Pakistan’s Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay

Pakistan’s Forgotten
Genocide—
A Review Essay

Sumit Ganguly

Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger,
and a Forgotten Genocide (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2013)

Gary Bass’s The Blood
Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide constitutes a vital contribu-
tion toward explaining the genocide of Bengalis in East Pakistan in 1971 E
the U.S. role in the crisis.1 Bass is the ªrst to investigate in any detail the com-
plicity of President Richard Nixon’s administration in allowing the perpetua-
tion of this tragedy. This essay discusses how Bass’s book contributes to
scholars’ and policymakers’ understanding of the genocide and the subse-
quent war between India and Pakistan, as well as the role of the United States
during the crisis. It then assesses the question of moral culpability and dis-
cusses the contribution of Bass’s book to the literature on studies of genocide.

The Blood Telegram offers a useful reminder of U.S. foreign policy toward
South Asia at a critical juncture in Indo-Pakistani relations. More important,
Tuttavia, is the way in which the book carefully traces the motivations, beliefs,
and choices of key U.S. policymakers during this calamity. In the process, Bass
shows how immediate U.S. geostrategic imperatives, a lack of concern about
or knowledge of regional affairs, and the personal animus of President Nixon
and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, toward Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi of India, all converged to form a policy of utter callousness in
the face of the massacre of hapless millions.

Background to a Crisis

In December 1970, Pakistan held its ªrst free and fair election after decades
of military rule. The results came as an unpleasant surprise to the domi-

Sumit Ganguly is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center on American and Global Security
at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and
Civilizations.

The author would like to thank his colleague David Fidler for useful comments on an earlier draft
of this essay.

1. Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2013). Subsequent references to this book appear parenthetically in the text.

International Security, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Autunno 2014), pag. 169–180, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00175
© 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

169

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International Security 39:2 170

nant party in West Pakistan, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). The Awami
League (AL), located in the eastern wing, won 160 out of 300 seats in the
National Assembly. Consequently the PPP would have to share power with
the AL in the Assembly. Unwilling to do so, the PPP, with the tacit backing
of the military establishment, reluctantly started negotiations with the AL
about forming a new government.

The PPP’s reaction to the electoral outcome was not surprising. Since the
creation of Pakistan in 1947, West Pakistanis had treated the eastern wing of
the country as a virtual internal colony. The bulk of industrial investment
was in the west; most foreign aid was dispersed in the west; and the Bengali-
speaking population of the eastern wing was woefully represented in the na-
tional civil service and the military.2 The unanticipated outcome of the 1970
election placed both the military establishment and the PPP in a quandary. For
the ªrst time in the history of the state, West Pakistan would be forced to treat
the eastern wing with a semblance of equality.

The negotiations between the PPP and the AL to form a new government
reached an impasse in early March 1971. In the wake of this deadlock, AL sup-
porters increasingly took to the streets in the East Pakistani capital of Dhaka
(then Dacca), staging strikes and demonstrations. Very quickly, the original de-
mands of the AL, which had included greater autonomy for East Pakistan,
were replaced with calls for secession. Faced with these growing demands
and fearful of the possibility of the country breaking up, the dictatorship of
Gen. Yahya Khan began making plans for a brutal military operation, code-
named “Searchlight,” to suppress the protests. On March 25, military units in
Dhaka and its environs began killing civilians, shooting down students
in university dormitories, and raping women, instilling terror among the
province’s defenseless Bengali population. The careful targeting of Bengalis
indicated that the goal of this operation was genocide.

The crackdown forced some 10 million East Pakistanis to ºee into India. Af-
ter seeking diplomatic alternatives to ensure the safe return of the refugees and
ªnding little global support, Prime Minister Gandhi launched a covert war
against Pakistan, using the Indian military to train East Pakistani rebels. In
response to substantial Indian support for an indigenous East Pakistani guer-
rilla movement throughout much of 1971, Pakistan ordered an air assault on
India’s northwestern air bases on December 3 of that year. Indian forces, Quale

2. For accounts of the lopsided features of the two wings, see Raonaq Jahan, Pakistan: Failure in
National Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); and Robert Jackson, South Asian
Crisis: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (London: Chatto and Windus, 1975).

