatics ruling them.
When you compare Pakistan you need to look at South Korea as well. We could have prospered like Koreans as well.
In short America can facilitate but its upto us to chose the path we want to go to .

 

[ajtr]

China became the #2 economy as a reward for containing USSR, what will India get??

India aims at usa not some 2nd or 3rd tire country.And that india will get back its past lost glory not by someone rewarding it but by achieving it by its own hard work.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

India aims at usa not some 2nd or 3rd tire country.And that india will get back its past lost glory not by someone rewarding it but by achieving it by its own hard work.

you are right AJ, but my main question is what incentives are there for India to help USA in playing a containing role against China?? very simply let USA and China battle it out themselves.

 

[ajtr]

you are right AJ, but my main question is what incentives are there for India to help USA in playing a containing role against China?? very simply let USA and China battle it out themselves.

Why India wans to be cat's paw against china too be discarded like used condom whenever uncle wishes.

 

[thakur_ritesh]

1) What would have happened to the Kashmir issue?

kashmir would have not made the international headlines as it did. western media has an unparalleled reach, a propaganda most heard to. EU states would have backed india so would have the british, the moot point of discussion would have been PoK and not J&K. UN would have accepted the indian point and there would have been no talk of a plebiscite.

2) Our relations with Pakistan.

hatred with pakistan would have persisted, relations would have been no better, the two nation theory which created pakistan makes sure the hatred. had the pakistanis not allied with the americans they would have allied with the soviets, they were ready to sell themselves at any cost to counter our influence. they have a geo political significance which would have assured them that, the friedly ussr that we remeber today would then have been seen as a terror, and commie ideology would have been the most hated ideology in india, not to say it is not as of today.

on the domestic front the CPI's and CPM's would have been a lot more marginalized and the misfortune of WB, kerala, and tripura to be ruled by them would have never happened. since a sense of socialism would have not been there but one of capitalism, the left leaning intellect wide spread amoungst us indians wouldnt have been around nor would we have seen the maoists around.

3) Bangladesh liberation?

bangladesh would have been there and more likely than not J&K would have been complete, and not a part of it under pakistan's control as is today.

4) Relations with China

i think as tense or possibly much much worse. two big neighbors with complete contrast ideologies, one commie the other capitalist would have possibly gone more than once at each other with china being played around by the soviets and india by the americans.

5) Economic benefits

huge!

india would have been a capitalist, and with shared values of democracy the americans would have been interested in developing an economically strong india. the path we took post 1991 disaster that sense would have been drilled in us much-much before. imagine if india had done the same since 1960's, we would have been today where we are expected to be in 2040's, we lost a lot of time.

india would have been catering to manufactured products across the globe and not china.

india would have been the super power today it self, and people would have been talking about the indian dream and not the american dream!

6) Strategic benefits etc

as i said kashmir wouldnt have been played up as it was.
indian troops would have moved everywhere along with the amricans, their war would have been ours, their enemies would have been ours.
india would have gone nuclear and accepted as a unsc permanent member a lot earlier.
we would have been at logger heads with the soviets and most of the nations we found friendly during the cold war era would have been our sworn enemies.


i think it is absolutely wrong to associate ourselves with the experience handed out to the pakistanis by the americans, for a simple reason, the pakistani elite is a complete sell out on the contrary we have checks and balances in our system which assures our leadership is not. they never had a democratic system, it was always the armed forces ruling them and they were the only one taking decisions which made sure the national interests and the inerests of it its awam were never taken into account.

 

[Mustang]

Nehrus socialism would have taken a beating and India would have become more capitalist. From economic POV, i think india would have been better off and perhaps even in defence sector, India by now would have produced and inducted an aircraft equivalent to Gripen.

From this anyone can make out that, I have more faith in capitalism than communism.

 

[tarunraju]

If India was allied with US, today post cold-war, we would be poorer, living in a more hostile neighbourhood with East Pakistan still very much there.

