As Americans grapple with issues of racism and power, a recently declassified trove of White House tapes provides startling evidence of the intolerance expressed by President Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser.
The full content of these tapes reveals how US policy toward South Asia under Mr. Nixon was influenced by his hatred and sexual revulsion toward Indians.
These new films are about one of the darkest episodes of the Cold War, which brought ruin to Bangladesh in 1971. At the time, India was leaning heavily towards the Soviet Union while a military dictatorship in Pakistan backed the United States. Pakistan flanked India on two sides: West Pakistan and East Pakistan, the most populous, and mostly Bengali.
In March 1971, after Bengali nationalists won a democratic election in Pakistan, the junta launched a devastating crackdown on its own Bengali citizens.
Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger staunchly supported the military regime in Pakistan that killed hundreds of thousands of Bengalis, with 10 million refugees fleeing to neighboring India. New Delhi secretly trained and armed Bengali guerrillas. The crisis culminated in December 1971 when India defeated Pakistan in a short war that resulted in the creation of an independent Bangladesh.
I documented the violent birth of Bangladesh and the shameful White House diplomacy in my book “The Blood Telegram,” published in 2013. Much of my evidence came from dozens of White House tapes, revealing Mr. Nixon and the Mr. Kissinger how they really operated behind closed doors. However, many tapes still had long beeps.
In December 2012, I filed a legal request for a mandatory declassification review with the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. After considerable discussion, Nixon archivists finally released a few tapes without bleeding in May 2018 and July 2019, then 28 more in batches from October 2019 to last May. (There are still beeps on a couple of revised tapes, some of which I’m appealing.)
It was surprising to hear a conversation between Nixon, Kissinger, and HR Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, in the Oval Office in June 1971.
“Without a doubt, the least attractive women in the world are Indian women,” Nixon said. “Without a doubt,” she repeated, in a venomous tone.
He continued: “The most asexual, nothing, these people. I mean, people say, what about black Africans? Well, you see something, the vitality in there, I mean they have a little animal charm, but God, those Indians, ack, pathetic. Uch “.
On November 4, 1971, during a private hiatus from a controversial White House summit with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, a rare woman at the time, the president harangued Kissinger about his sexual dislike of Indians.
Mr. Nixon said, “For me, they disconnect me. How the hell do they turn other people on, Henry? Tell me. “Kissinger’s response is inaudible, but it did not discourage the president from his issue.
The president, amid bitter confrontations with Ms. Gandhi over the danger of war with Pakistan, suggested to Mr. Kissinger that his own sexual neuroses were having an impact on foreign policy: “They mislead me. They are repulsive and it is easy to be hard on them. ”
A few days later, on November 12, 1971, in the midst of a discussion about the tensions between India and Pakistan with Mr. Kissinger and Secretary of State William P. Rogers, after Mr. Rogers mentioned reprimanding Ms. Gandhi, the president blurted out: “I don’t know how they reproduce!”
Kissinger has presented himself above the racism of the Nixon White House, but the tapes show him joining the bigotry, although the tapes cannot determine whether he really shared the president’s biases or was simply indulging him.
On June 3, 1971, Kissinger was outraged at the Indians, as the country was home to millions of traumatized Bengali refugees who had fled the Pakistani army. He blamed the Indians for causing the influx of refugees, ostensibly by their covert patronage of the Bengali insurgency. Then he condemned the Indians as a whole, his voice oozing contempt: “They are a people looking for garbage.”
On June 17, 1971, in the same conversation as Nixon’s outburst about “asexual” Indian women, the president was furious with Kenneth B. Keating, his ambassador to India, who two days earlier had clashed with Nixon and Kissinger. . in the Oval Office, calling Pakistan’s crackdown “almost entirely a matter of genocide.”
Mr. Nixon now asked what “do the Indians have that it takes even a Keating, for Christ, a 70-year-old man.” Here’s a cross talk, but the word seems to be “bachelor” or “bastard”. In response, Mr. Kissinger explained flatly: “They are excellent sycophants, Mr. President. They are masters of flattery. They are masters of subtle flattery. Thus they survived 600 years. They suck, their great ability is to suck people in key positions. ”
Kissinger also expressed his prejudices about Pakistanis. On August 10, 1971, while discussing with Mr. Nixon whether the Pakistani junta would execute the jailed leader of the Bengali nationalists, Mr. Kissinger told the president: “I tell you that Pakistanis are good people, but they are primitive in your mental makeup. ” He added: “They just don’t have the subtlety of the Indians.”
These emotional displays of prejudice help explain a foreign policy debacle. The Nixon and Kissinger policies toward South Asia in 1971 were not just a moral disaster but a strategic fiasco on their own Cold War terms.
While Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger had some reasons to favor Pakistan, an American ally who was secretly helping achieve its historic openness to China, their prejudices and emotions contributed to their excessive support for Pakistan’s murderous dictatorship. through their atrocities.
As Kissinger’s own staff members had warned him, this one-sided approach gave India the opportunity to divide Pakistan in half, first by sponsoring the Bengali guerrillas and then with war in December 1971, resulting in a Cold War victory for the Soviets. to camp.
For decades, Nixon and Kissinger have presented themselves as brilliant practitioners of realpolitik, directing a foreign policy that dispassionately served the interests of the United States. But these declassified White House tapes confirm an entirely different picture: racism and misogyny at the highest levels, cloaked for decades under ridiculous national security claims. A fair historical assessment of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger must include the whole truth, without bleeding.
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