by Gary J. Bass
Haig secretly told a Chinese delegation that Jordan had sent six fighter aircraft to Pakistan and would send eight more soon; Iran was replacing Jordan’s lost airplanes; and Turkey might be sending as many as twenty-two planes. Kissinger assured the Chinese, “Jordan has now sent fourteen aircraft to Pakistan and is considering sending three more.” Nixon later asked, “Did the Jordan[ian]s send planes[?]” Kissinger replied, “17.”39
Now Kissinger could ask China to move its troops toward India’s border. Nixon, keen for the People’s Liberation Army to deploy its soldiers, was convinced India would back down: “these Indians are cowards.” About the Chinese, he said, “All they’ve got to do is move something. Move their, move a division. You know, move some trucks. Fly some planes. You know, some symbolic act. We’re not doing a goddamn thing, Henry, you know that.”40
So Kissinger raced up to New York on December 10, bringing with him Haig and Winston Lord, his special assistant and China aide. George H. W. Bush got a call from the White House, telling him to come to an Upper East Side address, which was a CIA safe house. Bush arrived first, then Kissinger and Haig, followed by China’s tough ambassador to the United Nations, Huang Hua. It was an extraordinarily secret gathering. Kissinger assured the Chinese, “George Bush is the only person outside the White House who knows I come here.” Although Kissinger cringed at the apartment’s mirrored walls and tacky paintings, the place was chosen because it had no doorman and few occupants, so that gossipy New Yorkers would not see Chinese officials in Mao suits entering a building, soon followed by someone looking a lot like Henry Kissinger.41
With candor verging on gusto, Kissinger told the Chinese that the Americans were breaking U.S. law: “We are barred by law from giving equipment to Pakistan in this situation. And we also are barred by law from permitting friendly countries which have American equipment to give their equipment to Pakistan.” Making a show of being untroubled by the illegality, he explained that they had told Jordan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia—and would tell Turkey too—that if they shipped U.S. arms to Pakistan, the Americans would understand. The administration would only feign mild protest, and would make up the Jordanian and Iranian losses in the next year’s budget.
This operation, he said, was under way: “On this basis, four planes are leaving Jordan today and 22 over the weekend. Ammunition and other equipment is going from Iran.” And there would be “six planes from Turkey in the near future.” Kissinger reminded the Chinese how sensitive this information was.
While Kissinger spoke, Lord, Haig, and Bush—a future assistant secretary of state, a future secretary of state, and a future president of the United States—all kept quiet. George Bush was well aware of the illegal acts: after the meeting, he wrote, “Kissinger talked about the fact that we would be moving some ships into the area, talked about military supplies being sent from Jordan, Turkey and Iran”—prudently leaving out Kissinger’s admissions of lawbreaking. Winston Lord, who took the official notes, says, “How they were handling it, whether they were stretching or breaking limits, I don’t remember precisely. Clearly it was to help Pakistan and to impress the Chinese. In terms of the legality or morality of it, I can’t untangle that in my own memory.”
Next, as Bush noted, “Henry unfolded our whole policy on India-Pakistan, saying that we were very parallel with the Chinese.” Kissinger said that the Americans had cut off aid to India, including military supplies, pointedly mentioning that they had canceled all radar equipment for India’s northern defense—an invitation for China to strike one day. And he said that they were moving an aircraft carrier and several destroyers toward the Indian Ocean, in an armada that far outmatched the Soviet fleet there.
Kissinger then turned to his main goal: getting the Chinese to move troops against India. He said, “the President wants you to know” that “if the People’s Republic were to consider the situation on the Indian subcontinent a threat to its security, and if it took measures to protect its security, the US would oppose efforts of others to interfere with the People’s Republic.” In case all that diplomatic verbiage was unclear, he later bluntly said, “When I asked for this meeting, I did so to suggest Chinese military help, to be quite honest. That’s what I had in mind.”
Kissinger laid out all of the administration’s innermost secrets to the Chinese. One of the documents he showed them was, a Chinese translator pointed out, classified as “exclusively eyes only.” Kissinger joked, “There’s a better one that says ‘burn before reading.’ ” Turning to Bush, he said, “Don’t you discuss diplomacy this way.”
