The Blood Telegram Page 23
Kissinger and his team landed in a downpour, which was not enough to rain out the inevitable leftist protesters. At the airport, outnumbering the police, they shouted, “Kissinger go back,” “Murderer go back,” while waving black flags and big banners reading “Kissinger of death go back.” The Americans were hustled into cars and whisked off. The demonstrators, cheated of their intended target, let fly with tomatoes and rotten eggs at any other car that had the misfortune to be leaving the airport.
Other protesters had been assembling at the U.S. embassy, massing to about 450. Scores of them now broke into the embassy compound, charging toward the main doors, to the surprise of the U.S. Marine guards. Before the mob could break open those doors, Indian police swept in and arrested them, leaving behind only a red flag planted in the embassy’s lawn. The leftist crowds wrongly reckoned that Kissinger would be at the embassy, where they continued to chant slogans against him. In fact, he and his jet-lagged entourage had checked into the luxurious Ashoka Hotel—something that had evidently not occurred to the organizing cadres of the Communist Party of India.2
This was about as far as Kissinger could be from the teeming miseries of West Bengal and Tripura while still inside India. The Indian government asked him to come visit the refugee camps for himself. If he had served in another White House, he might have at least made a side trip to Calcutta, or perhaps have been packed off to one of the hundreds of camps in West Bengal to see U.S. dollars at work feeding the destitute. But Kissinger refused. Samuel Hoskinson, Kissinger’s aide, says, “It’s not really Henry’s kind of thing.” Kissinger was clear that, as an Indian diplomat noted, “he would not be able to visit any of the refugee camps.”3
KISSINGER IN INDIA
That day, Henry Kissinger and P. N. Haksar confronted each other face-to-face. Kissinger told Haksar that “we are men of the world.” In Haksar’s office in South Block, the two paramount foreign policy advisers went after each other with polite but unmistakable vehemence, interrupted only by Haksar’s attempts to dazzle Kissinger with wordy disquisitions.4
Haksar, already irate about U.S. arms sales to Pakistan, was stewing over the recent New York Times revelations of ongoing shipments. Kissinger blamed that on a “bureaucratic muddle,” and said he had been surprised to read about it in the newspaper. To avoid such muddles, Haksar said, arms shipments should be stopped outright. Kissinger rebuffed that, saying that the arms supplies were of marginal significance and that the United States needed to maintain its leverage over Yahya. Haksar ripped into arms shipments past and present, noting that the White House should not ignore the vast stocks given to Pakistan since the days of Dwight Eisenhower. When Kissinger, trying to downplay the importance of the supply, said that the Pentagon had not wanted to completely cut off “basically non-lethal” matériel, Haksar—who knew as well as his visitor did that cheap spare parts kept expensive weapons humming—shot back that he did not accept the “metaphysical concept called ‘non-lethal.’ ”5
To Haksar’s disbelief, Kissinger said that even if the United States “shipped all $29 million worth of military equipment, it would not make any difference in the situation. So let’s stop yelling about something that does not make a difference.” He snapped that “if India were going into a paroxysm over this there was no way in which the US could respond.”6
Kissinger, trying flattery, said that Richard Nixon believed that India was the only country in the region that could be “not only a big Power, but a Power for peace and stability.” Pakistan was only a small regional power—a soothing point that Haksar took to heart. For this, Haksar rewarded him with a pedantic lecture about the artificiality of Pakistan’s Islamic identity: “If religion could provide a basis for creating Nation-States, Europe would probably still have the Holy Roman Empire.”7
Haksar warned that the refugees were disrupting India’s borders, emphasizing that almost 90 percent of the people fleeing East Pakistan were Hindus. This, he said, struck against the root of India’s efforts to build up a secular democracy. While India could not drive the refugees out if they feared being butchered back in East Pakistan, they would return if East Pakistan got a democratic government. Kissinger, unswayed, brusquely told Haksar that “the Indians were just making a lot of noise in order to set up an invasion of East Pakistan.”8
