by Gary J. Bass
They all agreed. The White House was ready to escalate.56
Nixon and Kissinger, having set infernal machinery in motion, were rewarded by the more fearful judgments of the Soviet Union and China. A few minutes after that supercharged Oval Office session, the Soviets, having checked with Indira Gandhi, soothingly reassured Kissinger that India’s government “has no intention to take any military actions against West Pakistan.”57
Kissinger rushed into the Oval Office to tell Nixon that the Soviets, making the noon deadline he had set, had extracted an assurance from Gandhi that she would not attack West Pakistan. That was what they had been looking for. Kissinger did not disguise his relief: “goddamn it, we made it and we didn’t deserve it.” But he was proud of their brinksmanship earlier that day: “What you did this morning, Mr. President, was a heroic act.” “I had to do it,” said Nixon. “Yes,” Kissinger replied. “But I know no other man in the country, no other man who would have done what you did.”
Nixon reveled in his victory. Taking a historical turn, he said that in World War II and the Korean War, the right path was toughness. Kissinger concurred, saying that the Soviets had backed down because they “knew they were looking down the gun barrel.”58
The two men congratulated themselves. “Mr. President, your behavior in the last 2 weeks has been heroic in this,” Kissinger said. “You were shooting—your whole goddamn political future for next year.… Against your bureaucracy.… [A]gainst the Congress, against public opinion. All alone, like everything else. Without flinching, and I must say, I may yell and scream but this hour this morning is worth 4 years here.” Nixon gamely accepted the praise: “It wasn’t easy.… [T]he reason the hour this morning was that I had a chance to reflect a little and to see where it was going. The world is just going down the goddamn drain.”59
China was not actually going to move its troops. The Chinese leadership knew that picking a fight with the Soviet Union’s friend meant exposing themselves to a million Soviet soldiers on their border. After that dramatic Oval Office meeting, Alexander Haig and Winston Lord bolted up to New York for another secret session with the Chinese delegation. But Huang Hua said nothing to them about deploying Chinese troops to confront India.60
General Sam Manekshaw would later say that despite noticeable Chinese military activity along India’s northern border, China avoided any significant provocations. Although China hurled mephitic revolutionary propaganda against India, the Indian embassy noticed that the People’s Daily refrained from promising any direct action. Indian spies in the R&AW did think that China was stirring up insurgencies among India’s restless Nagas and Mizos, and cracked down in response—but this was harassment, not the start of a border clash. India was confident enough that China would stand by that it moved most of its Himalayan mountain divisions from the Chinese frontier to face Pakistan instead.61
In the end, China would only act immediately after the news that Dacca had fallen. It would not be until December 16, as India was securing a cease-fire, that China issued a protest note accusing seven Indian troops of violating China’s border at Sikkim, a small Indian state nestled in the Himalayas—a place where the winter weather would not be such an impediment to Chinese intervention. India would flatly deny the charges. Although Kissinger hopefully told Nixon that this “could be the prelude to limited Chinese military actions along the border with India,” it would all come too late to matter. The note was, the Indian embassy in Beijing concluded, “a grudging acceptance of the fait accompli in the East accompanied by fears that the existence of West Pakistan could be in jeopardy.” When Zhou Enlai delivered a furious banquet speech against India, India’s diplomats in Beijing smugly dismissed it as “impotent rage.”62
Years later, at a summit in Beijing, Kissinger would tell Deng Xiaoping, “President Nixon and I had made the decision—for your information—that if you had moved and the Soviet Union had brought pressure on you, we would have given military support” to China. He added, “We understand why you didn’t, but you should know our position, our seriousness of purpose.”63
IN ENTERPRISE OF MARTIAL KIND
On December 12, after that agitated session in the Oval Office, a top Soviet diplomat in Washington assured Kissinger that they would soon get results from the Indians, and that there was no need for “a fist fight in the Security Council because we are in agreement now.” Kissinger soothingly said that the United States would be cooperative. Although a U.S. aircraft carrier group was on its way, he downplayed that, saying that the Americans had to stand by their allies, but had now gone through that exercise.64
