Sarah Paine

If you look at after the United States having trouble negotiating all this so that whatever you do in the short term doesn't wreck you in the long term, but in order to get to the long term, of course, you've got to go through the short term.

So after the U2 crash,

in Russia or gets shot down and the Pakistanis are having a heart attack about that, that's when the Pakistanis look to cultivating more better relations with China because the U.S.

relationship is just too potentially costly and the Americans cut off the military aid.

And then...

When the Pakistanis are being very nice about delivering the mail for Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to line up invitations in Beijing, the United States is ignoring a humanitarian nightmare because all of this...

That coincides with the 1971 Bangladeshi War for Independence.

So let me explain what that is to you.

So Pakistan was holding presidential elections.

The dominant ethnic group in Pakistan are Punjabis.

Sometimes the Sindhis, like the Bhutto family, I think they're Sindhi, but anyway, generally speaking, particularly the army, the Punjabis dominate.

Bengalis live in Bangladesh, they won the election.

And the Punjabis are furious, so they send the army to start butchering people in East Pakistan to overturn the election.

So there are refugees pouring into India.

So this is the backdrop of what is going on there.

And for anyone who wasn't in the know, the United States is saying nothing about this.

There's this massive humanitarian crisis and the United States has got nothing to say.

The United States has something to say about everything.

but it had to do with this is the moment that Nixon is trying to get himself invited to Beijing so that he can talk to Mao about cooperating with the Chinese to overextend the Soviets in the Cold War, which is ultimately what we do, and it's very important to win the Cold War, and this is integral to this.

But everyone else is looking and going, what on earth is going on?