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Pakistan’s Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay 171

had carefully prepared for a ground invasion of East Pakistan, seized Dhaka
within two weeks. Following the unconditional surrender of all Pakistani
forces, India became the ªrst country to recognize the new state of Bangladesh,
despite facing widespread global opprobrium for having breached the sover-
eignty of another state.3

During the crisis, President Nixon’s administration blatantly tilted toward
Pakistan, despite awareness of the participation of the Pakistani military in
the genocide.4 The administration stonewalled attempts by U.S. ofªcials and
Indian interlocutors to bring pressure to bear on the Khan regime. Instead it
chose to dismiss the crisis as Pakistan’s internal affair.

A Forgotten U.S. Role

Bass’s marshaling of evidence about the 1971 genocide and the roles of
President Nixon and National Security Adviser Kissinger yields two crucial
ªndings. Primo, Nixon and Kissinger should be held at least partly responsible
for the large-scale massacre of civilians in East Pakistan. Secondo, key individu-
als within the U.S. State Department acted honorably and courageously, qui-
etly but ªrmly challenging the administration’s position through ofªcial
channels, despite the likely costs to their professional prospects.

Evidence of the genocide was made available to the Nixon administration
by the U.S. consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, and several of his close as-
sociates. Blood’s telegram, to which Bass’s title refers, described in graphic de-
tail the genocidal behavior of the Pakistan Army shortly after the military
crackdown in Dhaka and the abject lack of a U.S. risposta. As the dissenters
wrote in the telegram: “We have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the
grounds that the Awami conºict, in which unfortunately the overworked term
genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state” (P. 78).
Subsequently, during a visit to Washington, D.C., NOI. Ambassador to India
Kenneth Keating emphatically reinforced the views of the U.S. consulate in
Dhaka, especially Blood’s. Keating’s language was equally unequivocal: “Am

3. For an account that describes and analyzes the decisionmaking leading up to the war, see Rich-
ard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh (Berke-
ley: Stampa dell'Università della California, 1991). A more recent treatment is offered by Srinath Raghavan,
1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (Cambridge, Massa.: Stampa dell'Università di Harvard,
2013). Raghavan’s central argument is that the separation of East Pakistan and the emergence of
Bangladesh were not inevitable. He contends that a series of contingent choices culminated in the
breakup of Pakistan.
4. Christopher Van Hollen, “The Tilt Policy Revisited: Nixon-Kissinger Geopolitics and South
Asia,” Asian Survey, Vol. 20, No. 4 (April 1980), pag. 339–361.

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International Security 39:2 172

deeply shocked at massacre by Pakistani military in East Pakistan, appalled at
the possibility these atrocities are being committed with American equipment,
and greatly concerned at United States vulnerability to damaging allegations
of associations with the reign of military terror” (P. 61).

Another American, Sydney Schanberg, the New York Times India corres-
pondent, managed to cross the border covertly into East Pakistan and ªled a
series of accounts documenting the horriªc actions of the Pakistani military
(P. 98). No, Nixon and Kissinger did not lack information about the role of the
Pakistan Army in this developing tragedy.

enabling genocide

Bass’s meticulous scholarship demonstrates how both Nixon and Kissinger,
because of their unwavering support of the Khan regime, their ºawed view of
India as a Soviet stooge, and their hatred of Indira Gandhi, became witting ac-
complices to this genocide. At various stages, they had both the knowledge
and the resources to rein in Pakistan. Invece, as Bass shows, they justiªed a
policy that did nothing to stop the carnage. Infatti, they tacitly approved of the
actions of Pakistan’s military regime.

Inoltre, as Bass demonstrates in considerable detail, Nixon and Kissinger
sought to intimidate the courageous men and women in the U.S. Straniero
Service who dared to challenge their ºawed analysis of the politics of
the subcontinent and sought to change their morally bankrupt policies. A quote
from Nixon is especially telling: “When a bureaucrat deliberately thumbs his
nose, we’re going to get him” (P. 116). Even Ambassador Keating, the well-
respected former Republican senator from New York, discovered that the Nixon
White House had ignored his candid assessment of the developments in East
Pakistan. Not content with their attempts to stiºe dissent, Nixon and Kissinger
also demonstrated contempt for U.S. domestic law by seeking ways to circum-
vent an arms embargo placed on Pakistan (and India) by the United States in
the aftermath of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir. A tal fine, Essi
enabled the transfer to Pakistan of U.S. weaponry from pliant U.S. allies such
as Iran, Jordan, and Turkey. The U.S. State Department suggested that further
weapons shipments might be withheld until it had assessed their impact on
military action in East Pakistan. Kissinger urged Nixon not to authorize even a
temporary suspension of the weapons transfers. E, in a misguided attempt
to intimidate India and ostensibly prevent it from attacking West Pakistan,
Nixon and Kissinger ordered the U.S. Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal
as Indian forces were approaching Dhaka, despite the absence of evidence that
India’s war plans included an attack on West Pakistan. In definitiva, the belated