It's foolhardy to think that US alliance would have solved Indo-Pak conflict. The US is allied with Israel as well as several Middle East countries that don't recognize Israel. Yet, America's "Power-balancing" strategy made sure the status quo and belligerence continued to date. It would have done everything to prevent the creation of Bangladesh, and favoured the transfer of Kashmir to Pakistan by forcing plebiscite, on grounds of religious demographics.

It's even more foolhardy to think that India would be any richer than what it is today. Had it not been for the socialist regime that aligned with USSR, and maintained an excessively regulatory atmosphere while India developed its own entrepreneurship and skilled labourforce that ultimately hatched in 1991 to the world, cash-rich American entrepreneurs would have raped through our natural resources.

 

[Agantrope]

Barring Geo-Political scenario,

No Land Reforms would have happened and more poor and hungry people than today, Nation would have surely gone a toss
Nation would be ruled by the landlords, More the richer i am more the powerful i is.
Kashmir issue would be the same as the both Super power want their foothold in the region
Economy would have gone in bad shape, as the people are not that familiar with the capitalism (barring what they saw in east India co. rule)
One day or another, when Unkil find us we are useful we would have been in trash long ago.

 

[Yusuf]

why would indian economy following a thorough capitalist format not have done well? other 3rd world countries did well. same doubts were raised in 91 too. Today indian companies are acquiring foreign companies.

 

[hit&run]

Many good points by Pankaj neema.

There was nothing for India to offer USA during cold war. We were not the choosers but USA was and still USA is. So its a very hypothetical question if we would have chosen USA instead USSR. Even we didn't choose USSR but USSR came to us at the start then further India consolidate her relation during course of time for many reasons by running extra miles towars USSR.

 

[ajtr]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2227768

 

[neo29]

Lets say India was US ally in cold war. So logically Pak is a USSR ally. So in the Afghan war Pak would have helped USSR capture and control Afghan. Mujahideen loses the battle and the breeding grounds for jihadi elements does not exists anymore. Terrorism would not be as bad as it is today. Soviet would have direct access to IOR.

Being a US ally India would still be able to split East Pak. USSR would have surely intervened. Nevertheless with US and USSR would have been mere spectators like it actually happened in reality. BD creation would not have had any affect.

During the Chinese war, US did help us with supplies but being an important ally who knows US may have been able to take a stronger action against China.

Cant really comment of the extremism in Pak with this scenario. Someone can throw speculations please.

 

[thakur_ritesh]

a very interesting observation on this on going discussion. most people who have been anti-congress have actually endorsed and justified the policies pursued by the very same congress.

 

[ajtr]

a very interesting observation on this on going discussion. most people who have been anti-congress have actually endorsed and justified the policies pursued by the very same congress.

Most people are anti congress coz of it sycophancy are domestic politics.And the legacy of omissions and commission its leaders on various important issues of geopolitics which are still haunting india.Bring democracy to congress replacing dynastic politics then u'll find the overwhelming support for it.Btw People here are very supportive of the other stalwarts of the congress who never tried to impose themselves as cult figure on the party.People were even supportive of IG till she did emergency harakiri and was promptly shown the door.Btw congress which ruled this country majority of the time is always ready to lap up successes and and it promptly abandons it failures of it dynastic leaders on someone else as PVNR was made scapegoat of bhopal gas case just to save rajiv's skin.

 

[hit&run]

Anti congress for its policies for China and Kashmir.

There is nothing critically wrong with India's friendship with Russia. Fall of USSR is not the victory of USA, will never be.

Adding : Friendship with USA was never going to guarantee Kashmir and Border disputes with China to resolve in favour of India.