An exasperated Kissinger went for the jugular, suggesting that India’s support for the Bengali guerrillas kept the situation inflamed. Haksar replied, “I shall be perfectly frank with you,” which is how politicians in both Delhi and Washington preface a real whopper of a lie: “we have given no arms.” India, he said evasively, could not seal its frontier everywhere, neglecting to mention the Indian army’s and Border Security Force’s many training camps, or the rebel raids being launched from Indian soil deep into East Pakistan.9
In Kissinger’s recollection, their meeting was mostly a matter of him pacifying an excitable Haksar. He coolly recalled that he “had calmed Haksar down.” He urged Haksar to lower the volume: “If the Indians could quiet down, the US would try to work quietly over the next few months to encourage a settlement of the refugee problem.” Haksar explained the Indian government’s problem: “It did not want to go to war but it did not know how not to go to war.”10
Kissinger only hinted at the real reason he was in Asia, mentioning that he wanted to rapidly improve relations with China. He reassured Haksar that the United States would not help China, India’s sworn enemy, to dominate India. But then he warned Haksar that if a war broke out with Pakistan, China would react—a terrifying prospect for India. That, in turn, would drive India to seek help from the Soviet Union, and “cause complications for us in America.” Haksar bristled. He said that if India found itself at war with Pakistan and facing Chinese intervention, he hoped that the United States would be sympathetic to India.11
Kissinger was not above swooning for the urbane, cerebral elder-statesman type, as he was about to do for Zhou Enlai. But Haksar left him cold, despite the Indian official’s ostentatious efforts. After his showdown with his Indian counterpart, Kissinger saw the Indian government as unemotional but seeking a serviceable pretext for a war. Having spent less than a full day in Delhi, he did not believe there was “genuine Indian feeling against our arms aid to Pakistan.” Once rid of Haksar, Kissinger concluded that “they are playing power politics with cold calculations.”12
Kissinger spent the next day staggering from one brutal meeting to another. He was denounced, provoked, and prodded by Indians official and unofficial. On top of it all, patriotic Indian microbes took revenge on him. Kissinger’s whole upcoming ruse in Pakistan rested on him faking a sudden upset stomach—but in India, too soon, he really did get sick. To make his cover story work, he spent his time in Delhi miserably keeping his gastrointestinal woes to himself.13
The Indian government’s efforts at politesse were clumsy (one senior Indian diplomat reminded her colleagues to avoid mentioning the Arab-Israeli conflict because “Dr. Kissinger is a Jew”). The Indian press gleefully reported on demonstrations against him, and roasted him on the editorial pages. Members of the Lok Sabha erupted at a rumor that Pakistan would get several more ships loaded with military spares and ammunition. But what he faced in his meetings was worse.14
He kicked off his day with breakfast with Indian thinkers and academics at the Ashoka Hotel. It went horribly. One of the Indians was especially livid: K. Subrahmanyam, the author of that April secret strategic report that urged India’s top leaders to attack Pakistan to secure India’s regional hegemony. Subrahmanyam, emotional and bitter, told Kissinger that he, as a refugee himself, should understand the horror of what was happening. The United States was “making the same mistake as it made with Hitler in the 1930s—trying to deal with and placate an authoritarian regime which has embarked on a major program of reducing its population.” Kissinger, at the start of what was clearly going to be a very long day, tried to duck confronting him.15
For lunch, Kissinger had to face Haks
ar again for another ruined meal at the Ashoka Hotel, with fresh sparring over U.S. arms shipments to Pakistan. Later, Kissinger was shredded by the defense minister, Jagjivan Ram, a venerable politician who had been born into a downtrodden Dalit caste but enjoyed a meteoric rise under Nehru. Ram said he was under almost unbearable pressure to act against Pakistan. He had recently been at Agartala, near the East Pakistan border, where Pakistan was lobbing shells into India. “Pakistan has been sustained entirely by you,” he accused. Kissinger replied, “Only partially.” Ram smilingly retorted, “No, not just partially, almost entirely.”16