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Pakistan’s Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay 173

entry of the U.S. naval task force into the Bay of Bengal served only to alienate
Prime Minister Gandhi’s government from the United States.

knowledge and responsibility

What explains Nixon and Kissinger’s actions given the overwhelming evi-
dence of a genocide taking place in East Pakistan? As Bass demonstrates, their
unwillingness to pressure Yahya Khan stemmed from two important sources.
Primo, Khan had arranged a secret diplomatic channel to Beijing that enabled
the president and his national security adviser to pursue their vaunted “open-
ing” to the People’s Republic of China. Nixon maintained that if the United
States did not stand by Khan, it would lose all possible leverage with Pakistan
and risk the collapse of U.S. efforts to engage China. He also argued that
Pakistan, as a sovereign state, was at liberty to make decisions about its own
future. A tal fine, Nixon asserted: “We will not measure our relationship with
the government in terms of what it has done in East Pakistan. By that criterion,
we would cut off relations with every Communist government in the world
because of the slaughter that has taken place in the Communist countries”
(P. 215).

Secondo, Nixon had come to despise Prime Minister Gandhi. In his prior lim-
ited contact with the Indian prime minister, he had found her cold and calcu-
lating, unlike the Pakistani generals, whom he found more appealing.
Kissinger rarely lost an opportunity to stoke the president’s animosity toward
the Indian leader (pag. 206–207). As a sign of their mutual dislike, Nixon and
Kissinger encouraged China to move troops along the 1,500-mile Sino-Indian
border to exert military pressure on India, a contingency dreaded by
Indian policymakers whose country had barely recovered from the debacle of
IL 1962 Sino-Indian border war (P. 292). China might have responded
favorably to this U.S. encouragement were it not for a treaty that India
had signed with the Soviet Union in August 1971 that contained an implicit
security guarantee.

The evidence that Bass has amassed regarding Nixon and Kissinger’s
knowledge of the genocide and unwillingness to intervene to stop it chal-
lenges the arguments of their apologists. Per esempio, in a deftly argued but
ultimately ºawed essay that seeks to absolve Kissinger of any malfeasance,
Robert Blackwill, a former U.S. ambassador to India, makes two especially du-
bious claims. The ªrst involves the decision mentioned above to send a U.S.
task force into the Bay of Bengal toward the end of the crisis. Ostensibly, IL
deployment was designed to prevent India from attacking West Pakistan and
contributing to the breakup of the country. Blackwill repeats this claim

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International Security 39:2 174

and argues that this action, along with U.S. efforts to induce Jordan and Iran to
supply Pakistan with advanced U.S. ªghter jets, was necessary to prevent “a
war in which India was considering a drive for total victory and an all-out de-
struction of the Pakistani armed forces.”5 Yet he offers no evidence to bolster
this assertion. Secondo, Blackwill attempts to undermine Bass’s portrayal of
Nixon and Kissinger’s actions as a callous response to the genocidal policies
of the Khan regime in East Pakistan. His evidence, Tuttavia, merely under-
scores the anodyne nature of the administration’s efforts to bring any mean-
ingful pressure to bear on the regime. A military dictatorship that had engaged
in the perpetuation of genocide against its own population was certainly not
about to prove responsive to mere calls for the imminent restoration of peace
on the subcontinent. In definitiva, the material that Blackwill presents in defense
of Nixon and Kissinger’s actions does little to challenge Bass’s conclusions.

Unlike Blackwill, Harold Saunders, a member of the National Security
Council Staff in 1971, provides a more nuanced assessment of Bass’s book and
Kissinger’s role in the crisis in an essay in Foreign Affairs. Saunders under-
scores the animus of Nixon and Kissinger toward Indira Gandhi, their staunch
loyalty to Yahya Khan, and their unwillingness to rein in the Pakistani military.
He does not exculpate Nixon or Kissinger for the dubious choices of either in-
dividual during the crisis. He does, Tuttavia, argue that “policymaking is itself
the process of determining which moral principles or strategic objectives to
prioritize.”6 In Saunders’s judgment, the Nixon administration had decided
that preventing mass repression (and ultimately genocide) was a lower prior-
ity than protecting China’s opening.