 

[thakur_ritesh]

Most people are anti congress coz of it sycophancy are domestic politics.And the legacy of omissions and commission its leaders on various important issues of geopolitics which are still haunting india.Bring democracy to congress replacing dynastic politics then u'll find the overwhelming support for it.Btw People here are very supportive of the other stalwarts of the congress who never tried to impose themselves as cult figure on the party.People were even supportive of IG till she did emergency harakiri and was promptly shown the door.Btw congress which ruled this country majority of the time is always ready to lap up successes and and it promptly abandons it failures of it dynastic leaders on someone else as PVNR was made scapegoat of bhopal gas case just to save rajiv's skin.

are you trying to tell me IG is hated all over india just because of the emergency?

she was the person who rot the indian economy, had we just carried on with nehruvian economic policies, india would have been much better placed, she was to indian economy what ZAB was to pakistani economy, it was she who gifted us with the concept of nationalization of our corporations, which made sure the whole system became inept.
she was the person who gifted punjab with terrorism.
there is so much more to the credentials to this lady who one day termed India ka matlab Indira.
she was the one who made indians know what dictatorship was under the guise of democracy, and no this is not being referred to the era of emergency, it was how she functioned all the time.
thank goodness we have a stable tamilnadu!

is parivarvaad only limited to the congress?

come to himachal and i will show how parivarvaad is prevalent in bjp, the very party which claims they have none of it.
the sp's, the rjd's, the ncp's, the dmk's, the very foundation of tdp was an extension of parivarvaad, from north to south to east to west you find it everywhere, from regional to national partiies, possibly barring the commies, move to other south asian countries and it is right there, after all they all were created from mother india which just shows how deeply it is ingrained in our culture and if it is not parivarvaad then there is a coterie which generally consists of the people who donate the most money to these political parties, or the elites who can carry out the dirty murky stuff, democratic, let alone those parties, india is hardly democratic in the real sense of word, law in india mainly exists for the influencial, and people who can network themselves well, otherwise you can be assured you will be looted off the last paisa. the USA that a lot of us despise is a lot more democratic any day.

congress's biggest all time gift to india, the left leaning intellect, it was this fascination of these elites of congress for this intellect that we eventually looked to the soviets and that ideology of the soviets in turn had a lasting effect on the intellect of indias amass, ofcourse i am not denying other external pressures which pushed us to them possibly if IG had not allied with the soviets as much india would have possibly never seen the darkest days of its democracy, the emergency, had that left thinking not been there we would have tackled our internal problems a lot better, people wouldnt have associated with the maoists as much nor would we have seen the arundhati's in this country.

and who doesnt lap up success and underscore failures, you and i do so does almost everyone in life unless and until someone is a saint, we all love our skin more than someone else's, the saying, success has many fathers, never dropped from no where, there was something to it that some learned individual thought and pronounced it. its not a congress thing, its a human thing, its just that we all are too selfish which we feel is a natural phenomenon, had that sense not been there we would have all been handing out tons of aid to pakistan through various aid agencies, and would have not waited for a response from the paks, it is because we are selfish that we start looking for recognition or what do we get in bargain.

anyways this part of the discussion takes it out of the ambit of discussion going on in this thread so i'm not going to dig further here on this. i was just making an interesting observation, nothing more.

 

[tarunraju]

why would indian economy following a thorough capitalist format not have done well? other 3rd world countries did well. same doubts were raised in 91 too. Today indian companies are acquiring foreign companies.

Because we are located in too good a geographic location, and we're too big a country for the US to let us prosper like Malaysia. Today Indian companies are acquiring foreign companies because the people who make those companies could develop under an environment that safeguarded their opportunity and natural resources from capitalists from developed countries.

The difference it made was phenominal. It prevented India from becoming another Zimbabwe.

 

[Mustang]

As someone already mentioned, land reforms was one good thing out of communist ideology of nehru. But then again, government cannot provide all the jobs. This is one of the big reasons why there are so many poor people and turning towards maoist / naxalism. Having said that, it doesn't mean that i am okay with Sterlite / vedanta resources displacing or snatching the resources of tribal lands.

 

[venkat]

By now India would have become another Greece. May be there would have been lot of semiconductor companies like Intel,AMD etc setting up of fab facilities in India