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All the reasons that led Nixon to play for time led Mrs. Gandhi to force the issue. The inevitable emergence of Bangladesh [the Bengali name for East Pakistan] would eventually accentuate India's centrifugal tendencies. It might set a precedent for the creation of other Moslem states, carved this time out of India. This dictated to New Delhi that its birth had to be accompanied by a dramatic demonstration of Indian predominance on the subcontinent.
Attack in the East
Yahya made numerous concessions at the urging of the U.S., most important his agreement to restore civilian government in East Pakistan before the end of 1971; this in turn would surely lead to autonomy. To calm the situation, he also agreed to withdraw his troops from the borders with India. Yet New Delhi rejected the moves as inadequate. On Nov. 22, just 17 days after Mrs. Gandhi left Washington, Pakistani broadcasts reported that India had launched "an all-out offensive against East Pakistan. " I was sure that we were now witnessing the beginning of an India-Pakistan war and that India had started it. There was no pretense of legality. There was no doubt in my mind—a view held even more strongly by Nixon—that India had escalated its demands continually and deliberately to prevent a settlement. To be sure, Pakistani repression in East Bengal had been brutal and shortsighted; and millions of refugees had imposed enormous strain on the Indian economy. But what had caused the war, in Nixon's view and mine, was India's determination to establish its pre-eminence on the subcontinent.
Yet our paramount concern transcended the subcontinent. The Soviet Union could have restrained India; it chose not to. It had actively encouraged India to exploit Pakistan's travail in part to deliver a blow to our system of alliances, in even greater measure to demonstrate Chinese impotence. Since it was a common concern about Soviet power that had driven Peking and Washington together, a demonstration of U.S. irrelevance would severely strain our precarious new relationship with China.
Nor were we defending only abstract principles of international conduct. The victim of the attack was an ally—however reluctant many were to admit it—to which we had made several explicit promises concerning precisely this contingency.
Clear treaty commitments reinforced by other undertakings dated back to 1959. One could debate the wisdom of these undertakings, but we could not ignore them. Yet when Pakistan invoked the 1959 bilateral agreement between us as the basis for U.S. aid, the State Department was eloquent in arguing that no binding obligation existed. The image of a great nation conducting itself like a shyster looking for legalistic loopholes was not likely to inspire other allies who had signed treaties with us.
The issue burst upon us while Pakistan was our only channel to China; we had no other means of communication with Peking.
A major American initiative of fundamental importance to the global balance of power could not have survived if we colluded with the Soviet Union in the public humiliation of China's friend —and our ally. The naked recourse to force by a partner of the Soviet Union backed by Soviet arms and buttressed by Soviet assurances threatened the very structure of international order just when our whole