There was also the embarrassing chore of mollifying Swaran Singh, who had returned from his Washington trip just in time to be sideswiped by the New York Times scoop about ongoing arms shipments to Pakistan. Kissinger, in the foreign minister’s South Block office, quickly said that the White House and the top ranks of the State Department had not known that there might be shipments on their way to Pakistan—soothing, although a lie. There would be nothing more than $29 million worth on its way, he said, and, noting Nixon’s personal relationship with Yahya, said that the State Department’s unwelcome administrative hold on arms shipments had been a big step for the president. Singh, burning with humiliation, complained about this loophole, and said, “I would give hell to my staff if they did not give me full information.” Kissinger replied, “I am raising hell.” (He wasn’t.) Singh said, “It passes my comprehension what your interest in maintaining such a close relationship with Pakistan is.” Demanding a complete halt to arms shipments, he bluntly told Kissinger that “your giving of arms to Pakistan will provoke a war.”17
During his disagreeable, gut-churning day, Kissinger repeatedly made a crucial commitment: he promised Indian officials that the United States would back India if China began military moves against it. In his lunch with Haksar, Kissinger hinted at upcoming “significant starts” in U.S. relations with China. He then pledged to Haksar that “under any conceivable circumstances the U.S. would back India against any Chinese pressures. In any dialogue with China, we would of course not encourage her against India.”18
At the end of his excruciating meeting with Swaran Singh, Kissinger took him aside and vaguely sketched out the upcoming China opening. Assuring the foreign minister that this initiative was not directed against India, he said that the United States would “take the gravest view of any unprovoked Chinese aggression against India.” (This obviously left open the prospect of provoked Chinese strikes on India, so Singh asked for a pledge that the United States would provide military equipment to India if China attacked. He evidently got no answer.)19
Later the same day, Kissinger, showing a keen interest in the prospect of Chinese movement against India, made a firm pledge to Jagjivan Ram: “we would take a very grave view of any Chinese move against India.” He reassured the defense minister, “We will leave them in no doubt.” Ram was delighted. Kissinger, seemingly trying to preempt Indian alarm when they learned of his China trip, said, “We have been adopting a certain attitude in order to promote tranquility and peace but if it looks as if they are going in for violence, we would take a very grave view.”20
For the Indians, still traumatized by their humbling defeat by the People’s Republic in the 1962 war, this was tremendously reassuring. But five months later, Kissinger would in fact be encouraging China to move troops to confront India.
The centerpiece of the day was Kissinger’s audience with Indira Gandhi herself. He was ushered into the prime minister’s office in the majestic, domed South Block. But, much like Kissinger’s other meetings in Delhi, this encounter proved heatedly contentious.21
Kissinger began the meeting alone with the prime minister, shutting out all their staffers for a few secretive minutes. Thus sequestered, he vaguely alerted her about upcoming “significant developments” in the U.S. relationship with China, which he said were not directed against India. He also handed her a cheerless letter from Nixon, which reminded her of U.S. humanitarian aid for the refugees but gave no ground on arms shipments.22
After that, Haksar, Kenneth Keating—in a seersucker suit to fight the sweltering July heat in Delhi—and Harold Saunders were allowed to troop into the prime minister’s office. Kissinger showed signs of the impact of his rough visit. No longer blasé, he said he was now impressed by the intensity of Indian emotions. Still, echoing Nixon, he said the whole point of U.S. support for Pakistan was to maintain influence over Yahya to encourage the refugees to return. He agreed that it would take a political deal in Pakistan to get the refugees to return home, but admitted that “the US has no ideas at this moment.”
Gandhi, pointing to almost seven million refugees by now, warned of her “emotional” public. Kissinger asked when the problem would become unmanageable. Gandhi said it was already unmanageable: “We are just holding it together by sheer will power.” There were “hardly two people in Parliament who approve our policy.”
