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Review of:

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976: South Asia Crisis, 1971 by Department of State
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2005
Pages: xxxi+899. $66.00

Reviewed By: Gary R. Hess
Reviewed in: Diplomatic History
Date accepted online: 10/04/2008
Published in print: Volume 31, Issue 05, Pages 959-963
See all reviews for this journal

Book Review: Grand Strategy and Regional Conflict: Nixon, Kissinger, and Crisis in South Asia

The release of the 1971 Foreign Relations volume on South Asia details the American response to the most significant geopolitical event on the Indian subcontinent since India and Pakistan became independent nations in 1947. The brief war that ended the crisis resulted in the dismemberment of Pakistan, the creation of the nation of Bangladesh, and the resurgence of India's power and stature nine years after its humiliation in the Sino-Indian border war. Nixon's fabled "tilt" toward Pakistan brought the Indo-American relationship to its nadir. [1]The recorded Oval Office and telephone conversations between President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger-which constitute the most revealing documents in this volume-underscore that behind the tilt were deep personal antagonisms toward India and respect for Pakistan based on simplistic impressions of Indians as weak and cunning and of Pakistanis as masculine and trustworthy, indifference to the bloodshed inflicted by the Pakistani army on the Bengalis, and the insistence on interpreting the crisis within the framework of a global geopolitical structure which necessitated supporting Pakistan and restraining India. Grand strategy-Pakistan's role in the U.S. opening to China, the anticipated thaw in Sino-American relations, and the closer ties between India and the Soviet Union-determined U.S. diplomacy. [2]

The policymaking traced with remarkable thoroughness in this volume illustrates-perhaps more than any other case-the shortcomings of the national security priorities and decision-making style of Nixon and Kissinger. Among other scholars of Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy, John Lewis Gaddis observes that it suffered from "the imposition of global strategy on regional events which deadened sensitivity to the distinctive contexts within which they had developed" and a tightly controlled decision making which ignored regional expertise and risked that "issues would be seen in terms of personalities as well as interests." This risked leaving "thin the distinction between policy and petulance." [3]

The crisis had its origins in London's hasty partition of British India, which established India as a secular state with a Hindu majority and a substantial Muslim minority, and Pakistan as an avowedly Islamic state. Pakistan was an anomaly among nation-states in that it was divided into two wings, separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory. Aside from their common religion and animosity toward India, the peoples of Pakistan's two parts had little in common, divided not just by geography but by ethnicity, culture, language, and tradition. Civil and military power was concentrated in the West, although the eastern portion was the more populous. It was difficult to believe that such a contrived nation could long endure. By the late 1960s, the Bengalis of East Pakistan were pressing for greater political power. At length Pakistan's president, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan, agreed to national legislative elections. The December 1, 1970, election resulted in the Awami League, representing the autonomy aspirations of the Bengalis, gaining a majority of seats in the National Assembly. Determined to preserve a unitary state, Yahya in March 1971 launched a military campaign against the Bengalis. He poured troops from the West into the East. The Pakistani army waged a brutal war against what Islamabad still claimed were its own people. Perhaps as many as one million people died as the carnage went on. Some ten million Bengalis fled to India, crowding into the already bursting Indian province of West Bengal. Overwhelmed by the refugees and appalled by Pakistan's suppression, India supported the Bengalis, allowing the formation of a Bangladesh government-in-exile (the Awami League having proclaimed independence) and the establishment of guerrilla training bases on its soil; it armed and provided logistical support for the guerrillas. Preparing for a showdown, India in August signed a treaty of "peace, friendship, and cooperation" with the Soviet Union.

As the crisis mounted, American officials made no effort to restrain Yahya. Shortly after the crackdown began, Nixon told Kissinger: "The main thing is to keep cool and not do anything. There's nothing in it for us either way." To which Kissinger added: "[Intervention] would infuriate the Pakistanis, it wouldn't gain anything with the East Pakistanis ...and the Indians are not noted for their gratitude" (p. 37). This policy ignored the belief of virtually all State Department officials in India and Pakistan that the United States had embarked upon a disastrous course. The concentrated decision making, however, marginalized Secretary of State William Rogers, and he never seriously challenged Nixon-Kissinger strategy. He had an opportunity when the Dacca consul general and the twenty members of his staff cabled their unanimous "dissent" over the "moral bankruptcy" of failing to denounce the "suppression of democracy ...atrocities [and] genocide" (pp. 45-47). Instead of using this unusual initiative to challenge policy, Rogers apologized to Kissinger for that "goddam message ...it's miserable ...[and] inexcusable" (pp. 47-48).

By the time that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited the White House on November 5, India was preparing to intervene militarily. She brought out the worst in Nixon and Kissinger. In a postmortem on the president's meeting with her, Kissinger told him: "Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war over there .... While she was a bitch, we got what we wanted too." Nixon chimed it: "We really slobbered over the old witch." The ever-deferential Kissinger added: "You slobbered over her in things that did not matter, but in things that did matter, you didn't give an inch" (pp. 499-500). Ten days later, meeting with Pakistan's foreign minister, Nixon sympathized with Pakistan and "this terrible tragedy, this terrible agony you're going through .... We will try to restrain to the extent that we have any influence with the Indians. We will do everything we can to help you in your cause" (pp. 518-19).

