Time

The Nixon Administration drew a fusillade of criticism last week for
its policy on India and Pakistan. Two weeks ago, when war broke out
between two traditional enemies, a State Department spokesman issued
an unusually blunt statement, placing the burden of blame on India.
Soon after that, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations George Bush
branded the Indian action as "aggression" -- a word that Washington
subsequently but lamely explained had not been "authorized"

Senator Edward Kennedy declared that the Administration had turned a
deaf ear for eight months to "the brutal and systematic repression of
East Bengal by the Pakistani army," and now was condemning "the
response of India toward and increasingly desperate situation on its
eastern borders." Senator Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humprey echoed
Kennedy's charges.

The critics were by no means limited to ambiguous politicians. In the
New York Times, John P. Lewis, onetime U.S. A.I.D. director in India
(1964-69) and now dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton, wrote: " We have managed to align
ourselves with the wrong side of about as big and simple a moral issue
as the world has seen lately; and we have sided with minor military
dictatorship against the world's second largest nation." In Britain,
the conservative London Daily Telegraph accused Washington of "a
blundering diplomatic performance which can have few parallels."

Since March, when the Pakistani army staged a bloody crackdown in East
Bengal, murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians and prompting 10
million Bengalis to flee across the Indian border, the U.S. has been
ostentatiously mild in its public criticism of the atrocities and of
Pakistan's military ruler, President Yahya Khan -- a man whom
President Nixon likes. Washington wanted to retain whatever leverage
it had with the Pakistanis. Moreover the Administration was grateful
for Islamabad's help in arranging Presidential Adviser Henry
Kissinger's first, secret trip to China last July. India was shaken by
Washington's sudden gesture toward its traditional enemies, the
Chinese, with whom it had fought a brief war in 1962. Behind the
scenes, many State Department officials urges in vain that the
Government take a harder line toward Yahya, for humanitarian as well
as practical political reasons.

In the past five years, China has displaces the U.S. as Pakistan's
chief sponsor. India, increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union for
military aid, finally signed an important treaty of friendship with
Moscow last summer. The U.S. was not solely responsible for driving
the Indians into the Soviet camp; but its policy of not being beastly
to Yahya convinced the Indians that they could not count on the U.S.
for moral support. The result of the treaty: U.S. influence in India
was virtually neutralized.

The Administration's current anger, however, stems from a more recent
incident. During her trip to Washington last month, India's Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi led President Nixon to believe that her country
had no intention of going to war. Later, when the Indian army made
what appeared to be a well-planned attack on East Pakistan. Washington
officials concluded that Mrs. Gandhi's trip had been a smokescreen for
massive war preparations. Richard Nixon was furious, and was behind
the initial Government statements branding India the aggressor.

Last week, in an attempt to justify U.S. policy, Presidential Adviser
Kissinger help a press briefing. (the remark were supposed to be for
"background use" only until Senator Barry Goldwater blew Kissinger's
cover by printing a transcript of the briefing in the Congressional
Record. Kissinger insisted that the U.S. has not really sided with
Pakistan, but had been working quietly and intensively to bring about
a peaceful political solution. Indeed, at the time of the Indian
attack, he claimed, U.S. diplomats had almost persuaded Yahya Khan and
the Calcutta-based Bangladesh leadership to enter into negotiations.
New Delhi had precipitated the fighting in East Pakistan. Washington
believed, and refused to accept a ceasefire because it was determined
to drive the Pakistani army out of East Bengal.

It can be argued, however, that Washington was guilty of an
unfortunate naivete by believing that a political solution was
possible after the passions of the Indians and Pakistanis had become
so aroused. Given the continued existence of a power vacuum in East
Bengal, it may have been unrealistic to expect the Indians to refrain
indefinitely from dealing their archenemy a crippling and permanent
blow as to have expected the Israelis to halt their 1967 advance in
the middle of the Sinai.

It is true that the new U.S. policy toward China has further
restricted Washington's room for maneuver with the Indians, but this
hardly explains or excuses the Administration's handling of recent
affairs on the Indian subcontinent. Because of blunders in both
substance and tone, the US has

1. destroyed whatever chance it had to be neutral in the East
Asian conflict;

2. tended to reinforce the Russia-India, China-Pakistan lineup;

3. Seemingly placed itself morally and politically on the side
of a particularly brutal regime, which, moreover, is an
almost certain loser; and

4. made a shambles of its position on the subcontinent.