Huang denounced Indian aggression and the dismemberment of a sovereign Pakistan, harshly comparing India to Imperial Japan. Kissinger, trying to match the Chinese venom at India, said, “I may look weak to you, Mr. Ambassador, but my colleagues in Washington think I’m a raving maniac.”42
Returning to Washington, Kissinger hopefully noted that China was calling up reserve troops for its mountain divisions. He told Nixon that he was pretty sure that the Chinese would do something. Nixon was optimistically inclined to believe that if China moved troops, it would not “stiffen the Russians” to back up India. Kissinger was confident that China would move.43
Bush—whom Kissinger mostly used for comic relief—was frightened by Kissinger’s behavior and startled by how much information he unveiled to the Chinese. After the meeting, Bush privately wrote that he was uncomfortable to be “in close cahoots with China,” and would have preferred to “keep a fairly low profile, let Red China do what they had do to counteract the Russian threat.” He distrusted Huang, who was “a one-way street. We are supplying him with a great deal of information, he is doing nothing.” About Kissinger, Bush noted, “I think he goes too far in some of these things,” especially when Kissinger said he would support any Chinese resolution at the United Nations: “That is going very far indeed, it’s going too far.” But Bush, a team player on his way up, kept his misgivings to himself.44
“ARMAGEDDON TERMS”
With the Indian army closing in on Dacca, the crisis built to a crescendo. Nixon privately wrote off East Pakistan, and concentrated on safeguarding West Pakistan. Kissinger warned the president on December 10 that “the east is down the drain. The major problem now has to be to protect the west.… Their army is ground down. And 2 more weeks of war and they’re finished in the west as much as they are in the east.”45
Nixon’s and Kissinger’s efforts to back Pakistan seemingly wound up encouraging its military rulers to fight on in the east. Although a quick surrender would have saved soldiers’ lives, the Pakistani junta still hoped for rescue by the great powers. Even though Yahya seemed to realize that he could not hold East Pakistan, he vowed that his troops there would fight “to the last Muslim” for Pakistan and Islam. On December 10, a senior Pakistani general desperately offered an eastern cease-fire through the United Nations—but Yahya quickly withdrew the proposals. These cease-fire terms were also scorned by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, appointed by Yahya as deputy prime minister and foreign minister in a new wartime civilian Pakistani government. In Delhi, Haksar was shocked at the military junta’s willingness to allow continued wasteful bloodshed.46
On December 11, the Pakistan army’s chief of staff exaggeratedly wrote to General Niazi, the commander of Pakistan’s Eastern Command, that the United States’ Seventh Fleet would soon be in position and that China had activated a front. With India under strong Soviet and U.S. pressure, the chief of staff instructed Niazi to hold out, following Yahya’s wishes.47
With Niazi’s troops still battling on, Indian officials needed more time to win in the east. So a frenetic Haksar insisted that a cease-fire must address “the basic causes of the conflict”—an effective way of stalling. Indira Gandhi, despite the staggering rebuke from the United Nations General Assembly, told foreign governments that a cease-fire without firm commitments to get the Bengali refugees home would merely “cover up the annihilation of an entire nation.”48
Still, Haksar brief
ed Indian officials that they had no territorial claims in either Bangladesh or West Pakistan. He urged them to avoid saying or doing anything that would help those who were trying to label India the aggressor. India was, he wrote, “fighting a purely defensive battle” against West Pakistan.49
Trying to mollify the Nixon administration even as Indian soldiers fought on, Haksar instructed the embassy in Washington to explain that India wanted no West Pakistani soil, and that India’s recognition of Bangladesh was a “self-imposed restraint” proving it had absolutely no territorial ambitions there. By way of contrast, he reminded the U.S. government that Pakistan was attacking in Kashmir and elsewhere on the western front. The Indians were clumsy about explaining their goals in one particular area of Kashmir, called Azad Kashmir, under Pakistan’s control but claimed by India; but even there, Haksar said that India would not wrest that land from Pakistani rule by force. Swaran Singh, India’s foreign minister, told George Bush that India had “no major ambitions” there, leaving open the possibility of what Bush called “minor rectifications.” The Indians assured Bush they did not want to prolong the war. Haksar soothingly wrote that “we have no desire to aggravate the situation and shall exercise self-restraint consistent with the needs of self-defence.”50
