How Kissinger “Lost” India

After Mao Tse Tung took control over China, and Chiang Kai Shek retreated to the island of Formosa late in the 1940’s, there was much finger-pointing within the United States administration to place the blame on specific individuals, especially within the State Department, for having “lost” China. The Cold War had just started, and this was seen as a huge victory for Communism. Early in the 1970’s, India was similarly “lost” from American influence by the actions of Henry Kissinger, then National Security Adviser to President Nixon. Kissinger’s actions during the civil war in Pakistan drove a non-aligned India into the Soviet sphere of influence; ironically this happened while he was working to re-open diplomatic relations with China. The “tilt” policy practiced by Kissinger and Nixon, not only alienated the world’s largest democracy and a natural ally of the United States, but in conjunction with other events, laid the seeds of the 9/11 disaster thirty years later.

On independence from Britain in 1947, colonial India was partitioned into two sovereign states: India and Pakistan. The Muslim-dominated western and eastern parts of the sub-continent respectively formed Islamic West and East Pakistan, separated by a thousand miles of a secular India, albeit with a Hindu majority . The princely states, over three hundred kingdoms that owed allegiance to the British Monarch, were theoretically free to join either nation. As small areas surrounded by the other state would not be viable, Muslim kingdoms within the central landmass, such as Hyderabad, acceded to India, as did Hindu kingdoms within Pakistan. The Hindu-ruled kingdom of Kashmir, with a majority Muslim population, was on the north western border of the peninsula and could viably be part of either state. On acceding to India, it was attacked by Pakistani irregulars in 1948 and a UN brokered cease-fire divided it at the Line of Control which is the operational border between India and Pakistan. Kashmir remains a bone of contention and wars were fought in 1965 and 1999 by Pakistan to get full control of the province. Pakistan has also sponsored and provided bases for terrorist groups within Indian-controlled Kashmir that demand “independence”.

Unlike India which has evolved into a vibrant multi-party democracy with regular competitive elections, freedom of expression, smooth transfers of power and armed forces that remain under civilian control, Pakistan has seen a series of experiments in democracy, dictatorship and military rule. Its strategic location at the edge of the Middle East, just south of both Russia and China, had made it an important component of United States policy in that region during the Cold War. This led to disproportionate military aid, and the unbalanced growth of the military forces in the country compared to civil society. Even though there has been a great deal of multilateral lending to help develop industry and agriculture, it has been overshadowed by the amounts spent on the military . As Wilcox says, “Within Pakistan, American alliance assistance came to have three effects: to strengthen the armed services within the political system, to strengthen the central government against other centers of authority in society, and to strengthen Pakistan against India” .

Thus it is no mystery to understand why the armed forces took over from the civilian government in 1959, and General Ayub Khan became the President. In 1965, assuming that India was still vulnerable after its China war in 1962, and needing to bolster public opinion and confidence in his armed forces, Ayub Khan attacked India. Instead of the swift decisive victory that was expected, the Pakistan Army was forced into a stalemate that required Soviet mediation at Tashkent to broker a cease-fire, after the United States refused to mediate . This led to two changes that set the stage for the civil war to come. Firstly, India’s Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Sastri, died while negotiating at Tashkent, resulting in the selection of Indira Gandhi as the leader of the country. Secondly, in 1967 a set of younger officers, led by General Yahya Khan, removed Ayub and his disgraced colleagues from power.

Yahya Khan very soon established a legal framework to elect legislators who would then create a new constitution for the country and elections were held at the end of 1970 for national and provincial assemblies. At that time there were four contiguous provinces in the west with a total population of 55 million, and a single province in the East with a population of 75 million. In the twenty years since independence, significant fissures had emerged between the provinces, especially between East Pakistan and the provinces in the west. While the East earned most of Pakistan’s foreign exchange, it was the least developed, and had a per capita income 20% lower than that of the west. Most importantly, the people living in the East were culturally, temperamentally and physically different from the West Pakistanis . This led them to be more tolerant of Hindus, and many years after partition there were still many Hindus living in Bangladesh . Living in the low-lying but fertile river delta, the poor people of that region were often subject to natural disasters such as flooding and cyclones.