There was a fistfight anyway. The same day, in New York, the United Nations Security Council reconvened. After the last debacle, Haksar had sent Swaran Singh, India’s foreign minister, to confront George Bush and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was now leading the Pakistani delegation. Haksar told Gandhi that “the art of diplomacy lies not merely in advocating one’s cause, but in reducing one’s opponents.” That Singh did skillfully. “Is Mr. Bhutto still harbouring dreams of conquering India and coming to Delhi as a visitor?” he caustically asked. When Bush, on Nixon’s and Kissinger’s instructions, inquired about India’s ultimate intentions in the war, Singh asked about U.S. intentions in Vietnam. He denounced Pakistan: “It is not India which has set a record in political persecution, the genocide of a people and the suppression of human rights that inevitably led to the present conflagration.”65
For the third and last time, the Soviet Union shielded India with its veto, knocking down another Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal. Kissinger, not checking with Nixon, threatened to scrap the upcoming Soviet summit.66
All the while the diplomats traded insults, Nixon and Kissinger had the USS Enterprise carrier group sailing fast toward the Bay of Bengal. To use the wholly implausible pretext of evacuating Americans, Kissinger told the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Send it where there are Americans—say, Karachi.” Kissinger informed Bhutto that U.S. warships would soon cross the chokepoint of the Strait of Malacca, heading for the Bay of Bengal, and be spotted by the Indians. Nixon insisted that it continue toward India unless there was a settlement.67
The Enterprise, a nuclear aircraft carrier from the U.S. Seventh Fleet, was accompanied by the rest of its formidable task force: the helicopter carrier USS Tripoli, seven destroyers, and an oiler. (They were under the Honolulu-based command of Admiral John McCain Jr., the father of John McCain III, the Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate.) With alarming symbolism, the carrier group set sail not merely from the Vietnam war zone, but, as the Indian government unhappily claimed, from the Gulf of Tonkin.68
Nixon and Kissinger had a schoolboy enthusiasm for moving military units without meaning too much by it. Still, compared with India’s ragtag fleet, this was an awfully intimidating force. An Indian official called it “a nuclear-studded armada including the most powerful ship in the world.” The Enterprise had helped blockade Cuba during the missile crisis there. It was a modern, mammoth warship, almost five times larger than India’s own rickety aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant. Even one of the Enterprise’s escorts, the Tripoli, was bigger than the Vikrant. The Enterprise, powered by atomic reactors, could sail around the world without refueling; the Vikrant was lucky if its boiler worked. This U.S. carrier group was, the vice admiral of India’s eastern fleet recalled, “a fantastic threat.”69
Indian troops were simultaneously closing in on Dacca from the north, south, and east. While the news of the Seventh Fleet’s deployment broke in the Indian press, Gandhi rallied a gigantic crowd in Delhi, speaking in simple, blunt Hindi. Indian warplanes circled overhead. As one of her top advisers nervously noted, this huge gathering could have made a tempting bombing target.70
The wartime prime minister complained that the United States’ alliance with Pakistan was supposed to be against communism, not democracy. Although not naming the United States or China, she warned that
India would stand firm against “severe threats” of “some other attack.” And, in words so inflammatory that her press office cut them from the printed version of her speech, she irately declared that the world was against India because of the color of its people’s skin. She led the masses in roaring “Jai Hind!”—victory to India.71
That victory was almost in hand. Triumphant in Bangladesh and under pressure from both superpowers to leave it at that, India lost whatever appetite it might have had for a wider war. India by now held some pockets of Pakistani territory in the west, and two Soviet diplomats tried to ascertain the country’s intentions from Haksar and then from Gandhi herself—hoping to restrain them from reckless steps that might drag the United States into the war. The CIA noted that the Soviet Union had advised India to be satisfied with liberating Bangladesh and not to seize any West Pakistani territory, including that contested area in Kashmir known as Azad Kashmir. As Haksar anxiously wrote to Gandhi, the Soviets believed that the United States was firmly committed to defend West Pakistan’s territorial integrity. Thus Indian provocations against West Pakistan could drive the Americans to “enlarge the conflict.”72
Haksar urged the prime minister to impress upon General Manekshaw that his troops must use “extreme care” on the western front. The United States, Haksar nervously wrote, would react to any military moves that gave the impression that India was trying to grab land in West Pakistan, including Azad Kashmir, or that India was planning to transfer forces from the eastern theater to charge deep into West Pakistan.73
