Interventionism's Dangerous History
Nationalism is the scourge of Western elites. The enduring love of blood, soil, and faith defies those who imagine that values are a viable alternative to national interests in foreign policy. The urge to act abroad in accordance with domestic ideals, however noble, is dangerously unrealistic.
Gary Bass, a professor of political science and international affairs at Princeton University, disagrees. He provides a disturbing portrait of realpolitik and its (in)famous American practitioners in The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, And A Forgotten Genocide. In 1971, “The White House was actively and knowingly supporting a murderous regime at many of the most crucial moments [emphasis in the original].” West Pakistan (now Pakistan) decimated its Bengali population in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) with tacit approval from President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger.
The book excels as a work of diplomatic history. It recounts a little-known crisis and situates it in the Cold War context. As Bass notes, the death toll in East Pakistan ranks somewhere between the massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda. Yet, Nixon and Kissinger stuck by Pakistan for reasons of personal distaste for Indians as much as geopolitics. It is worth a brief look at the nature of the problem that erupted into violence in March 1971.
Pakistan was born in adversity. The partition of India in 1947 displaced populations and unleashed sectarian violence that killed hundreds of thousands. After the bloodshed subsided, other issues appeared. The British created the Muslim homeland demanded by Muhammad Jinnah (the Quaid-i-Azam or Great Leader) and the Muslim League by packing Muslims into a “cartographic oddity.” Pakistan was predominately Punjabi in the west, Bengali in the east, and had hostile India wedged in between.
Little united the fledgling country except religion. West Pakistan housed the seat of government, but East Pakistan was more populous and spoke a different language (Bengali). In the name of national unity, the ruling elites, including Jinnah, demanded that all Pakistanis speak Urdu. Bengali resentment over the language issue eventually led to riots in the 1950s, which the military used as a justification to stage a coup in 1958.
The coup was a blow to Jinnah’s vision. He founded Pakistan first and foremost as an Islamic state. But in a February 1948 radio address, seven months before his death, he professed belief that Pakistan’s constitution “will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principles of Islam … Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy … equality of man, justice and fair play to everybody.” This hope did not die with the coup as General Yahya Khan, who assumed power in 1969, scheduled an election for December 1970.
The election was remarkably free and fair, and the military government was thoroughly repudiated. Its poor response to a mid-November 1970 cyclone that struck East Pakistan and killed 500,00 people completed the Bengalis alienation from their government. “It was almost as if they [the government] just didn’t care,” remarked Archer Blood, the U.S. Consul General in Dhaka (the capital of East Pakistan).
A “mainstream Bengali nationalist party” called the Awami League swept the eastern vote en route to a majority in the National Constituent Assembly. Its leader, Mujib-ur-Rahman, had campaigned on a platform of autonomy for the east, and he stood to become Prime Minister of Pakistan. Whether or not the Awami League’s victory meant secession at a future date is debatable. But the military junta feared Bengali separatism, refused to relinquish power, and began a crackdown on the night of March 25, 1971.
West Pakistan’s actions horrified the world. State Department officials sent cables that described a “reign of terror by the Pak military.” The army committed atrocities ranging from shelling Dhaka to executing professors and students in cold blood. The crackdown would later devolve into the targeting of the Hindu minority in East Pakistan.
Ten million refugees eventually landed in India, an intolerable burden for any country let alone a poor one. The slaughter appalled India’s Bengali population, and Hindu nationalist politicians along with the press wasted no time in screaming for Pakistani blood. Even Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru) inquired about immediate military action that spring. Her senior commanders deemed the request unrealistic. It was better to let a Bengali insurgency (armed by India) bleed Pakistan until better weather in late autumn made prosecuting a war easier.
Meanwhile in Washington, Nixon stayed silent. Neither the carnage nor accusations of “moral bankruptcy” by Blood in his famous “dissent cable” moved him. Pakistan had long been a “fierce anti-communist ally,” and Nixon refused to intervene in its internal affairs. Moreover, Yahya was not just a personal friend but also the facilitator for the opening of China. He engineered Kissinger’s secret trip to China via Pakistan in July 1971. The trip paved the way for Nixon’s visit in February 1972, and the full exploitation of the Sino-Soviet split thereafter.
Kissinger later called the administration’s Pakistan policy “correct on the merits, above and beyond the China connection.” That statement sounds too detached considering the “crude stream of vitriol” captured on the White House tapes. Nixon ripped the liberal media and Democratic congressmen (namely Sen. Ted Kennedy) for weeping over a “bunch of goddamned brown Moslems” in East Bengal. He had no less scorn for Indians, “bastards” in need of a “mass famine,” or their elected leaders. He not only hated the “abrasive, arrogant, and suffocatingly self-righteous” Nehru, but also gave Mrs. Gandhi the special epithet of “that bitch.”
Kissinger was equally cantankerous. When India maneuvered Pakistan into bombing airfields to precipitate armed conflict in December 1971, Kissinger decried the “rape” of Pakistan by Soviet-armed India. He pushed Nixon to ask China to mass troops on India’s border and approved weapons transfers to Pakistan via Jordan and Iran despite a congressional embargo.
