The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY FEBRUARY 2015 7 y new year’s recommenda- tion to you is e Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide , by Princeton professor Gary Bass. It tells the story of Archer Blood, a Foreign Service o cer who as consul general in Dhaka in 1971 supported his subordi- nates’ dissent cable, knowing that doing so would derail his career, which it did. Spoiler alert: Blood wins in the end, at least in my reading. e genocide described in the book is the Pakistani military’s systematic target- ing of the Bengali Hindu minority in East Pakistan in the spring of 1971, during the events that led to the creation of an inde- pendent Bangladesh. e military went into villages, rounded up the Hindus, and shot them en masse. About 300,000 Bengalis in total were murdered. e vast majority were Hindus. e book illuminates U.S. relations in South Asia during the Cold War. Kissinger passed messages to China and arranged Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing through Pakistan’s military dictator General Yahya Khan, even as the massacres were taking place in East Pakistan. is secret Pakistan channel, India’s leadership of the non-aligned movement, Nixon’s near pathological dislike of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi—all come out in the salty Nixon-Kissinger dialogue of the White House tapes. e result was U.S. silence about the aforemen- tioned genocide, committed with U.S.- supplied arms. e dissent cable, drafted by young political o cer Scott Butcher during the round-ups and shootings, calls our policy “morally bankrupt” and urges the U.S. government to use its considerable in u- ence with the Pakistani government to stop the genocide. Consul General Blood could have merely authorized the cable to be sent. Instead, he added his endorse- ment to the cable: “I support the right of the above-named o cers to voice their dissent … I also subscribe to these views.” He added pragmatically that the Bengali nationalists were pro-American and likely to prevail and establish an independent Bangladesh, so “one-sided support of the likely loser” was foolish. He didn’t know about the Pakistan channel to China. I am neither an expert on South Asia nor in a position to judge the policy nar- rative of this book, which assumes that the U.S. could indeed have been e ective in slowing down the massacres. I just don’t know. But I enjoyed the book for another reason—its contrast between the choices of FSO protagonist Archer Blood and NSC antagonist Henry Kissinger. Both men were 48 years old in 1971. Archer Blood was a rising political o cer with 23 years in the Foreign Service. Recently promoted into the Senior Foreign Service, he was pleased to get Dhaka, where he had served earlier, as his rst command position. When the massacres started, his team responded with a steady stream of detailed spot reports, leading over a period of two weeks to increasing advocacy as the outlines of genocide became clear. “ e silence fromWashington was deafening,” Blood recalled later in an oral history interview. e cable provoked Kissinger to call Blood “this maniac in Dhaka” and have him recalled. Henry Kissinger’s manage- ment style as it emerges from the White House tapes is euphemistically known as “managing up.” He attered Nixon and supported Nixon’s worst instincts, while suppressing policy options such as those presented by Blood. Kissinger’s NSC team appeared quiescent on the matter of Blood’s dissent. “One did not want to be perceived as being too much on Blood’s side,” said one. In my reading, the result is an indel- ible stain on Kissinger’s reputation for leading a groupthink policy process that worked brilliantly in some cases but failed in others. Bass’s book makes the case for East Pakistan as one of the failures. And Archer Blood? He never got a chief of mission job, with another six years of Kissinger in power after Dhaka. His moral courage at the moment of truth inspired others, and his reputation con- tinues to shine bright with the publica- tion of the Bass book. He also won AFSA’s Christian Herter Award for constructive dissent by a senior o cer. Be well, stay safe and keep in touch, Bob Silverman@afsa.org n PRESIDENT’S VIEWS M Robert J. Silverman is the president of the American Foreign Service Association. The Blood Telegram BY ROBERT J . S I LVERMAN