In East Pakistan the dominant political party was the Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Elections that were to be held in September 1970 were postponed due to a cyclone that caused much devastation and loss of life, and finally completed in December. Due to the step-motherly treatment by West Pakistan governments since independence and a popular perception that relief efforts were not satisfactory, the Awami League swept the polls in the East, capturing 167 seats out of the 169 available. As the East had the most seats, and the votes in the West was split between the Pakistan People’s Party led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and several other parties, Mujib’s party had the majority in a house of 302 seats and he should have been made Prime Minister. Bhutto’s party came a late second with 81 seats.
The election result was greeted with shock in West Pakistan and led to weeks of negotiation between the military dictatorship, Bhutto, Mujib and the leaders of the other parties. Mujib proposed a six-point program that would have led to a great deal of autonomy for the provinces, but this was not acceptable to the west. Early in March 1971, Mujib, frustrated with the delays in the transition of power, declared autonomy for East Pakistan, taking over the civilian administration, but stopping short of full independence and thus remaining within Pakistan. After negotiations failed in Dacca, on March 25 Yahya Khan declared an emergency in the East, expelled foreign journalists and let the Army, mainly made of West Pakistanis, loose on the civilian population. According to Hersh, “over the next weeks and months, the West Pakistani army expanded its march of horror, slaughtering Awami League supporters, students and intellectuals on a scale not seen since the Third Reich” . This genocide is estimated to have killed upto 3 million people and forced almost 10 million to leave their homes and take refuge in India. The West Pakistan army was opposed by the Mukti Bahini which was an amalgam of the more militant members of the Awami League with the Bengali regiments of the army, such as the East Pakistan Rifles. Mujib was arrested and put into solitary confinement in West Pakistan, and some senior members of the Awami League who escaped the killings set up a government-in-exile in Calcutta for the new country in the making: Bangladesh.
Against the international outcry against the Pakistan government’s actions and India’s appeal for help, was contrasted the silence of the Nixon administration. Even though Bangladesh was a cause celebre in the United States outside the official circles, both the State Department and the White House were very guarded in their public pronouncements against Pakistan. The US Consulate in Dacca had a clandestine radio transmitter and was able to send detailed reports about the genocide that were followed by a formal note of dissent from American policy signed by diplomats at the consulate, the State Department and AID . But Nixon and Kissinger had a secret agenda and didn’t want that to be disturbed by the events in Pakistan.

When Nixon won the presidential election in 1968, he was determined to be “hands-on” in his foreign policy, and chose Henry Kissinger as his National Security Adviser. Kissinger was an academic who had only played advisory roles in previous administrations, and had “no respect for career diplomats” ; as a result foreign policy was completely controlled from the White House, sidelining William Rogers, the Secretary of State, and the State Department. In order to secure a grand foreign policy victory and firmly establish Nixon’s legacy, Kissinger embarked on expanding the current United States-Soviet Union superpower relationship to include China and make it a triangular relationship. The inclusion of China would not only counter-balance the Soviet Union, but would help America in its negotiations to get out of the quagmire in Vietnam.

Kissinger “viewed the regional crises as inherently linked to triangular diplomacy” , and was not interested in the details of the history of the region or the motivations of the leaders there. He was convinced that anything that happened in the world was orchestrated by one of the three powers, and local factors did not merit consideration. In addition to ignoring experts and career diplomats, Kissinger felt that there was no need to monitor or accommodate public opinion , so what “mattered was how the Soviets, and in particular, the Chinese viewed American policy” . As Pakistan was Kissinger’s conduit to China, “Yahya Khan held the key to Nixon’s re-election” . In the initial phase of the conflict “Peking completely backed Pakistan, charged Indian interference, and noted that internal strife was part of the internal affairs of Pakistan” , and Kissinger may have been concerned that any American criticism or interference in the civil war would have put his grand plan at risk.

Instead of staying out of the conflict, Kissinger pretended to make an attempt to reconcile India and Pakistan, making a trip to both capitals in July 1971. When he vanished from public sight in Islamabad for some time, pleading an indisposition, it was speculated that he was in secret talks with Mujib. But it was revealed two weeks later that he had secretly flown to Beijing for talks with Zhou En Lai, and this duplicity “renewed Indian distrust of the American role in the East Pakistan crisis” and the “secret trip to China via Pakistan sent a message of support for Pakistan” . In addition, Kissinger had secretly been warning the Indian Ambassador in the United States about possible Chinese reaction to any Indian intervention , making it clear to India that it needed the Soviet Union in its corner.

On August 9, 1971, India and the Soviet Union signed a 20-year treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation, signaling closer ties between the two countries, the end of India’s non-alignment, and including “the news that Russia would provide India with more arms” . Since 1964, the Soviets had already been supplying sophisticated weaponry, including aircraft, as well as the opportunity to manufacture them in India . The clear message from Kissinger that the US would support China in any action against India, less than a decade after India’s China War, forced India to conclude this treaty that had been proposed by the Soviets many months before, but rebuffed at that time.

