South Asia and United States policy

THE ENCOUNTER BETWEEN ASIA AND THE WEST is increasing in scope and in depth. But it is still far too limited and superficial to provide the basis for a viable relationship between countries and peoples with such a different cultural heritage and historical experience, as well as such different outlook and interests, separated by more than geographical distance but at the same time united by the forces that make for interdependence in the modern world. "The central drama of our age," wrote Walter Lippmann in September 1965, "is how the Western nations and Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of coexistence. Today we do not have even the rudiments of an under standing by which Europeans and Americans, Russians and Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis, would be willing to live and let live." This observation underscores the importance of developing what Lippmann has called "a new order of human relationship between the Asian world and the West em world." "In Asia," he pointed out, "the margin of safety is very thin; there is not even the beginning of a meeting of minds, and a catastrophe is possible."

In the growing encounter between Asia and the West, South Asia is obvi ously an area of special significance. It is today a major center of world attention and concern, but it is still a relatively unknown area, and there is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding about the internal situation and the external orientation of even the major countries of the area, India and Pakistan.

There is perhaps no major part of the world that presents more complex problems to United States foreign policy than the Indian subcontinent. As a direct ally of the United States, Pakistan is of special importance to Amer ican policy, political, strategic, and economic. India's prospects, as the lead ing nation in non-Communist mainland Asia, are crucial to the future bal ance of power.