| It was an aeroplane read that shouldn’t have been. The principal charges I recall against Kissinger were these: - that he generally failed to inform himself on the history of the region and thought in generalities (‘peaceful Bengalis’, etc.) instead of reading reports from the region seriously and in depth; - that he overestimated the importance of Pakistan as a bridge to China, and consequently (and irrationally) attempted to support Pakistan; - that he did not seem to understand the nature of the geopolitical position that would emerge after the war, seemed to ignore the Anglophile and pro-US tendencies of the middle class intellectuals underpinning the Bengali nationalist movement and Awami League, ignored the risk of lasting resentment (which hasn’t, in fact happened in the Bangladeshi case but arguably is one reason for lasting Indian Russophilia) consequent on American actions in the crisis; and - that he seemed to ignore the possibility that the Bengalis might win, and instead doubled down until it really was obvious. Now, maybe Kissinger overall was still an excellent strategist (although I’d disagree.) But even if he was, Kissinger still had extremely strong preconceptions, which weren’t always obvious to those with whom he interacted. And those preconceptions were quite hard to change. So even if Kissinger was in some ideal sense more rational than others through his strategic understanding, for the purposes of actually interacting with other people, he wasn’t: you’d have to guess what his preconceptions were, and you’d have very great trouble changing them to align with his other objectives. |