Beyond the “Tilt”: US Initiatives to Dissipate Bangladesh Movement in 1971

During the South Asian crisis in 1971, the US administration, especially the White House, stood firmly behind the Pakistani President Yahya Khan and demonstrated a disdain for India and particularly its leader Indira Gandhi. Historians and analysts have previously insisted that Pakistan’s role as a conduit of rapprochement with China and Henry Kissinger’s focus on geopolitical concerns greatly influenced the American policy decision in 1971. These claims have now been confirmed by the recently declassified US foreign policy documents in Foreign Relations of the United States, XI and its companion electronic volume. These volumes also suggest that the US administration undertook at least three initiatives to dissipate the Bangladesh movement, an aspect largely ignored in the historical accounts of the South Asian crisis. Drawing on the documents in these volumes, other declassified documents available at the US National Archives, and the Bangladeshi sources this paper constructs a narrative of these three US initiatives. It also insists that US clandestine efforts, described as a “political settlement ” contributed to the bloodshed instead of bringing it to an end. The role of the United States during the South Asian crisis in 1971 has once again come under the media spotlight.1 The publication of the Foreig