The Pakistani military debacle in East Bengal is at the same time a diplomatic debacle for the United States. Futile last‐minute White House warnings to Moscow restrain the Indians in their hour of victory and the provocative dispatch of a carrier task force to the Bay of Bengal can neither conceal nor alleviate this disaster to American prestige and posture throughout the democratic world.

While the White House has been seeking to focus blame on the Russians for a situation that the Soviet Union has indeed been cynically and successfully turning its own advantage, it must be observed that Soviet gains on the subcontinent have been to a considerable degree made in America. The Nixon Administration practically drove India into the waiting arms of the Russians by its silence in the face of the brutal repression in East Pakistan and by the economic and military support witlessly continued to extend to Pakistan long after that crackdown began last March 25.

The United States Government has rightly criticized India for resorting to military action to redress its grievances against Pakistan. But the Administration previously failed to do what it could have done to restrain New Delhi from this desperate folly by pressing vigorously for a realistic political solution in East Bengal. It is one thing to condemn India for use of force, which we unreservedly do; it is another to ignore the causes for this action and indeed to have contributed to the conditions that led to it, which regrettably Washington has done.

President Nixon's stubborn backing of the authoritarian military regime in Islamabad, whose survival even in a diminished state is highly doubtful, has helped greatly to expand Soviet influence throughout most the subcontinent and to create fresh opportunities for Maoist extremism in the confusion and despair that war's inevitable legacy. Furthermore, it can only undermine faith in American support for free institutions elsewhere in the developing world.