Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between
President Nixon and His Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)/1/
/1/ Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers,
Box 367, Telephone Conversations, Chronological File. No classification
marking. A note on the transcript indicates that the tape recording from which
the transcript was prepared was "brought in" on March 29.
P: Hello.
K: Mr. President.
P: Hi Henry. You sleep well?
K: Yes, very well. It's really a very restful place out here.
P: What's new today. Got anything on the wires
or anything of interest?
K: There's nothing of any great consequence Mr. President. Apparently Yahya has got control of
P: Good. There're sometimes the use of power is . . .
K: The use of power against seeming odds pays off. Cause all the experts
were saying that 30,000 people can't get control of 75 million. Well, this may
still turn out to be true but as of this moment it seems to be quiet.
P: Well maybe things have changed. But hell, when you look over the
history of nations 30,000 well-disciplined people can take 75 million any time.
Look what the Spanish did when they came in and took the Incas and all the rest.
Look what the British did when they took
K: That's right.
P: To name just a few.
K: Well in those cases the people were more or less neutral. In the Inca
case they expected a god to come from the West . . .
P: That sort of . . . yeah, put them out.
K: Which helped a bit.
P: That's right. But anyway I wish him well. I just . . . I mean it's
better not to have it come apart than to have to come apart.
K: That's right. The long-term impact of its coming about [apart]
. . . people now say that the fellow Mujib in the
East is really quite moderate and for a Bengali that's right. But that's an
extremely unstable situation there and the radical groups are likely to gain
increasing strength.
P: This will be only one blip in the battle and then it will go on and on
and on and it's like everything in the period we live in isn't it since World
War II.
K: That's right, that's right.
P: Where revolution in itself, independence is a virtue which of course
it never was. That wasn't true at the time of the French revolution either and
it isn't any more true today. The real question is
whether anybody can run the god-damn place.
K: That's right and of course the Bengalis have been extremely difficult
to govern throughout their history.
P: The Indians can't govern them either.
K: No, well actually the Indians who one normally would expect to favor a
breakup of
P: Interesting.
K: And that, I think, is a good chance.
[Omitted here is discussion of issues unrelated to