India’s Dilemma

While on a state visit to the United States, in November 1971, Prime Minister
Gandhi had tried to apprise Nixon and Kissinger of the humanitarian crisis on
India’s doorstep—a crisis that threatened to overwhelm parts of her country.
Nixon promised to provide relief assistance, but cautioned that “[io]t would be
impossible to calculate with precision the steps which other great powers
might take if India were to initiate hostilities” (P. 254).

5. Robert D. Blackwill, “In Defense of Kissinger,” National Interest, January/February 2014, http://
nationalinterest.org/article/defense-kissinger-9642.
6. Harold H. Saunders, “What Really Happened in Bangladesh: Washington, Islamabad, and the
Genocide in East Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93, No. 4 (July/August 2014), P. 41.

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Pakistan’s Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay 175

Nixon’s intransigence toward India and his unwillingness to restrain Pakistan
convinced Gandhi that her only choice was to initiate a war against Pakistan to
stem and eventually reverse the tide of refugees ºowing into India. In this con-
testo, Bass argues that the interplay of three distinct pressures drove her toward
the military option. Primo, India could ill afford to absorb close to 10 million ref-
ugees, especially in its highly volatile northeastern border states, dove il
inºux of East Pakistanis threatened to change the delicate demographic bal-
ance. Secondo, Gandhi was faced with widespread pressure both from within
the parliamentary opposition and from India’s attentive public to act deci-
sively to end the crisis. Here Bass once again makes an important contribution.
Even though previous accounts discuss Indian domestic imperatives for inter-
vening in East Pakistan, Bass provides detailed, granular evidence of internal
debates and pressures on Gandhi to act decisively not only to stem the ºow of
refugees into India, but to end the slaughter of coethnics in a neighboring
state. Most important, he demonstrates an extraordinary grasp of the internal
politics of the country and the signal importance of the East Pakistan crisis for
the politics of the adjoining state of West Bengal, which bore the brunt of the
refugee crisis. Third, a small number of Gandhi’s key foreign policy advisers
counseled her to seize the opportunity to deliver a decisive blow to Pakistan.
They came to this conclusion, Tuttavia, only after it had become all but appar-
ent that even India’s friends in the global community, let alone the great pow-
ers, were unwilling to exert signiªcant pressure on Pakistan to end the crisis
and the concomitant ºight of refugees into India. Despite widespread knowl-
edge of the horrors that the Pakistan Army had visited on its citizenry in East
Pakistan, the United Nations General Assembly in December 1971 voted over-
whelmingly to condemn the Indian decision to intervene. Even key members
of the nonaligned movement, of which India was a founder, evinced little sym-
pathy for India’s predicament. Inoltre, they unanimously condemned India
for its intervention in East Pakistan, even though it put a nearly immediate
end to the mass slaughter. The reaction of the global community and the
nonaligned movement, which Bass thoroughly documents, underscored
the continuing adherence to the norm of national sovereignty even in the face
of overwhelming evidence of genocide.

A Missing Piece

Despite its many contributions, Bass’s book does not explain how the Pakistan
Army could abruptly descend into an unapologetic massacre of its fellow citi-

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International Security 39:2 176

zens. Professional militaries, though willing to inºict untold harm on external
adversaries, do not routinely turn into cold-blooded killers of their own citi-
zenry. In another important study of genocide, Per esempio, Christopher
Browning examines how a German police battalion in occupied Poland during
World War II underwent a gradual process of brutalization before engaging in
large-scale killing.7

Although Bass does not discuss the motivations of the Pakistan Army at any
length, he does allude to how it could perpetrate such acts of wanton cruelty,
suggesting three important sources. Primo, the Punjabi-dominated military had
long internalized the British colonial assertion of the inherent martial attrib-
utes of certain ethnic groups in South Asia and the intrinsic nonmartial fea-
tures of others. According to this anthropological myth, the Punjabis, among
others, were imbued with martial qualities and the Bengalis were deemed
largely effeminate and unsuitable for military service.8 Consequently, army
personnel viewed many of their Bengali Muslim brethren with barely veiled
contempt. Infatti, President Ayub Khan, Pakistan’s ªrst military dictator, had
written of the Bengalis in the most condescending language in his autobiogra-
phy, Friends, Not Masters: “East Bengalis, who constitute the bulk of the popu-
lation, probably belong to the very original Indian races. It would be no
exaggeration to say that up to the creation of Pakistan, they had not known
any real freedom or sovereignty. . . . As such they have all the inhibitions of
downtrodden races and have not found it possible to adjust psychologically to
the requirements of new-born freedom. Their popular complexes, exclusive-
ness, suspicion and a sort of defensive aggressiveness probably emerge from
this historical background.”9

