In 1971, the United States threatened India with the use of military force as West and East Pakistan disintegrated into Pakistan and Bangladesh. India, caught between the two combatants, swamped with refugees, and with a sizable Bengali minority, supported the breakaway Bangladesh against the militarily superior Pakistan. The administration of President Richard Nixon viewed the crisis in terms of global geopolitics: Pakistan, a “friend” of the United States, was being “screwed [by] a friend of Russia's.”Footnote 1 The Nixon administration eventually sent the USS Enterprise carrier battle group to the Bay of Bengal in an effort to deter India from what Nixon and national security advisor Henry Kissinger believed was its ultimate goal: the destruction of Pakistan.
Although the United States and India never used military force, the threat was present—making the confrontation a militarized interstate dispute.Footnote 2 The events provide a rare opportunity to explore the mechanisms of security between democracies in the context of the possible use of force. At the empirical heart of this article is an analytical puzzle. The data demonstrates that Nixon and Kissinger clearly saw India as a geopolitical threat—to the point that they sent the Enterprise. Yet, despite this assessment they sent the carrier battle group completely unannounced. When questioned about the carrier's movement, the administration presented a fabricated mission rationale: the evacuation of U.S. citizens. This article leverages this puzzle to test a mechanism-based theory of the democratic peace. In doing so, I propose conditions under which securitization will—and will not—work. In democracies, securitization fails when the object is also generally regarded as a democracy. The article also illuminates processes of security in democracies as part of an effort to understand the relationship between social identity, political structure, and democratic security.
The 1971 case is also attractive because “mainstream” structural international relations (IR) theories are unable to provide a compelling explanation for U.S. behavior. Structural realist balance-of-power predictions are indeterminate.Footnote 3 It is not clear that the secession of overwhelmingly poor East Pakistan would meaningfully change the regional or global balance of power. Even assuming that secession did change the balance of power, structural realism does not explain the secretive, milquetoast U.S. response where a more robust response would be required. Shifting to balance of threat does not resolve the problem of underdetermination.Footnote 4 Reframing the balancing/bandwagoning impetus from power to threat does not help us understand why India might be construed as a threat, much less why the United States would choose to oppose India rather than acquiesce to India's actions as a means of gaining influence over Indian foreign policymaking. Admittedly, India had recently signed a friendship treaty with the Soviets, but this on its own does not mandate a balancing response. Under neorealism, alliances enjoy no permanence in the anarchic system, so the alliance with Pakistan for its own sake cannot be explanatory.
Variants of structural liberalism (neoliberalism) do not fare better. Emphasizing economic interdependence and international institutions as moderators of conflict, neoliberalism has little to say on patterns of behavior in the absence of these factors.Footnote 5 In 1971, India and the United States shared no appreciable institutional ties outside the United Nations and negligible economic interdependence.Footnote 6
This article takes advantage of structuralist approaches' failure to explain the 1971 case to present a mechanism-based theory of the democratic peace, integrating the Copenhagen School's securitization theory with theorizing regarding public democratic identity dynamics.Footnote 7 The argument is that we cannot understand the underlying mechanisms of the democratic peace without examining the domestic security politics of democracies and the ideational factors that shape them.
