How Kissinger “Lost” India
....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....
....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” .....
....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.....
....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.....
....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......
.....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.....
....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 ......
....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 ....
....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....
And the only way to avoid it is by getting back into a dialogue," Clinton said.
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) Somebody at work mentioned this; so I googled and saw some discussions at Sepia Mutiny so was little amused. I think I posted a video of Jon Stewart's parody (a.k.a ripping Glenn to shreds) earlier. It was too much fun onlee. I very well know him, the way I test & increase my patience is listen to some of these folks and measure how long before I shout at the radio or change to different station.