Russell Stevenson and Dr. Andrew Johns, Department of History

The research on the Indo-Pakistani war as conducted at the Nixon Presidential Materials project in Baltimore, Maryland yielded excellent fruits for groundbreaking research in the future. Given the relatively recent release of Nixon-era documents to the public, the conclusions to be gleaned from them have the potential to produce groundbreaking scholarship on this “hot spot” in world affairs. As journalists Michael Hirsh and Ron Moreau have argued, “no other country is arguably more dangerous than Pakistan.” However, the danger has long predated the Pakistan’s decision to engage in the Bush administration’s Global War on Terror. My research has focused on one of the more tumultuous periods in recent Pakistani history: the creation of Bangladesh and the ensuing Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. As my research shows, the United States failed to intervene economically or militarily in the East Pakistan, thus creating the vacuum of Western influence that allowed more extreme radical Islamist elements to take hold in both Pakistan’s and Bangladesh’s political structures.

The documents retrieved—spanning from February to November 1971—cover a key time period in Nixon’s decision-making concerning the rebellion and subsequent mass-murder of the Bengals/East Pakistanis. Interestingly, in the days immediately following the mass destruction of late March, Nixon received communication from West Pakistani president Yahya Khan that maintained his willingness to compromise while at the same time insisting that “firm action had to be taken to assert [the] government’s authority and to safeguard the integrity of Pakistan.” Nixon’s response was telling: he refused to paint Khan’s action as a term of causation but instead as general “civil strife.” The acting Secretary of State, Joseph Sisco, maintained the U.S. needed to “[carry] water on both shoulders” in order to “[maintain] good relations with West Pakistan while not alienating East Pakistan Bengali leaders.” After all, East Pakistan “in the long run may be running their own show separately.” Heretofore, the accepted wisdom has been that policymakers had written off East Pakistan’s political significance and only sought to placate Khan because of his role in as intermediary to China. Additionally, scholars have assumed that West Pakistan represented strategic concerns whereas East Pakistan represented humanitarian concerns. This documentation, only now being revealed to the public through this research, demonstrates that policymakers saw a strategic benefit to supporting the Bengali regime. However, Nixon ultimately ignored this advice, preferring instead to maintain what he saw as a key geo-strategic link to rapprochement with Communist China

If further evidence demonstrates the reality of this strategic benefit, Nixon’s decision will reveal itself to be even more profound than previously thought. Indeed, were there other, more humane nations willing to assist the United States in achieving their strategic objectives and how aware was Nixon of these alternatives? If so, then Nixon’s decision to support West Pakistan will have been all the more calloused. Calling it “morally bankrupt” will be a horrific understatement given that Nixon had choices that might have allowed for a similar outcome with more humane means.
Additionally, Nixon’s fail to intervene may well prove to be a landmark decision in creating the tumultuous landscape of radical Islam that pervades the Asian subcontinent today. The founding father of what became Bangladesh, Mujibur Rahman, had incurred the anger of his rivals through the increased secularization and consolidation of his power. When Rahman was ousted in a coup d’etat in 1975 by Ziaur Rahman and when Pakistani president Zia ul-Huq took power in Pakistan in 1977, both Pakistan and Bangladesh took on a radical Islamist tone even if the reforms were more of rhetoric than of substance. The Nixon administration’s failure to take up the cause of East Pakistan not only demonstrated a failure of moral courage but also represented a strategic failure to invest itself in the region. This author maintains that, given the evidence collected, had the U.S. effectively adhered to Sisco’s in supporting the humanitarian cause of the Bengalis while soothing West Pakistan’s complaints, the U.S. effort would have acted as a bulwark against future radicalization of the subcontinent, thus preventing the area from becoming what is now called the “new playground of Jihad.” Instead, not only had the Nixon administration admitted its “moral bankruptcy,” it had forged a covenant of blood brotherhood with a regime which would lay the foundation for not just mass murder but also for an infrastructure of radical Islam that has plagued the West for the past three decades.

References

• Ron Moreau and Michael Hirsh, “Pakistan: The Most Dangerous,” Newsweek, October 29, 2007, 1.
• Khan to Nixon, March 31, 1971, and memo from Haig to Nixon, Box 759, Folder 10, Nixon Presidential Materials Project.
• Memo from Sisco to Nixon, April 27, 1971, Box 759, Folder 10, Nixon Presidential Materials Project.
• Charles H. Kennedy, “Islamization and Legal Reform in Pakistan, 1979-1989,” Pacific Affairs 63(1): 62-77.
• Sreeram Chaulia, “Bangladesh—New Playground of Jihad,” on http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/2269.cfm, accessed 11/03/2007.