4 Quotes by Gary J. Bass

While Pakistan plunged into civil war, Kissinger looked for massacres committed by Bengalis, to generate a moral equivalence that would exonerate Yahya. It would be convenient for Nixon and Kissinger to be able to say that both sides were equally rotten.

Nixon bitterly said, “The Indians need – what they need really is a – ” Kissinger interjected, “They’re such bastards.” Nixon finished his thought: “A mass famine.

I shall be perfectly frank with you,” which is how politicians in both Delhi and Washington preface a real whopper of a lie:.

In one of the awkward alignments of the Cold War, President Richard Nixon had lined up the democratic United States with this authoritarian government, while the despots in the Soviet Union found themselves standing behind democratic India. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the brilliant White House national security advisor, were driven not just by such Cold War calculations, but a starkly personal and emotional dislike of India and Indians.