The State Department’s analysts confirmed that—at least for the moment—India’s troops matched Haksar’s words. Kissinger told Nixon that Indian troops were still in a holding posture on the western front, despite Indian airstrikes at military sites across West Pakistan. At the same time, Pakistan was on the offensive in Punjab and especially in Kashmir; as the CIA reported, Pakistan’s troops had driven the Indians out of Chhamb and were still advancing. India and Pakistan were, the CIA reckoned, roughly equally matched in Kashmir and the northwest. But the CIA had some signals intelligence to suggest that India might be preparing to shift some troops from the eastern front to the western.51
Fearing the worst from China, India shored up its Soviet support. Gandhi’s government sent D. P. Dhar racing back to Moscow on December 11, carrying a personal message for the Soviet premier. The Soviet leadership stood by India, but cautiously; they were not willing to recognize Bangladesh yet. Still, the Soviet ambassador in Delhi secretly pledged that if China intervened against India, the Soviet Union would open its own border diversionary action against China. Indira Gandhi warned a long list of world leaders that the intervention of outside powers would “lead to a wider conflagration with incalculable consequences”—a reminder of Soviet backing for India.52
On the morning of December 12, in the Oval Office, Nixon and Kissinger reached a peak of Cold War brinksmanship. They had warned the Soviet Union to restrain India by noon that day, or face unilateral U.S. retaliatory measures. Believing that China was about to move its troops toward the Indian border, they braced themselves to stand behind China in deadly confrontations against both India and the Soviet Union—with the terrible potential of superpower conflict and, at worst, even nuclear war. Kissinger seemed ready to order bombing in support of China. As he later put it, he and Nixon made their “first decision to risk war in the triangular Soviet-Chinese-American relationship.”53
Despite the reassuring signals coming from Indian diplomats, Kissinger wanted China to move some troops. Until the Chinese had acted, he did not want to hear any more of their bombast against India. The opening to China rested on U.S. toughness now, he argued: “If the Chinese feel we are nice people, well-meaning, but totally irrelevant to their part of the world, they lose whatever slight, whatever incentives they have for that opening to us.”
Nixon wanted to “hit in there hard and tough,” publicly accusing India of Soviet-supported “naked aggression.” Calling Gandhi “that bitch,” Kissinger said they needed “to impress the Russians, to scare the Indians, to take a position with the Chinese.” The president resolved to press the Soviet Union. “It’s a typical Nixon plan,” Kissinger told him. “I mean it’s bold. You’re putting your chips into the pot again.” Without acting, he said, they faced certain disaster; with brinksmanship, they confronted a high possibility of disaster, “but at least we’re coming off like men. And that helps us with the Chinese.”
Urging the president on, Kissinger blasted critics who said they were alienating the Indians: “We are to blame for driving 500 million people. Why are we to blame? Because we’re not letting 500 million people rape 100 million people.” Nixon compared India to Nazi Germany: “Everybody worried about Danzig and Czechoslovakia and all those other places.”54
Then Alexander Haig strode into the oval office with a message from China. “The Chinese want to meet on an urgent basis,” Kissinger said. “That’s totally unprecedented,” he said. “They’re going to move. No question, they’re going to move.” Nixon asked if the Chinese were really going to send their troops. “No question,” replied Kissinger.
Kissinger now fully expected a standoff between Chinese and Indian soldiers, with obvious potential for skirmishing or worse. Although Kissinger often bragged around Washington that he was the only thing standing between a madman president and atomic annihilation (“If the President had his way, we’d have a nuclear war every week”), here he played the instigator. In this nerve-racking session, he repeatedly pressed the president to escalate the crisis to maximum danger. Now that the United States had seemingly unleashed China against India, India would have to beg the Soviet Union for help. If that caused a confrontation between the Soviet Union and China, Kissinger insisted that Nixon had to back China: “If the Soviets move against them, and then we don’t do anything, we’ll be finished.”55
Nixon balked. “So what do we do if the Soviets move against them?” he grilled Kissinger. “Start lobbing nuclear weapons in, is that what you mean?” But Kissinger, rather than backing off at that dire prospect, held fast: “Well, if the Soviets move against them in these conditions and succeed, that will be the final showdown. We have to—and if they succeed, we’ll be finished. We’ll be through.”
