Modern Power Politics—Cold War

During the first decade and a half after the end of World War II, which roughly coincided with the advent of India's independence, the most gripping phenomenon in international affairs was the cold war. It certainly gripped Europe and America. It affected Australia, which during this period was somehow politically closer to the U. S. A. than the U. S. A.'s closest neighbour Canada. If it failed to grip the other great continents of Asia and Africa to anything like the same degree, the credit goes largely to one country, India, and to one man, Jawaharlal Nehru, who formulated its foreign policy, Nehru himself would have said that India's foreign policy merely expressed itself through him, for in the circumstances, historical, geographical, political and even policy other than non-alignment .