Securitization, Identity, and the Democratic Peace
The central problem with the study of the democratic peace lies in underdevelopment of the causal mechanisms that generate the phenomenon. While the majority of large-N statistical studies examining the democratic peace support it,Footnote 8 the emphasis on large-N studies has produced a significant lacuna when it comes to understanding the mechanisms of the democratic peace and the dynamics of democratic security.Footnote 9 This is not to say that mechanisms are completely absent from the literature. Constructivist, psychological, and rationalist approaches have produced plausible mechanism-based explanations. The constructivist literature focuses on the monadic construction of state-level shared norms and identity or on the influence of democratic identity on the individual decision maker.Footnote 10 While these are valuable areas of investigation, they neglect the role of domestic political structure in the norms and identity dynamic; the importance of public social and corporate identity; and the role of identity and norms in the dyadic context of interstate relations. Constructivists argue that leaders construct threats based on their identity-informed interests. The argument should be extended to the public in democracies because their construction of threat is an important factor in democratic security policy.Footnote 11
Scholars in the rationalist tradition focus on the behavioral implications of political structures in terms of audience costs (credible commitments),Footnote 12 transparency (enhanced signaling),Footnote 13 and the political effects of winning coalition size (distribution of war benefits).Footnote 14 Psychological approaches focus on the role of perception in political leaders—significantly overlapping with individual-centric constructivist approaches—or on operational codes shaped by democratic background.Footnote 15 The rationalist and psychological explanations share the constructivist focus on leaders. The mechanism of the democratic peace lies in the cognitions of democratic leaders or the anthropomorphized state. Rationalist explanations ostensibly point to domestic politics, but in all cases the proposed mechanism is never directly investigated. Further, the politics of security are exogenized by the assumption that the public universally and consistently accepts the security arguments of political leaders. Finally, most are monadic explanations of a dyadic phenomenon.Footnote 16
Securitization Theory and Social Identity
This article proposes a theoretical approach targeted at addressing these gaps, fusing securitization theory with social identity to produce a model linking domestic political structure and identity with international security behavior. The term securitization refers to the sociopolitical construction of security.Footnote 17 Under securitization theory, security is the product of a political speech act that recreates an issue or situation as one of security. Crucially, the act of securitizing an issue involves both a securitizing actor—who makes the claim that a particular object of value (referent object) is facing an existential threat requiring the suspension of normal politics—and an audience, which must agree both that the referent object is a thing of value and that it is (existentially) threatened in the way that the securitizing agent claims. The goal of the securitization move is to shift the issue from the arena of normal politics into the realm of security politics—characterized by urgency and exceptional measures, including power centralization and marginalized debate. The Copenhagen School posits three facilitating conditions that shape the likelihood of successful securitization.Footnote 18 The first focuses on whether the speech act follows the grammar of security (existential threat, point of no return, possible solution). The second highlights the social capital or authority of the securitizing actor. The third identifies the role of external objects that are generally held to be threatening (for example, tanks).
The 2003 invasion of Iraq provides a useful example. President George W. Bush argued that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could be used directly against Americans or given to terrorists who would deploy them against Americans. The securitizing actor was Bush and the referent object was the physical safety of Americans. The audience, the U.S. public, agreed with the assessment and accepted the movement of the issue out of normal politics. The facilitating conditions were also present. The grammar of the securitization move was correct (emergency action before Iraq reconstitutes weapons program), the president as securitizing actor had the requisite social capital, and there were external objects (WMD, terrorists) held to be threatening. Implicit in this example is the idea that securitization is a process rather than a singular event.Footnote 19 Additionally, we cannot understand securitization without accepting that it is a socially and politically embedded process of argumentation.Footnote 20
While securitization theory gives us powerful tools for analyzing the security process, it is not a complete theory of security. In particular, securitization theory only begins to address factors that facilitate or inhibit securitization. Incorporating findings from social psychology, specifically the social identity approach (SIA),Footnote 21 has the potential to produce a more comprehensive framework. Initially developed by Tajfel and Turner,Footnote 22 SIA focuses on how identity derived from group membership shapes the social behavior of individuals toward fellow members of the ingroup as well as toward members of outgroups.Footnote 23 Originally, the approach focused on the role that ingroup-outgroup dynamics play in driving social conflict, and the most influential use of the approach in IR has been along similar lines.Footnote 24 Over time, as scholarship has expanded to explore the rationale and ramifications of group membership, SIA has become a primary theoretical vehicle for understanding social cognition.Footnote 25
