Rapprochement with the United States } 313
We think that the immediate objective must be to prevent an attack on
the West Pakistan army by India. We are afraid that if nothing is done
to stop it, East Pakistan will a Bhutan and West Pakistan will become
a Nepal. And India with Soviet help would be free to turn its energies
elsewhere. ... It is our judgment, with great sorrow, that the Pakistan
army in two weeks will disintegrate in the west as it has in the east. ...
We are looking for a way to protect what is left of Pakistan ... both of us
must continue to bring pressure on India and the Soviet Union.... So we
are prepared to listen to any practical proposals for parallel action.^54
“When I asked for this meeting,” Kissinger told Huang, “I did so to sug-
gest Chinese military help, to be quite honest.” In order to preserve West
Pakistan’s military strength, Kissinger continued, “We are ... prepared to at-
tempt to assemble a maximum amount of pressure in order to deter India.”
While Kissinger thus pushed for Chinese military pressure on India’s north-
ern frontiers, US leaders were deciding to deploy a naval task force to the Bay
of Bengal in a demonstration of force intended to deter India from striking
West Pakistan. The same day Kissinger met with Huang Hua in New York,
December 10, US leaders decided to move warships from the Pacific through
the Malacca Strait to the Bay of Bengal as a warning to Moscow not to act
militarily against China under the August treaty. Nixon and Kissinger ex-
pected China to act in support of Pakistan, and saw the naval demonstration
in the Bay of Bengal as a way of encouraging the Soviets to advise New Delhi
not to move against West Pakistan, or failing that, of deterring a Soviet move
against China under the August treaty. Parallel military pressure from the
United States and China would help prevent an Indian attack against West
Pakistan that might destroy the remaining strength of that country.
Huang Hua promised to convey Kissinger’s proposals to Zhou Enlai, but
otherwise evaded Kissinger’s call in New York for Chinese military demon-
strations.^55 On December 16, however, six days after the Kissinger-Huang
talks and on the very day that Pakistan’s forces in the east surrendered, China
issued a “strong protest” of “grave encroachments” by Indian violations of
Chinese territory on the “China-Sikkim boundary.”^56 By the time the Chinese
protest was delivered, the Himalayan roads were already blocked by snow
and thus impassable, a fact well understood by military leaders. Indian intel-
ligence had watched carefully China’s words and military movements during
the East Pakistan crisis, and was confident that China would not intervene in
this India-Pakistan war. But the US task force, including ten ships and headed
by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, entered the Bay of Bengal on December
- Parallel PRC and US military diplomacy during the 1971 India-Pakistan
war demonstrated very clearly the possibilities for Sino-American coopera-
tion based on common interests. Zhou Enlai later told Z. A. Bhutto that US
diplomacy had saved West Pakistan.^57