The White House & Pakistan: Secret Declassified Documents, 1969-1974

During the period 1969-74, the years of Richard Nixon’s presidency, many significant events took place that both shaped the modern history of the world, and in a more traumatic way reshaped the contours within the Indian subcontinent. Following President Nixon’s visit to Pakistan in August 1969, a number of channels were used by the White House to establish contact with the People’s Republic of China, culminating in Dr Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in July 1971. The furtive preparations for the visit, both within the White House and in Pakistan, Dr Kissinger’s subsequent report of his negotiations with Premier Zhou Enlai, and the detailed Memorandum of Conversations of their meetings have since been declassified, and are being published here extensively for the first time. These documents reveal as never before the extent of Nixon’s famous tilt towards Pakistan during the crisis in East Pakistan that precipitated the war between India and Pakistan in December 1971, and resulted in the establishment of Bangladesh. Many of these documents throw new light on the reasons behind the stance taken in tandem by the United States and China in support of Pakistan against India which was backed by the Soviet Union. The 208 documents in this volume include a number of fascinating Memorandum of Conversations between leaders such as President Nixon, Chairman Mao Zedong, Premier Zhou Enlai, President Yahya Khan, President (later Prime Minister) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and other world dignitaries. The book also contains a lucid, well-written and informative introduction on US-Pakistan relations from 1947 to 1969 as a useful preamble to the documents themselves.