There are three commonly accepted elements that drive group social behavior: self-categorization, ingroup affect, and ingroup ties.Footnote 26 Self-categorization refers to the process by which individuals partition the world into ingroups and outgroups.Footnote 27 Cognitively, these groups are represented by context-specific prototypes. Once activated, these prototypes define the group, prescribing the attitudes, norms, feelings, and behaviors of ingroup and intergroup relations: “Social categorization of the self … actually transform[s] self-conception and assimilate[s] all aspects of one's attitudes, feelings, and behaviors to the ingroup prototype; it changes what people think, feel, and do.”Footnote 28 Hogg and others suggest that self-categorization also reduces social and behavioral uncertainty.Footnote 29
Ingroup affect and ingroup ties provide the glue that holds groups together. Ingroup affect refers to the emotional attachment group members have to each other. Ingroup ties refer to the utility that individuals derive from group membership (for example, access to resources). The fuel for ingroup-outgroup classification is positive distinctiveness.Footnote 30 Groups offer individuals both a source of identity (thus locating the self in society) and self-esteem. The desire for personal self-esteem requires the ingroup to excel over alternative groups, which drives conflict as subordinate groups reject the status quo and seek a more positive self-image.Footnote 31 Pursuit of a positive self-image brings the subordinate group into conflict with the dominant group, which maintains positive self-image through its dominant position. This dynamic led Mercer to conclude that SIA supports structural realist predictions about the inevitability of conflict in the international system.Footnote 32
A Mechanism-Based Theory of the Democratic Peace
Building on SIA, I argue that stable democracies require the presence of a democratic social identity shared across the public. This is a group identity, specifying the nature of sociopolitical reality within democracy. The norms that inform democratic identity include nonviolent conflict resolution, rule of law, right of political participation, compromise, and transparency.Footnote 33 For such an identity to function, there has to be flexibility in the other delimiters of identity. Differences in religion, cultural practices, economic perspective, gender, and race have to be tolerated if a democracy is to be successful. The criteria for recognition and respect in a democracy must be fairly open.Footnote 34 Furthermore, a democracy can operate only if the population willingly buys into the program. Thus, if a state is to be democratic, then democratic identity must be a significant factor in the imagined community that binds the society under the state together.Footnote 35 Democratic governance fundamentally rests on the democratic identity of its citizenry.
In the securitization process, democratic identity acts on the claim of existential threat. Shared democratic identity defines the sociopolitical boundaries of interaction, making it very difficult to claim another democratic state poses an existential threat. The sociopolitical reality created by democratic categorization and group membership makes the violent resolution of conflicts of interest unacceptable and claims that other ingroup members would resort to force unconvincing. Conversely, categorization of the external state as a nondemocracy empowers securitization by making the existential threat claim plausible.
These dynamics play out in discourses over foreign policy. Policies involving negotiation and reconciliation—democratic political behavior—are justified by appealing to democratic norms and identity. Leaders emphasize that the external state warrants these approaches as a trustworthy member of the democratic community, that these behaviors are expected in return, and that the situation can be approached without concerns over violence. Policies involving aggression and violence—nondemocratic political behavior—are justified by demonstrating that the target state is beyond reason or trust, and that their behavior could result in violence against the home state (an existential threat). Political leaders achieve this aim by emphasizing the undemocratic identity and unwillingness to reliably operate by democratic norms of the other. The securitized state poses an existential threat because it is dissimilar from the democratic self, defined in part by the exclusion of violence from conflict resolution amongst the ingroup. In the event of disputed securitization, political actors are expected to contest the categorization of the external state in an effort to garner audience support.Footnote 36
Democratic identity occupies a privileged position in threat construction in part because it provides the political sphere's behavioral expectations, including the resolution of conflicts of interest, in a way that other identities in the political context do not. Since the democratic peace highlights the absence of war—and war is a political actFootnote 37—any effort to understand security relations between democracies must account for factors like political identity that shape domestic politics. This does not mean democratic identity is all-powerful. Other identities may come into play in the securitization move. The argument here is that democratic identity plays a particularly central and important role in democratic security construction. Democratic identity does not dictate that we must like our fellow democrats,Footnote 38 or that democracies should make war against nondemocracies. In the case of shared democracy, however, it does make the existential threat element of the securitization move extremely difficult.