Late in November, Yahya Khan chose to force resolution of the conflict by attacking India in the West. After an initial setback, India struck back in the West, completely immobilizing the Pakistan Air Force and Navy and gaining some ground, but not attempting to go further. In the East, the Indian Army, working in collaboration with the Mukti Bahini in pre-planned moves, conducted a two week campaign to liberate the people and create the state of Bangladesh: they were welcomed everywhere as liberators. Even then Kissinger tried his best to reverse an un-winnable situation by branding India as the aggressor, putting pressure on the Soviets to arrange a quick cease fire and ordering the Seventh Fleet with the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal. Pakistan, after being rebuffed in its attempt to invoke secret US treaty obligations that required American involvement in the war, surrendered in the East on 14 December. India immediately halted military operations, and on 17 December recognized the new country and its leader Mujibur Rahman who had been released by Pakistan.
Anatoly Dobrynin, Moscow’s Ambassador in Washington is quoted as having pointed out the irony to Kissinger of a situation “where [the Soviets] were lined up with what looked like [the Americans] had always thought was a pillar of democracy [i.e. India] while [the US] were lined up with the Chinese”
Kissinger focused on his grand plan to create a triangular super power relationship and open diplomatic relations with China, and decided that nothing should disturb its implementation. Keeping his eye on the goal to have Nixon re-elected in 1972, he deliberately ignored Pakistan’s bloody civil war and tried to thwart India’s actions to resolve the crisis. Using his position in Washington, he threatened India with dire consequences if it intervened, including the possibility of Chinese attack that the US would not interfere with . This forced India to move closer to the Soviets in self-defence. The world’s largest democracy and a natural ally of the United States and its people was forced into an alliance with a communist dictatorship.

There may be some who defend Kissinger by pointing out that the policy was Nixon’s, that the President had a personal animosity against Indian leaders, especially Indira Gandhi, and Kissinger was just following orders. However, Hersh quotes a 1979 interview with Indira Gandhi: “It was not so much Mr. Nixon talking as Mr. Kissinger, because Nixon would talk for a few minutes and would then say ‘Isn't that right, Henry?’, and from then on Henry would talk on for quite a while. I would talk with Henry rather than Nixon”
In addition, while Kissinger cited the likely Chinese reaction to any US pressure on Pakistan as a reason to do nothing, his understanding was flawed. In his October visit to China he was surprised by Zhou En Lai’s” glaring lack of interest in discussing the Indo-Pakistani conflict” . Yet in November Kissinger still told New Delhi that if there was an India-Pakistan conflict, China would intervene and the US would not help . Siddiqui states that Chinese support for repression wasn’t there, especially as Communists were targeted for extermination in East Pakistan. When Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bhutto went to China in November 1971, Zhou En Lai was quoted as having said “Chinese military aid was for meeting the threat of external aggression and not for the repression of the people”.

While Kissinger followed the usual practice of supporting repression by a client state, no matter what the circumstances, it was the Reagan administration that later demonstrated that transition from a dictator to democracy was possible, as was done in the cases of the Phillipines and South Korea . Thus the defence usually put forward that there was no alternative to supporting a repressive regime in order to avoid a complete breakdown in the country was not valid. It is surprising that even now, the Bush administration “quietly acquiesced as Musharraf amended Pakistan’s constitution in a way that extended his presidency for another five years and gave him the power to dissolve parliament.”

The “Tilt” created a military class in Pakistan that overbalanced the civilian administrators and politicians and continually needed a justification for more military aid. During the Cold War it was the Soviet Union and China that needed to be countered, a game that Pakistan played well with all three superpowers in the 1970’s. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan was a conduit for American aid to the Jihadis, mostly through the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), using the funds and equipment to build-up experienced commanders like Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban were born in the madrasas of Pakistan, and took over Afghanistan completely after the Soviet defeat and withdrawal. During the 1980’s, the Jihadis used Kashmir as a training ground for terrorists while America looked the other way. The relationships forged between the American intelligence and military establishment and Pakistan during the tilt proved stronger than the increasing evidence that the Taliban and Bin Laden were just using India as a training ground for an attack on the West. Until right after 9/11, Pakistan regular army, special forces and intelligence units were working closely with the Taliban: forces that were trained and funded by the United States.

The relationship between the United States and India would not recover from Kissinger’s actions for three decades, until Bill Clinton visited India in 2000 , and re-started the dialogue. Since then, especially during the Bush administration, the strategic cooperation between India and the United States has been growing in many areas, including joint military exercises. Closer cooperation between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest should be beneficial not just to their people, but to the rest of the world.

Works Cited
Hanhimaki, Jussi. The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Hersh, Seymour M. The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. New York: Summit Books, 1983.
Mann, James. Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.
Siddiqui, Abdul Rahman. East Pakistan: the End Game. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004
Wilcox, Wayne. The Emergence of Bangladesh. Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1973.

Animesh Mukherjee
Gerald Dorfman
MLA 243: Problems in American Foreign Policy
Final Paper
June 4, 2007