Bangladesh War #4: Diplomatic Moves

As war looked inevitable, India went around the world capitals to gauge which way they’d lean in case of war, writes Gary Bass in The Blood Telegram. The response was disastrous, unsurprisingly. Western countries toed America’s line. South East Asia didn’t see any reason to stick their neck out, one way or the other. The Middle East openly backed Pakistan. Only Israel was supportive.

 

Was America likely to get involved militarily, when war came? India was confident that would never happen:

“With the United State painfully trying to extricate itself from Vietnam, nobody wanted more military involvement in Asia.”

To make sure, India also took its case publicly to the American public and media. Their aim? Make the optics of it (America supporting a genocidal regime) impossible for Nixon to intervene militarily. Remember Kennedy’s visit to the refugee camps from the earlier blog? Well, that helped too. India, being a democracy with a free press, knew how to play that game with the US.

 

That left China. As mentioned earlier, India was relying on winter to lock the Chinese out. But after the opening of the US-China relations, India considered the possibility of the US asking China to intervene on its behalf. This was a valid fear, as future events would prove.

 

So India decided to neutralize the risk by signing a treaty with the Soviets. Though the treaty didn’t state whether the Soviets would get involved if anyone attacked India, the wording was vague enough to serve India’s purpose. It would make China stop and think: would the Soviets attack them on their north if they attacked India to their south? Was it a risk worth taking? India believed (hoped?) China would not be willing to take that risk.

 

The US was left fuming by the India-Soviet pact. Indira sent a message to Kissinger telling him it was an act of expedience. When he criticized her for putting all her eggs in one basket, she snapped back:

“We won’t (wouldn’t have) if there’s another basket.”

 

Nixon invited Indira to meet him, as a last attempt to avert war. It was a disaster: the two couldn’t even pretend to tolerate each other. At a state dinner hosted for her, she broke protocol and ripped into both Pakistan and US policy:

“Has not your own society been built of people who have fled from social and economic injustices? Have not your doors always been open?”

In a private meeting, she poured scorn on Nixon for aligning with a genocidal dictatorship when America claimed to love freedom and democracy, both of which she pointedly said, India had. For good measure, she added plenty of Nazi and holocaust references to what was happening in East P.

 

There was no ambiguity anymore that war was imminent.