Using a Pakistani preemptive attack as a pretext, Indian forces invaded East Pakistan on December 5 and within ten days defeated the Pakistani army. On the day of the Indian attack, Rogers belatedly implored Kissinger to consider "whether we want to burn our bridges behind us or not with India ...[and] we ought to think about it and talk about it and get the other fellow's point of view" (pp. 632-35). More important to Kissinger was his subsequent phone conversation with Nixon where the global strategy trumped regional considerations. Credibility was on the line. Kissinger told Nixon: "If we collapse now ...the Soviets won't respect us for it; the Chinese will despise us and the other countries will draw their conclusions" (pp. 635-40). Repeatedly, he referred to "learning" from history, especially the importance of resisting aggression. Considering India with Soviet support as the aggressor, Kissinger reached back to the 1930s: "I have to consider this our Rhineland .... If the Russians come out of this totally cocky, we may have a Middle East war in the Spring" (pp. 721-24). Nixon sought to restrain the "treacherous ...vicious ...sanctimonious" Indians (pp. 608, 743). He wanted China to pressure India by moving troops to the border: "If the Chinese start to move, the Indians will be petrified" (p. 675). Convinced that India-with Soviet backing-was planning to move beyond its victory in the East to attack and dismember West Pakistan (despite any substantive basis for such projections), Nixon and Kissinger determined that it was time to show them that "the man in the White House" was tough. On December 10, Nixon dispatched the aircraft carrier Enterprise with supporting vessels to the Bay of Bengal as a show of strength to restrain India and the Soviet Union and to reassure China that, if they entered into a relationship with the United States, they could count on U.S. steadfastness. Notably, it did nothing for Pakistan, whose leaders by that time were desperate, with Yahya writing Nixon that U.S. assistance must "assume, without any further loss of time, meaningful dimensions. The American intervention does not only have to be credible but also tangible and meaningful" (pp. 806-7).

At one point, Nixon paused and posed a fundamental question: the United States had to face "realities ...the partition of Pakistan is fact" and the Bengalis welcomed Indian troops, "so why are we going through this agony?" Kissinger's response took Nixon back to the global strategy: "To prevent the Pakistani army from being destroyed, ...to retain our Chinese arm ...[and to prevent] the collapse of the world's psychological balance of power, which will be produced if a combination of the Soviet Union and Soviet-armed client state can tackle a not insignificant country without anybody doing anything" (pp. 721-24).

In the name of upholding the global balance of power, Nixon and Kissinger cost the United States deeply in South Asia. India's resentment was palpable. In an article in Foreign Affairs in 1972, an indignant Indira Gandhi castigated Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy, lambasting the "dispatch of the warship Enterprise to support a ruthless military dictatorship and to intimidate a democracy." She went on that "the United States has yet to resolve the inner contradiction between the tradition of the Founding Fathers and of Lincoln, and the external image it gives of a super-power pursuing the cold logic of power politics." [4] In Pakistan, American stature likewise plummeted. Also writing in Foreign Affairs, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who became president in 1972, blamed his country's defeat on U.S. economic assistance to India, which had facilitated the Indian arms buildup, and on the neutrality and arms embargo imposed during the 1965 war, which had enabled India to exploit the regional imbalance of power six years later. Bhutto added: "The accusation of a 'tilt' is difficult to understand, taking into account the fact the United States, in spite of past commitments to come to our assistance, had sealed off supplies of all arms." [5]

Although Nixon and Kissinger made efforts at mending relations with India, in a sense the response to the 1971 crisis betrayed a significant change in America's priorities in Asia. Since the early days of the Cold War, India had held a special position in American strategic thinking. India was considered the "essential democracy." As the world's most populous democratic nation embarking on an ambitious program of economic development, India was considered a critical test of the capacity of democratic societies to improve the lives of their peoples against the Communist model represented by China. The opening to China reduced India's importance in American policy and this facilitated being dismissive of India's position in 1971. [6] It would be another quarter-century before Indo-American relations would substantially improve and the "tilt" would be seen in a broader historical context.

[1]The columnist Jack Anderson revealed classified documents that showed Nixon's animus toward India, the decision to "tilt," and his pressures on Kissinger (giving "him hell hour after hour"). See Jack Anderson with George Clifford, The Anderson Papers (New York, 1973).

[2]For accounts of U.S. policy, see Dennis Kux, India and the United States: Estranged Democracies (Washington, DC, 1993), 289-312; Christopher Van Hollen, "The Tilt Revisited: Nixon-Kissinger Geopolitics and South Asia," Asian Survey 20 (April 1980): 339-61; Robert J. McMahon, "The Danger of Geopolitical Fantasies: Nixon, Kissinger, and the South Asia Crisis of 1971," paper presented at the Conference on Nixon and the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-77, Mershon Center of Ohio State University, December 2, 2006. McMahon's paper shows the development of Nixon's thinking about Indians and Pakistanis over the previous two decades. See also Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947-1964 (Ithaca, NY, 2000).

[3]John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War, rev. ed. (New York, 2005), 331-32.

[4]Indira Gandhi, "India and the World," Foreign Affairs 51 (October 1972): 65-77. Gandhi balanced her criticism with expressions of appreciation for the pro-Indian sentiment of many Americans during the nationalist struggle against the British and during the 1971 crisis. She called for improved relations and mutual understanding, prompting the New York Times to label her message as the "Indian love call." New York Times, December 6, 1972.

[5]Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, "Pakistan Builds Anew," Foreign Affairs 52 (April 1973): 551-52.

[6]Gary R. Hess, "American Perspectives on India, 1947-1990," in Four Decades of Indo-U.S. Relations: A Commemorative Perspective, ed. A. P. Rana (New Delhi, 1993), 168-201.