Henry Kissinger, the best-known American diplomat of modern times, is deeply associated in the Indian mind with the American tilt to Pakistan during the 1971 war to liberate Bangladesh. Many in India also view Kissinger as the one man responsible for the rise of China by drawing it into a long-term partnership with the United States against the Soviet Union. But Kissinger is more than the “villain” of the 1971 war and a lifelong “friend of China”. His contributions towards shaping American foreign policy and the evolution of the post-war world in the second half of the 20th century are immense and consequential. As Delhi reflects on Kissinger’s celebrated but controversial legacy, his statecraft holds lessons for a rising India seeking a larger role in the world.
The US tilt to Pakistan in 1971 did not involve firing an American shot against India, nor did it affect the outcome of the Bangladesh war. In criticising Kissinger’s China policy, it is easy to forget that New Delhi was a much bigger political champion of China in the 1950s when America was trying to isolate it. Large countries like India can’t be obsessed about specific moments in history and lose sight of the larger geopolitical dynamic. In Kissinger’s realpolitik, protecting an important Cold War ally — Pakistan — and turning an adversary like Communist China into a strategic partner was driven by a deep consideration for US interests in the 1970s. That world has now gone. There is now a robust India-US partnership no longer tied to Pakistan and aimed at securing an Asia that an assertive China has destabilised. As an exponent of power politics, Kissinger had no hesitation in accepting later that he would have done precisely what PM Indira Gandhi did in 1971 — seize an opportune moment to break up Pakistan and establish India’s primacy in the Subcontinent.
