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There was no question of "saving" East Pakistan. Both Nixon and I had recognized for months that its independence was inevitable; war was not necessary to accomplish it. We strove to preserve West Pakistan as an independent state, since we judged India's real aim was to encompass its disintegration. We sought to prevent a demonstration that Soviet arms and diplomatic support were inevitably decisive in crises.
It was nearly impossible to implement this strategy because our departments operated on different premises. They were afraid of antagonizing India; they saw that Pakistan was bound to lose the war whatever we did; they knew our course was unpopular in the Congress and the media. If there was a "tilt" in the U.S. Government at this stage, it was on the side of India.
In this atmosphere the Washington Special Action Group assembled on Dec. 3 to chart a course. It was a meeting memorialized in transcripts that were leaked to Columnist Jack Anderson. Out of context these sounded as if the White House was hell-bent on pursuing its own biases, but they can only be understood against the background of the several preceding months of frustrating and furious resistance by the bureaucracy to the President's explicit decisions. "I've been catching unshirted hell every half-hour from the President, who says we're not tough enough," I commented in what I thought was the privacy of the Situation Room. "He really doesn't believe we're carrying out his wishes. He wants to tilt toward Pakistan, and he believes that every briefing or statement is going the other way." That was of course a plain statement of the facts.
My sarcasm did nothing to affect departmental proclivities. When I transmitted the President's instruction to cut off economic aid to India, State suggested a similar step toward Pakistan—in spite of the President's view that India was the guilty party. This provoked me in exasperation into another "tilt" statement: "It's hard to tilt toward Pakistan, as the President wishes, if every time we take some action in relation to India we have to do the same thing for Pakistan."
Dismembering the West?
On Dec. 7 Yahya informed us that East Pakistan was disintegrating. The issue had gone far beyond self-determination for East Pakistan. A report reached us, from a source whose reliability we have never had any reason to doubt, that Prime Minister Gandhi was determined to reduce even West Pakistan to impotence: she had indicated that India would not accept any U.N. call for a cease-fire until Bangladesh was "liberated"; after that, Indian forces would proceed with the "liberation" of the Pakistani part of Kashmir and continue fighting until the Pakistani army and air force were wiped out. In other words, West Pakistan was to be dismembered and rendered defenseless. Mrs. Gandhi also told colleagues that if the Chinese "rattled the sword," the Soviets had promised to take appropriate counteraction. Other intelligence indicated that this meant diversionary military action against China in Xinjiang (Sinkiang). Pakistan could not possibly