Kissinger, playing for time, asked for a few more months before any extreme measures. He doubted that there was any point to cutting off economic and military aid to Pakistan: “the limited number of arms now being shipped to Pakistan makes almost no difference in the military balance.” Gandhi said that whatever the practical impact of the arms shipments, they mattered greatly psychologically and politically.23
The prime minister sliced into Pakistan, which, she declared, based its existence on stoking hostility to India. Pakistan had long felt that it would get U.S. support no matter what it did, encouraging Pakistani “adventurism and Indophobia.” She complained that Pakistan turned every issue into a clash between Hindus and Muslims: “Indophobia was clothed in the metaphysics of holy wars and the defence of Islam.” If Pakistan really cared about Islam, she said cuttingly, it would consider the impact of its actions on the sixty million Muslims in India. Gandhi said that she did not want to take extreme measures, but that would depend on how the situation developed—thus leaving the option of war wide open.24
Kissinger had an odd way of lying even when he did not need to. He assured Gandhi that it “was the assessment of all of the US specialists in March that it was impossible that force would be used by the West Pakistani Government in East Pakistan.” This was false; there was in fact at least one U.S. expert in that very room—Harold Saunders—who had warned him of an imminent crackdown early in March. Keating prudently changed the subject.25
Finally, Kissinger showed his charm. He said he did not want to risk the United States’ fundamental relationship with five hundred million people in a strong democracy over “an essentially regional issue where America’s vital national interests were not involved.” And in what the Indians would soon realize was a reference to China, he promised that “America would, under no circumstances, allow any outside power to pressurize or threaten India.”26
This line delighted his hosts. The Indian government eagerly seized on Kissinger’s multiple promises of U.S. support for India against Chinese pressure, highlighting them as perhaps the most important thing that the national security advisor said in all his meetings with India’s ministers.27
Finally, Kissinger urged Gandhi to visit Washington—a prospect that in reality filled Nixon with dread. The prime minister ended the tense meeting with a churlish reply: she smiled and said she would like to come, but “could not breathe a word of it” without having her domestic critics bludgeon her into having to say no.28
It had been a grueling day. As Kissinger jetted off for Islamabad and Beijing, both he and Haksar brooded on his ghastly visit.
Haksar still had no clue what Kissinger was really doing there. “Kissinger talked bravely about getting away from the past, but the past, even if buried, rules thoughts and actions from its grave.” Bemused by the chaotic nature of U.S. policy, he thought that the United States wanted India to be a counterweight to China. Haksar did not realize that exactly the opposite was happening: Nixon and Kissinger were going to try to use China to balance against India.29
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p; Kissinger left India sobered and alarmed. He grumbled about the viciousness of the Indian press. When he returned to Washington, he would tell Nixon that “what the Indians are really after, that became clear to me on my trip.… They think that … if they can undermine East Pakistan then in West Pakistan so many forces … will be turned loose that the whole Pakistan issue will disappear. The Indians and West Pakistanis they hate each other.”30
On his way to Pakistan, Kissinger secretly wrote, “I have had full exposure to the strong Indian feelings.” He ruminated on Gandhi’s statement that the pressure was unbearable, and that her government was just hanging on by willpower. There was, he grimly wrote, “a growing sense of the inevitability of war or at least widespread Hindu-Muslim violence, not necessarily because anyone wants it but because in the end they fear they will not know how to avoid it”—one pithy line from Haksar that, at least, had struck home.31
“THE ARMY WAS DRIVING OUT THE HINDUS”
It was with palpable relief that Kissinger flew to Islamabad. For Winston Lord, the whole trip was a blur, his mind fixated on Beijing. “I was so preoccupied with where we were going secretly, and in charge of that,” he remembers. On the plane, he says, he was kept busy juggling three sets of briefing books: one for people who knew nothing about the China trip; another for the few officials on the plane who knew their ultimate destination; and one “for those, like Hal Saunders, who knew that we were going to China, and had to provide cover.”
The visit of Nixon’s top foreign policy adviser was a gala occasion for the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, and the ambassador, Joseph Farland—the only person there who knew what Kissinger was really up to—had summoned his consuls from across the country. Archer Blood, already ousted, was not there. But one of Blood’s horrified colleagues seized the chance to confront Kissinger personally.