Nixon was not swayed. “Then we better call them off,” said Kissinger, about the Chinese. Then he realized, “I think we can’t call them off, frankly.” Haig said that the Chinese could only be dissuaded now at a terrible price. Kissinger said that “if we call them off, I think our China initiative is pretty well down the drain.” Nixon saw the logic there: “our China initiative is down the drain. And also our stroke with the Russians is very, very seriously jeopardized.”
Kissinger goaded Nixon to confront the Soviet Union, despite the peril: “If the Russians get away with facing down the Chinese, and if the Indians get away with licking the Pakistanis, what we are now having is the final, we may be looking right down the gun barrel.” Bucking Nixon up, he said, “I think the Soviets will back off if we face them.” But he did not give any suggestions about what to do if they did not.
Nixon yielded to Kissinger’s pressure, hoping that the Soviet Union would be satisfied with its gains from India’s battlefield victories and in no mood for further confrontation. Kissinger said that “we’ve got to trigger this quickly.”
The president rounded on Kissinger: “The way you put it, Henry, the way you put it is very different as I understand. You said, look, we’re doing all these things, why don’t you threaten them. Remember I said, threaten, move a couple of people.… Look, we have to scare these bastards.” In a frightening analogy, Kissinger compared this moment to China’s entry into the Korean War: “They are acting for the same reason they jumped us when we approached the Chinese border in Korea.”
Kissinger demanded that Nixon stand firm. He ratcheted up the geopolitical stakes: “if the outcome of this is that Pakistan is swallowed by India, China is destroyed, defeated, humiliated by the Soviet Union, it will be a change in the world balance of power of such magnitude” that the United States’ security would be damaged for decades and maybe forever.
This induced in Nixon a doomsday vision of a solitary United States isolated against a Soviet-dominated world. “Now, we c
an really get into the numbers game,” he said darkly. “You’ve got the Soviet Union with 800 million Chinese, 600 million Indians, the balance of Southeast Asia terrorized, the Japanese immobile, the Europeans, of course, will suck after them, and the United States the only one, we have maybe parts of Latin America and who knows.” Kissinger replied, “This is why, Mr. President, you’ll be alone.” “That’s fine,” said Nixon, standing tough against his own phantasm. “We’ve been alone before.”
After that, Nixon tried to take a step back from the brink: “I’d put [it] in more Armageddon terms than reserves when I say that the Chinese move and the Soviets threaten and then we start lobbing nuclear weapons. That isn’t what happens. That isn’t what happens.” Instead, he said, they would use the hotline to the Soviets and talk to them.
“We don’t have to lob nuclear weapons,” agreed Kissinger. “We have to go on alert.” But now he wanted to get the United States to join the war. “We have to put forces in,” he said bluntly. “We may have to give them bombing assistance.”
Nixon added, “we clean up Vietnam at about that point.” Kissinger agreed: “at that point, we give an ultimatum to Hanoi. Blockade Haiphong.” (He would make good on this in May 1972 with the mining of Haiphong harbor.)
Trying again to cool off, the president said, “we’re talking about a lot of ifs. Russia and China aren’t going to go to war.” But Kissinger disagreed: “I wouldn’t bet on that, Mr. President.” The Soviets “are not rational on China,” he said, and if they could “wipe out China,” then Nixon’s upcoming visit there would be pointless. Despite believing that a war—possibly a nuclear war—was possible between the Soviet Union and China, Kissinger still insisted on backing China in a spiraling crisis.
Haig—who would become Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state—concurred, suggesting that the United States might tacitly support a Chinese invasion of India: “they feel they know that if the United States moves on the Soviets that will provide the cover they need to invade India. And we’ve got to neutralize the Soviet Union.” The president asked, “suppose the Chinese move and the Soviets threaten, then what do we do?” They planned to tell the Soviet Union that war would be “unacceptable” once China began moving troops.