Secondo, the Pakistan Army directed its genocidal strategy primarily toward
the Hindu population of East Pakistan. At the onset of the crisis, Hindus con-
stituted nearly 13 percent of the population of the province. Bass provides in-
controvertible evidence of the hatred that the West Pakistanis in general, E
the military in particular, possessed for the minority population of the region.
All of the accounts that Bass provides are reminiscent of other genocidal cam-
paigns. Infatti, some depressing regularities seem to characterize genocide in
the modern era. Per esempio, Bass recounts the following observation of a U.S.

7. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998).
8. Peter Robb, ed., The Concept of Race in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995).
9. Mohammed Ayub Khan, Friends, Not Masters: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1967).

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Pakistan’s Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay 177

Foreign Service ofªcer in the Dhaka consulate, Desaix Myres: “The Army con-
tinues to check, lifting lungis (a kind of sarong worn by Bengalis), checking cir-
cumcision (practiced by Muslims but not Hindus), demanding recitation of
Muslim prayers. Hindus ºee or are shot” (P. 82).

Third, the Pakistani military’s unrelenting hatred of the Hindu population
was inextricably linked to its unremitting hostility toward India. Decades of
domestic propaganda under two military regimes—ranging from the depic-
tion of Hindus in civics textbooks as devious, cunning, and cowardly to their
image in popular culture, especially in ªlms and soap operas—had imbued
the military with an inveterate loathing of Hindus.10 In the view of the
Pakistani military, the Hindu minority of East Pakistan was little more than a
ªfth column ready to act at India’s bidding. Once a handful of key individuals
had decided to use substantial force against the restive population, the Paki-
stan Army could act without remorse or pity.

The pathway to genocide in East Pakistan partially supports Benjamin
Valentino’s argument about the perpetrators of mass killings. In his work on
genocide in the twentieth century, Valentino eschews explanations based on
regime type, collective psychology, or ethnic or racial hatred.11 Instead, he ar-
gues that genocides in the twentieth century can mostly be attributed to lead-
ers who considered them strategic tools to accomplish political ends. In this
case, ethnic and racial hatred of the Bengalis was dispersed within both the
Pakistani military establishment and Pakistani society. This hatred, Tuttavia,
had existed since the creation of Pakistan twenty-six years earlier. What trig-
gered the genocide was the decision of a small group of individuals within the
military to resolve at a critical juncture what they deemed a trying political is-
sue: the presence of a hated, tiresome Hindu minority. When they perceived an
opportunity to settle this political conundrum through the use of mass killing,
they acted without hesitation.

A Sanitized History

Bass’s evidence on the role of the Nixon administration in the 1971 genocide in
East Pakistan stands in stark contrast to the sanitized accounts offered by

10. Vedere, Per esempio, K.K. Aziz, The Murder of History: A Critique of History Textbooks Used in Paki-
stan (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2010).
11. Benjamin A. Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).

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International Security 39:2 178

Nixon and Kissinger. Bass shows that in his memoirs, Nixon deftly shifted
blame for the crisis away from Pakistan and toward the Bengali rebels and
India’s subsequent intervention. Kissinger does not address the mass slaugh-
ter in East Pakistan, except to say that the atrocities were “clearly under [IL
Pakistani government’s] domestic jurisdiction.” He shifts blame for most of
the controversial decisions to Nixon and dismisses the administration’s do-
mestic critics for lacking an understanding of an “essentially geopolitical point
of view” (P. 142).

Given the relative geostrategic unimportance of Bangladesh to U.S. foreign
policy, the accounts of Nixon and Kissinger have largely gone unchallenged
until now. The signiªcance of Bass’s painstaking research and his scrupulous
portrayal of the choices that created permissive conditions for the genocide
should now lead to a much-needed reappraisal of the foreign policy legacies of
both individuals. What distinguishes Bass’s work, Tuttavia, is his singular
focus on a long-forgotten episode in U.S. foreign policy that had signiªcant
consequences in South Asia then and now.

