Sino-Indian Relations

Abstract

U A country's foreign policy is generally governed by numerous historical, political, economic, geographic, cultural, religous, ethnic, and other considerations; but the main motivation is really enlightened self-interest. Through the centuries, this has been true of every country in the world which has had anything like a foreign policy. However, this does not mean that a nation's foreign policy, because it is governed by self-interest, need necessarily be Machiavellian and bereft of any ennobling idealism. While the government of India conducts its foreign affairs on the principle of what is good for India as the policy makers understand it, there are certain progressive and theoretical principles upon which every foreign policy action is based. We may not always succeed in our aims, and sometimes we fall far short of them, especially when conflicting interests arise; nevertheless, the objectives are there, not as ornamental facade, but as serious guide-posts. An objective and nonpartisan evaluation of India's foreign policy during the last dozen years will reveal that her efforts have been directed in the main to the promotion of peace, even if peace is negatively defined as the sum total of averted and arrested wars. Whether it is in Indonesia or among the emerging states of IndoChina, in Israel or Korea, Egypt or Tibet or with Pakistan, or in the general East-West Cold War, our singular aim has been to lessen