The securitization dynamic is not unique to democracies. What is unique is the primary audience. In a democracy, the public plays a critical role in major foreign policy decisions like war. It is inherent to the nature of democratic governance: leaders are accountable to the public for their policy decisions. Consequently, it is to the dominant (democratic) identity of the public and the attendant set of norms that leaders in democracies must appeal to securitize an external state. In democracies, we would expect contestation over securitization moves to occur within the elite, but the primary audience (and adjudicator) of this contestation is the public. The role of the public as securitization audience is one of the critically defining elements of democracy. Leaders in autocracies face a different audience: the policymaking elite. Political structure, identity, and norms are far more personalistic, indicated by small selectorates and hierarchical political structures.Footnote 39 The governing identity(s) and the interests of the state are grounded in the particulars of the ruling group.
Applying securitization to the democratic peace creates an analytical avenue for studying the role of norms and identity in the formation of security policy in democratic states. It positions the locus of action at the domestic level, where decisions of war and peace are made. SIA provides a theoretical and empirical basis for the role of identity in securitization. The social group plays a critical role in establishing the parameters of social reality. In order to understand international conflict, we must account for social groups. In this context, the social identity approach focuses on the development of the self and the other through self-categorization, a process that establishes the boundaries of social behavior and perception.
Combining securitization with SIA gives us a structured way for looking at the security process, focusing on the communicative action of leaders and their audiences. Conflict should be preceded by securitization speech acts that seek to establish the ingroup-outgroup categorization as part of an effort to claim an existential threat to a referent object. Opponents of the securitization should challenge the categorization as one possible political approach, thus making identity in the securitization move a site of political contestation. These same forces would be expected to preempt or weaken securitization moves against fellow democracies by democratic leaders conscious of the political cost of such a move. This approach also ties norms and structure together in explanation. To securitize successfully, leaders must use the language of security; they must appeal to certain norms and identities to communicate the idea of a threat and that the object threatened is valuable. The nature of the audience (general public, small group of oligarchs, military officers) as well as the norms and identity language the audience responds to are linked to the political structure. Securitizers in autocracies face a very different audience, requiring a very different language of securitization than those in democracies. I expect that political leaders use the language of democratic identity and norms to signal possible threats or the lack thereof to their securitizing audience. Moreover, the justifications for securitization acts in democracies are bound to include identity-related arguments, since questions of war and peace are existential issues in democracies.Footnote 40
Finally, it is worth addressing arguments by Risse and Williams, which bear similarities to my approach. Risse argues that the democratic peace is the result of intersubjective perception arising out of international interactions.Footnote 41 My approach focuses on domestic social identity arising out of the domestic political structures and norms and how this identity interacts with the international security context through the securitization process. Hence, it differs from Risse by disaggregating the state as an entity as well as alternatively sourcing democratic identity and the mechanism of security. Williams approaches the democratic peace from the standpoint of recognition: democracies recognize each other through “disciplined subjectivity,” a shared commitment to self-restraint.Footnote 42 This commitment, along with the role of history in building a liberal community through shared accomplishment (victory over the irrational, undisciplined self and others) creates the liberal identity. There are important differences between Williams's argument and that presented here. First, like Risse, Williams's liberal identity arises from shared international history. In my argument, identity instead derives from domestic sociopolitical dynamics. Second, Williams's argument suggests that liberal identity operates on either the anthropomorphized state or leaders of the state (Williams is ambiguous on this). My argument focuses on the role of democratic identity in conditioning the political process of securitization. Lastly, while it is not clear how the identity Williams outlines operates to produce the democratic peace outcome, this paper makes claims for a mechanism-based theory of the democratic peace.
Contributions
In combining securitization theory and SIA, this article makes significant contributions not only to our understanding of the mechanisms behind democratic security, but also securitization theory, the social identity approach, and international relations more generally. Because the proposed framework redirects analytical and theoretical focus to the political dynamics within the state, it stands apart from approaches that focus on the state in the system, individual policymakers, or abstracted rationalist models of domestic politics. The theory outlined here also seeks to account for the role of structure and norms in security outcomes to address the gaps that arise out of the literature's tendency to analytically disaggregate them. I also highlight the relationship between agents and the social and political structures they operate within, a dynamic largely missing from the literature. Linking securitization and social identity gives IR scholars a means to engage empirically with a subject (identity) that has presented significant challenges. Finally, the argument explicitly focuses on the mechanisms and processes of security within democracies, directly addressing the literature's most serious weakness.
