Ships

"Kissinger now proposed three dangerous initiatives. The United States would illegally allow Iran and Jordan to send squadrons of U.S. aircraft to Pakistan, secretly ask China to mass its troops on the Indian border, and deploy a U.S. aircraft carrier group to the Bay of Bengal to threaten India. He urged Nixon to stun India with all three moves simultaneously. Kissinger knew that the American public would be shocked by this gunboat diplomacy. “I’m sure all hell will break loose here,” he said."

"Now the threat from the Enterprise drove Indians to a whole new level of wrath. Jaswant Singh, who would later become foreign minister, remembers the hollering of India’s newspapers as the carrier group steamed into the Bay of Bengal, becoming a lasting symbol of American hostility.... The Parliament went predictably berserk. Atal Bihari Vajpayee from the Jana Sangh joined a West Bengali legislator from the Communist Party (Marxist) in demanding that Gandhi’s government denounce the United States. Beyond Parliament, the perennial critic Jayaprakash Narayan was incandescent with rage at this attempt to “frighten India to submit to Nixon’s will.” If the Americans actually tried to establish a beachhead, he threatened “the most destructive war that history has yet witnessed.”"

"Sydney Schanberg, the New York Times reporter, was in Calcutta when he heard the news about the Enterprise. “I had a sinking feeling,” he says bitterly. “I’m an American, I’m standing in Calcutta, and my country is sailing up, and now I’m the enemy of my country? Because I’m living in India and thinking they’re on the right side? It was the worst feeling, to this day, one of the worst feelings in my life. You don’t want to hate your government. Somehow someone’s tipped the world upside down.”"