With Indian troops racing against the UN’s clock, Haksar was grateful for every deferral and adjournment of the byzantine Security Council. While Haksar eagerly awaited the end of military operations in Bangladesh, he came up with a quibbling series of stalling tactics for the United Nations, meant to be “sufficiently elastic to generate discussion and give time.” But the Soviet Union, having endured more than its fill of embarrassments on India’s behalf, was, as Haksar told Gandhi, anxious for India to allow it to say something in the Security Council that was not completely negative.74
The same CIA intelligence that had so alarmed Nixon and Kissinger now reported that India was almost ready to end its war. According to the CIA’s mole in Delhi, India would accept a cease-fire once an Awami League government was set up in Dacca. Although hawkish military leaders and Jagjivan Ram, the defense minister, reportedly wanted to fight on in southern Azad Kashmir and to smash Pakistan’s war machine, Gandhi had had enough. She wanted to avoid more trouble with the United States and China. Under Soviet pressure to accept a cease-fire as soon as Bangladesh was a fact, India, according to the CIA, was set to “assure the Soviet Union that India has no plans to annex any West Pakistani territory.” Once the war ended, according to this CIA mole, Gandhi was confident that Yahya’s military regime would fall and there would be new pressure for autonomy in Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier Province, and other restive areas in West Pakistan. India would dominate South Asia.75
General Jacob remembers, “by thirteenth December we depleted strength on the outskirts on Dacca.” He and the other generals were closely watching the United Nations, as the Soviet Union kept on vetoing cease-fire resolutions. Then, he recalls, “The Russians say, no more veto. Panic—sorry, ‘concern’—in Delhi.” That night he prayed. He says that God evidently answered, as he received information that General Niazi, commander of Pakistan’s Eastern Command, would be going to a meeting at Government House in Dacca. He bombed the gathering. This terrified the remainder of the local Pakistani government. That evening, Jacob says, Niazi went to Herbert Spivack, the U.S. consul general, with a cease-fire proposal.76
General Manekshaw, the Indian chief of army staff, sent a third note asking Pakistan to surrender. Once again, he offered protection under the Geneva Conventions to all surrendering soldiers and paramilitaries, and promised to protect ethnic minorities—meaning the Urdu-speaking Biharis, who were terrified of the Mukti Bahini’s vengeance. With the Bangladeshi forces under his command, he promised that Bangladesh’s government had also ordered compliance with the Geneva Conventions. “For the sake of your own men I hope you will not compel me to reduce your garrison with the use of force.”77
General Niazi urged the United States to help get a cease-fire to spare his troops and avoid street fighting in the city. Yahya accused India of inflicting bloodshed on his military and civilian forces of “holocaust” proportions.78
In Delhi, Haksar warned India’s defense ministry that the dominant interest of the United States and China was preserving West Pakistan. He thus cautioned against any statements or military actions that indicated that India had serious intent to sever parts of West Pakistan or seize Azad Kashmir. To Haksar’s annoyance, India’s information ministry had been hard at work generating exactly that kind of impression, by preparing propaganda trying to whip up Sindhi irredentism in West Pakistan. He ordered a stop to that, and demanded the withdrawal of all propaganda “fanning Sindhi, Baluchi or Pathan irredentism.”79
Even with the war lost, the CIA reported that pro-Pakistan forces killed “a large number of Bangla Desh intellectuals” soon before the fall of Dacca. According to the State Department, as many as two hundred people were killed. Later, after an Indian general visited the massacre site, he could not eat. Arundhati Ghose, the Indian diplomat, remembers telling him that he was a soldier, accustomed to seeing dead bodies. Yes, the general replied, but he had found the hand of a woman, with her nails painted. He said, “I can’t get that out of my head.”80
Yahya begged Nixon to send the Seventh Fleet to Pakistan’s shores to defend Karachi. But Nixon, despite often sounding like he was on the verge of war with India, had no intentions of any naval combat. The USS Enterprise carrier group was an atomic-powered bluff, meant to spook the Indians and increase Soviet pressure on India for a cease-fire, but nothing more. Kissinger privately said that “we don’t want to get militarily involved and there isn’t a chance. Can you imagine the President even listening to that for three seconds.” Kissinger worried that the American public would not be able to stomach the mere sight of a U.S. aircraft carrier threatening India—let alone actually opening fire. As for Nixon, he left no doubt: “we’re not going to intervene.”81
Samuel Hoskinson, the White House staffer, who remains convinced that India meant to destroy Pakistan, applauds the deployment of the carrier group. “To my way of thinking, it was a brilliant strategic move,” he says. “I know Nixon and Kissinger have been faulted for that. I think more than anything else it stopped Madame Gandhi in her tracks.”
