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Embedded ideologies: Nixon, Kissinger, and the South Asia crisis 1971
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Date
2025
Authors
Tanner, Elizabeth
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Publisher
University College Cork
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Abstract
This thesis examines how ideological precepts conditioned President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s decision-making process and produced a costly and unstable foreign policy during the 1971 India-Pakistan crisis and war. Based primarily on a close reading of archival sources in the 3,700-hour collection of Nixon tapes, and the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, this thesis provides an analytical narrative of how the language Nixon and Kissinger used to frame policy options drew on established structures of meaning. As this thesis demonstrates, Nixon and Kissinger reproduced a set of ideological convictions centred around nationalist revolution, racial hierarchy, credibility and hegemonic masculinity that led them to make a series of decision-making errors as they grappled with the complex regional and geopolitical dynamics of the crisis. When civil war erupted in Pakistan, an apathy toward political revolution shaped Nixon and Kissinger’s assumption that Pakistan was a stable bet as the gateway for their secret diplomacy with China. As millions of refugees crowded into neighbouring India, racial hierarchy legitimated their support for the Pakistan military government, distrust of India’s manoeuvres and dismissal of Bengali nationalist aspirations. With direct links to China established, Nixon and Kissinger believed that US credibility with China was at stake if they did not, one, maintain support for Pakistan, and two, counter a perceived threat of the Soviet Union enabling India to destroy Pakistan. During the India-Pakistan war, Nixon and Kissinger’s determination to ‘come off like men’ motivated them to resort to gunboat diplomacy, in order to maintain US prestige, in a conflict in which the US had no direct interest. This thesis refutes Kissinger’s own framing of 1971 as an exercise in cool-headed realpolitik and argues that ideological blinkers led to cumulative decision-making errors escalating the regional conflict into a superpower showdown.
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Keywords
History , America , Contemporary , International , Ideology , Gender , Credibility , Nixon , Kissinger , South Asia Crisis 1971 , East Pakistan , Bangladesh
Citation
Tanner, E. R. 2025. Embedded ideologies: Nixon, Kissinger, and the South Asia crisis 1971. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.