To a Bangladeshi associated with the history of his country´s birth, the documents presented in the pages that follow evoke a strange feeling. They are like reading about the unfolding events in the future from some point in the past. These cables are all about facing the past and confronting the future. In many ways, the events of 1971 have ceased to be part of international memory, political or personal. There is no mention of 1971 when large-scale state-sponsored killing sprees are discussed, and Bangladesh provides better copy for disasters and microcredit. As far as the world is concerned, South Asia has been squeezed into matters relating to hostility between India and Pakistan because strategic interests intervene there.
From these declassified documents of Foggy Bottom (The American Papers: Secret and Confidential, India*Pakistan* Bangladesh, Documents 1965-1973, Compiled and Selected by Roedad Khan, OUP, Karachi, 1999), it is clear that the big reason why the US wanted Pakistan united was to keep the roaring Reds at bay, be they from Moscow, Peking or from the fabled hills of Naxalbari.
The telegrams are not about the war in Bangladesh or any other war. When they discuss the events of 1971 in Bangladesh, they are actually about another war —the global fight against communism. The events were not about preventing military intervention by US forces but the paranoia of possible US policy failure.And not in South Asia, but vis-avis the Soviets in South Asia. What these documents do is make the US look silly when they talk about human rights and democracy.
These cables are also about political globalisation, the platform on which the present-day chariots of economic globalisation roll on. The Cold War was about economic and political markets. Instead of emerging economies, they were emerging polities. The states didn´t matter but the enemy did.