Includes Index and Bibliography

When we now know (and have known for a time) that the United States had been put in the highly unenviable position of deciding between its longterm ally of Pakistan (the Islamabad government) and brutal violence mass murder (sometimes termed flat-out genocide) in Bangladesh. Declassified documents (like Roedad Khan's compilation, "The American Papers") now tell us that Nixon and Kissinger was not as dumb or naive as Choudhury would like to think. They made a calculated decision to support Pakistan in its violent pursuit of national territory, one that was hardly unpopular in the major US media and in many nations (including China), and kept it in response to India's invasion in December of 1971. The idea that, thanks to US aid (which Choudhury correctly estimates, but fails to recognize didn't reach East Bengal, as local historians now point out), the United States was the best friend of Bengal, while simultaneously remaining true to its commitments to a stalwart partner in the region, Pakistan, is just pretty ridiculous. What happened to this naivety when he warned potential Bengal readers of Soviet commitment only being part of their reflection of their "traditional pursuit of hegemony"? As though the United States is never interested in the pursuit of power, only humanitarian causes?
After reading that, it is very hard to take the rest of the book seriously EXCEPT as an insight into the political experts that the State Department, and perhaps even the likes of Nixon and Kissinger, relied upon which brought them to the tragedy of 1971, and their own justification for their decisions.
On the other hand, his theories concerning Soviet-Indo relations are actually fairly convincing, at least to me (albeit one-sided, again, a reflection of the knowledge available to him in the closed atmosphere of the Cold War). Someone more familiar might be able to punch them full of holes. In any case, they're imperfect, but at least not as disturbing as his equation of Nixon and Kissinger's strict "hands off" orders during the massacres in Dhaka and elsewhere with a "very humanitarian objective". He pulls no punches with the (often cynical) Asian response to the WP invasion of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s, why is he portraying the Nixon government as having nothing to do but weigh benevolent humanitarianism against their loyalty to Yahya Khan?
Don't treat this as an (accurate) history. Treat it, highly skeptically, as a very political personal account from one "expert", and you can get a lot out of it. Really, it's terribly unfortunate that this is presented as a historical treatise instead of a personal account (given his reference to his small role, all the more!), which might excuse his disturbing claims, at least a little.