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Against this background I gave a press briefing in which I emphasized that we had not condoned the Pakistani repression in East Bengal in March 1971; military aid had been cut off, and major efforts had been made to promote political accommodation between the Pakistani government and Bangladesh officials in Calcutta. In our view India was responsible for the war. The resolution we supported at the U.N., calling for cease-fire and withdrawal of forces, won overwhelming backing, passing 104 to 11. Here was an issue on which we enjoyed more support in the world community than on practically any other in a decade. But neither our briefings nor the overwhelming expression of world opinion softened media or congressional criticism.
On Sunday morning, Dec. 12, Nixon, Al Haig and I met in the Oval Office, just before Nixon and I were to depart for the Azores to meet with French President Georges Pompidou. It was symptomatic of the internal relationships of the Nixon Administration that neither the Secretary of State nor of Defense nor any representative of their departments attended this crucial meeting, where, as it turned out, the first decision to risk war in the triangular Soviet-Chinese-American relationship was taken.
At 11:30 a.m. we sent a message over Nixon's name on the hot line to Moscow—its first use by the Nixon Administration. (Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev later used it during the October 1973 Middle East war.) Actually, this Moscow-Washington telegraphic link worked more slowly than did the communications of the Soviet embassy. But it conferred a sense of urgency and might speed up Soviet decisions. The one-page hot line message declared that the President had "set in train certain moves" in the U.N. Security Council that could not be reversed. It concluded: "I cannot emphasize too strongly that time is of the essence to avoid consequences neither of us want."
Just when we had finished dispatching the hot line message, we received word that Huang Hua, then China's U.N. Ambassador, needed to see me with an urgent message from Peking. It was unprecedented, the Chinese having previously always saved their messages until we asked for a meeting—a charming Middle Kingdom legacy. We assumed that only a matter of gravity could induce them into such a departure. We guessed that they were coming to the military assistance of Pakistan. If so, we were on the verge of a possible showdown. For if China moved militarily, the Soviet Union—according to all our information—was committed to use force against China.
Nixon understood immediately that if the Soviet Union succeeded in humiliating China, all prospects for world equilibrium would disappear. He decided—and I fully agreed—that if the Soviet Union threatened China we would not stand idly by.
A country we did not recognize and with which we had had next to no contact for two decades would obtain some significant assistance—the precise nature to be worked out when the circumstances arose. To provide some military means to give effect to our strategy and to reinforce the message to Moscow, Nixon now ordered an aircraft carrier task force that had been alerted earlier to proceed through the Strait of Malacca and into the Bay of Bengal.
In the