But India’s military commanders seem to have doubted the Americans would fight them. “I didn’t think the Americans were so foolhardy,” recalls General Jacob. “We had land-based aircraft.” Vice Admiral Mihir Roy, the director of naval intelligence, says he briefed Indira Gandhi about the composition of the task force, and explained it was possible that it could strike India. But with Vietnam going on, he told the prime minister, he did not believe the Americans would attack. He also noted that the Seventh Fleet could try to break India’s blockade of Pakistan by coming between India’s navy and the land; Vice Admiral N. Krishnan, leading India’s eastern fleet, feared that the Enterprise task force would do this at Chittagong. Krishnan even considered having an Indian submarine torpedo the U.S. fleet to slow it down. But he told his underlings in the Maritime Operations Room that any direct U.S. attack could cause “the end of the world,” or embroil the Americans in “a Vietnam to end all Vietnams.” In defiance of the Enterprise, India intensified its naval assault on Chittagong and Cox’s Bazar.82
India’s political leaders claim to have been equally skeptical that the Enterprise would actually fight them. Thanks to Soviet surveillance, they knew that Dacca was going to fall before the Seventh Fleet could do anything about it. They were well aware how impossible it would be for Nixon, mired in Vietnam, to send U.S. troops into a new Asian war against India. Gandhi later said, “Naturally, if the Ame
ricans had fired a shot, if the Seventh Fleet had done something more than sit there in the Bay of Bengal … yes, the Third World War would have exploded. But, in all honesty, not even that fear occurred to me.”83
Still, the Indian government asked the Soviet Union to warn against the dire consequences of this threatening movement of the U.S. Navy. At the same time, Haksar ordered D. P. Dhar, the Indian envoy sent to Moscow, to personally reassure Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin that India had no territorial ambitions in either Bangladesh or West Pakistan, and that India’s western position was entirely defensive. The Soviet ambassador assured India that a Soviet fleet in the Indian Ocean would not allow the United States to intervene.84
On December 15, India’s R&AW spy agency warned that U.S. warships were moving past Thailand, heading toward India. That day, the Enterprise carrier group entered the Bay of Bengal.85
This caused some panic among Indian officials, according to General Manekshaw, although Gandhi and Haksar publicly affected nonchalance. Manekshaw claimed that in a cabinet meeting Swaran Singh and other ministers urged an immediate cease-fire to avoid facing U.S. troops or even nuclear weapons. There were some overheated rumors of a shooting war between Americans and Indians. India was tipped off, seemingly by an American source, that the Seventh Fleet might move into action, maybe even landing troops. One senior Indian official in Washington claimed that the task force was ready to establish a beachhead, with three Marine battalions at the ready, and that bombers on the Enterprise had been authorized by Nixon to bomb Indian army communications if necessary. When India’s ambassador in Washington asked a senior State Department official about the prospect of U.S. troops establishing a beachhead, he got a less than categorical denial, although the official said he had not heard of the possibility. The Indian ambassador fed the story to the press, lashing out against the Nixon administration on American television.86