India, the dominant regional power, chose to boost its nuclear weapons pro-
gram and conducted its ªrst nuclear test in 1974 in part because of the entry of
the U.S. naval task force led by the USS Enterprise, a nuclear-powered aircraft
carrier, into the Bay of Bengal.12 Even today, some of the anti-Americanism
that permeates India’s political culture stems from this event. Despite the
squalid record of Yahya Khan, the United States turned to another Pakistani
military dictator, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, when it sought to dislodge the
Soviets from Afghanistan. Subsequently, it made one of his equally duplicitous
successors, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the linchpin of its counterterrorism strat-
egy in South Asia for more than a decade, with very mixed results.13

Ironically, despite Nixon and Kissinger’s staunch support for the Khan re-
gime, even today most Pakistani elites believe that the United States showed
itself to be a ªckle ally in the midst of an existential crisis. The U.S.-Pakistan re-
lationship remains based mostly on exigent circumstances and mutual conve-
nience. Bangladesh, even though it continues to grapple with the forces that
led to its bloody birth, barely registers in the U.S. foreign policy calculus, bar-
ring humanitarian concerns and those pertaining to the rise of radical Islam.14

12. K. Subrahmanyam, “India: Keeping the Option Open,” in Robert M. Lawrence and Joel Larus,
eds., Nuclear Proliferation: Phase II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974), pag. 112–148.
13. Vedere, Per esempio, Husain Haqqani, Magniªcent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic
History of Misunderstanding (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013).
14. Apart from humanitarian concerns, the only real U.S. interest in Bangladesh involves the
emergence of radical Islam and the possible creation of terrorist havens. On the growth of Islamic

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Pakistan’s Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay 179

Conclusione

Gary Bass’s The Blood Telegram makes three main contributions to three bodies
of literature: NOI. diplomatic history, the question of humanitarian interven-
zione, and studies of genocide. Primo, it provides an important discussion of a ne-
glected phase of U.S. diplomatic history. It richly illuminates how the Nixon
administration, in its quest for geopolitical advantages, refused to bring to
bear the considerable diplomatic and material resources of the United States
to contain a regional crisis. Worse still, in the face of overwhelming evidence of
the atrocious behavior of its ally, Pakistan, the administration did little or noth-
ing to curb its behavior. Invece, it sought to intimidate a fellow democratic
state, India, which was attempting to end a reign of mass terror under ex-
tremely trying circumstances. The work is also a poignant reminder of how
feckless U.S. foreign policy choices during the Cold War did little to burnish
the image of the United States as genuinely committed to the promotion of de-
mocracy and human rights abroad.

Has much changed in the global order since the 1971 genocide? Certamente,
the end of the Cold War has made it far easier for the United States to adopt a
more robust and clear-cut position on the promotion of democratic values and
human rights. The absence of a looming Soviet threat and communist subver-
sion has freed the United States from supporting at least some anti-democratic
regimes. Yet, strategic considerations continue to interfere with the adoption of
a wholly consistent position on the protection of human rights beyond na-
tional borders. Per esempio, the United States has done little to address wide-
spread human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, not to mention Pakistan.

Secondo, Bass’s book is a reminder that fashioning a global standard for the
prevention of mass slaughter remains a fraught endeavor. Infatti, despite var-
ious attempts to forge a new norm of a “responsibility to protect,” states and
international institutions continue to debate the merits of humanitarian inter-
vention. A number of key states in the international system, including Brazil,
China, India, and Russia, for both legitimate and self-serving reasons, Avere
expressed considerable skepticism about the norm in the wake of the UN-
supported intervention in Libya.15 India, in particular, has been highly critical
that what was originally a UN mandate for alleviating human suffering in

militancy in Bangladesh, see Sumit Ganguly, “The Rise of Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh,” Spe-
cial Report 171 (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, agosto 2006).
15. Ramesh Thakur, “R2P after Libya and Syria: Engaging Emerging Powers,” Washington Quar-
terly, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Primavera 2013), pag. 61–76.

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International Security 39:2 180

Libya metamorphosed into a policy that resulted in regime change. Ovviamente,
China, India, and Russia all face signiªcant problems of domestic political un-
riposo, have resorted to substantial force against restive minorities, and fear that
support for the norm could come to haunt them in the future.

Third, Bass describes the conditions that can make genocide possible. IL
origins of the East Pakistan genocide can be traced to deep-seated racial and
ethnic animosities, cultural prejudices, and vicious political objectives.

In the end, Bass’s study underscores how the global community, because of
an absence of any compelling strategic interests in South Asia and because
of its adherence to the principle of national sovereignty, could remain oblivi-
ous to ending widespread human suffering.

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