SOUTH ASIAN IRONY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000300340054-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 8, 2001
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: January 12, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 200ij&1 !iqS ADPIA%0160
;gouth 'Asian Irony
l ( -
~? - ?~. .i:: e.,.a..'~~~"rntA.Anri) Ambassador Keating in New
Delhi argued that open American pressure on President
s
' The many disastrous aspects of President Nixon
'policies in the India-Pakistan conflict have masked the
main irony disclosed by the Anderson papers. It is that
the Nixon-Kissinger approach, favoring Pakistan over
India, helped bring about precisely what it was their
'chief objective to forestall: a Soviet victory and a major
increase in Soviet influence in the subcontinent and the
Indian Ocean.
Until columnist Jack Anderson published the secret
minutes of White House meetings, observers could only
guess at the rationale behind Mr. Nixon's decision to
abandon a quarter-century of American impartiality in
the subcontinent's feud. But the minutes show Mr.
Kissinger's overriding concern from the beginning of
hostilities that Soviet military aid and Soviet vetoes in
the United Nations would enable India to destroy its
chief adversary-and the balance of power on the sub-
continent-by attacking and dismembering West Pakistan
once East Pakistan had been conquered. Strictly in terms
of Great Power rivalry, Pakistan's supporters-the United
States and China-would be the losers, while the Soviet
Union as India's backer would emerge predominant in
.the area.
Other top Administration officials, however, expressed
doubts about the Kissinger thesis that India was plan-
ning with Soviet support to attack West Pakistan. Am-
bassador Keating in New Delhi urged the White House
to favor India, which not only was the inevitable victor
but had the better moral case. This course would have
avoided leaving India with Moscow as its only backer,
but Mr. Keating's advice was ignored, if indeed it ever
reached the cloistered President.
Mr. Nixon's isolation from the first-hand advice and
argument of the Government's own experts is one of the
striking revelations of the Anderson transcripts. Though
incomplete and therefore perhaps not ifevealing the entire
story, they do show Mr. Kissinger as an all-powerful
intermediary handing down Presidential orders and dis-
couraging doubting questions even about minor tactics.
A Chief Executive who fails to expose himself to the
fullest information,. free debate and the challenges of
others to his prejudices can hardly be protected from
blunders by even the most brilliant White House staffs.
'Not only is it improbable that the Kissinger-Nixon
analysis was correct. The special irony was that their
acquiescence over eight' months in President Yahya
Khan's bloody repression of East Pakistan helped thrust
India into Russia's arms and create the danger of the
very war Mr. Nixon was trying to avoid. CIA Director
Helms told one White House meeting that Moscow's
"major policy switch" to support Indian military action
did not occur until "just prior to Chinese emergence into
the U.N. scene" in the Fall. ,z r.E
Yahya Khan for a political settlement-rather than the
cautious, secret persuasion that failed-would better fit
the realities of Pakistan's deterioration, India's predom
inance. and Bangladesh's emergence. "We should be
guided by the new power realities in South Asia which,
fortunately, in the present case, largely parallel the
moral realities as well," he reportedly cabled Wash-
ington. ? I.
It was by ignoring the moral realities, misjudging the
power realities, and failing to heed-or to be informed
of-the political realities that Mr. Nixon put the United
States on the slippery slope to its present predicament in
South Asia. ....,.:t,:.... .. ,
Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R000300340054-6