Free The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens Page B

apparently that surreptitiousness, while not essential in itself, was essential if Nixon and Kissinger were going to be able to take the credit for it.)
    It cannot possibly be argued, in any case, that the saving of Kissinger's private correspondence with China was worth the deliberate sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Bengali civilians. And - which is worse still -later and fuller disclosures now allow us to doubt that this was indeed the whole motive. The Kissinger policy towards Bangladesh may well have been largely conducted for its own sake, as a means of gratifying his boss's animus against India and as a means of preventing the emergence of Bangladesh as a self-determining state in any case.
    The diplomatic commonplace term "tilt" - signifying that mixture of signals and nuances and codes that describe a foreign policy preference that is often too embarrassing to be openly avowed - actually originates in this dire episode. On 6 March 1971, Kissinger summoned a meeting at the National Security Council and - in advance of the crisis in East-West Pakistan relations that was by then palpable and predictable to those attending - insisted that no preemptive action be taken. Those present who suggested that a warning to General Yahya Khan be issued, essentially advising him to honor the election results, he strongly opposed.
    His subsequent policy was as noted above. After returning from China in July, he began to speak in almost Maoist phrases about a Soviet-Indian plot to dismember and even annex part of Pakistan, which would compel China to intervene on Pakistan's side. (In pursuit of this fantasy of confrontation, he annoyed Admiral Elmo Zumwalt by ordering him to dispatch the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise from the coast of Vietnam to the Bay of Bengal, while giving it no stated mission.) But no analyst in the State Department or the CIA could be found to underwrite such a bizarre prediction and, at a meeting of the Senior Review Group, Kissinger lost his temper with this insubordination. "The President always says to tilt toward Pakistan, but every proposal I get is in the opposite direction. Sometimes I think I'm in a nuthouse."
    The Nixon White House was, as it happens, in the process of becoming exactly that, but his hearers only had time to notice that a new power-term had entered Washington's vernacular of crisis and conspiracy.
    "The President always says to tilt toward Pakistan." That at least was true. Long before any conception of his "China diplomacy," indeed even during the years when he was inveighing against "Red China" and its sympathizers, Nixon detested the government of India and expressed warm sympathy for Pakistan. Many of his biographers and intimates, including Kissinger, have recorded the particular dislike he felt (more justifiably, perhaps) for the person of Indira Gandhi. He always referred to her as "that bitch" and on one occasion kept her waiting for an unprecedented forty-five minutes outside his White House door. However, the dislike originated with Nixon's loathing for her father Pandit Nehru, and with his more general loathing for Nehru's sponsorship - along with Makarios, Tito and Soekarno - of the Non-Aligned Movement. There can be no doubt that, with or without an occluded "China card," General Yahya Khan would have enjoyed a sympathic hearing, and treatment, from this president, and thus from this national security advisor.
    This is also strongly suggested by Kissinger's subsequent conduct, as Secretary of State, towards Bangladesh as a country and towards Sheik Mujib, leader of the Awami League and later the father of Bangladeshi independence, as a politician. Unremitting hostility and contempt were the signature elements in both cases. Kissinger had received some very bad and even mocking press for his handling of the Bangladesh crisis, and it had somewhat spoiled his supposedly finest hour in China. He came to resent the Bangladeshis and their leader, and even compared (this