With respect to securitization theory, this approach begins to thicken securitization's analytical power by highlighting a set of tools—identity—that political actors can use to make securitization claims and enhancing the reach of securitization theory on societal dynamics. It also contributes to understandings regarding ways in which social contexts can act as boundary conditions on securitization moves. In doing so it answers Stritzel's call for greater effort to understand the role and significance of broader social context for the securitization move.Footnote 43 While the Copenhagen School acknowledges that there are constraints on securitization moves, the approach here adds greater specificity. It also applies securitization theory in an empirical context and in the process develops a methodology for the use of securitization theory.
The framework presents a possible avenue for incorporating the social identity approach into IR and aids in establishing external validity. While SIA has been rigorously tested in experiments, its validity beyond controlled settings remains an open question.Footnote 44 Since social identity does not speak directly to international relations, applying the approach's theoretical toolbox faces a number of questions, notably at what level of analysis should it apply and how it applies outside the experimental setting, particularly in the context of dynamic, complicated, and chaotic social situations like those that characterize IR.
Methods and Case Selection
The Copenhagen School offers little methodological guidance. However, since securitization is a speech act, empirics should focus on the discourse of U.S. leaders regarding India. A careful look at the securitization comments made by U.S. decision makers should reveal patterns of identification and the relationship between this identification and U.S. policy. Using a content analysis approach similar to Chilton's analysis of Powell's “Rivers of Blood” speech,Footnote 45 I focus on the public security arguments of presidential and congressional political leaders. In the United States, the primary political figure in terms of foreign policy formation is the president. Consequently, presidential discourse is a central focus. Congressional discourses also play a role since Congress serves as a politically important forum for the contestation of securitization moves. Finally, securitization is successful only if the audience accepts the securitization argument. In democracies, this means assessing the position of the public on the securitization move. While acceptance is difficult to measure, public opinion polling offers important empirical insight.
With respect to case selection, the events of 1971 provide a particularly crucial test of my approach. India's relations with the United States were often uneasy during the Cold War. India's socialist economic model and nonalignment policy were at odds with the Manichean U.S. worldview. Just months before the crisis over Bangladesh, India signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union. If there were ever a time when shared democratic identity between democracies would be weak, it would be in U.S-India relations in 1971. Thus, if democratic identity plays an important role in the crisis, the approach in this article will have survived a difficult test. The case is also important because the primary mechanism in much of the democratic peace literature—the cognitive processes of foreign policymakers—was at best not operative and at worst reversed. Both Nixon and Kissinger prided themselves on a foreign policy predicated on balance-of-power calculations. In that context, we have no reason to expect democratic identity would operate in their cognitive and decision-making processes.Footnote 46 This presents significant problems for many of the democratic peace explanations. To the extent that the democratic peace is the product of multiple causes, the U.S.-India case gives us a critical opportunity to probe causal mechanisms with individual-level causes marginalized. Finally, the time frame of the case (1971) predates the rise of modern democratic peace research.Footnote 47 Accordingly, it provides an opportunity to examine real-world effects without the influence of the academic discourse.Footnote 48
Historical Overview of U.S.-India Case
The partition of British India in 1948 produced two states: secular, predominantly Hindu India and ethnically oriented, Muslim Pakistan. The geographic bulk of the Pakistani state—dominated by the Punjabi ethnic group—lay northwest of India. East of India lay more populous and mainly Bengali East Pakistan. In 1970, the first democratic election in Pakistan's history gave a parliamentary majority to the Awami League, an East Pakistan party that favored eastern autonomy. West Pakistani leaders, who controlled the outgoing government, were unhappy with the election outcome, resulting in a political impasse. March 1971 demonstrations in East Pakistan prompted military action. The Pakistani president, Yahya Khan, outlawed the Awami League and ordered the military to arrest Awami leaders and disarm Bengali military personnel. The crackdown was brutal, particularly for East Pakistan's Bengali Hindu population. The military action pushed millions of refugees into India. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi denounced the Pakistani action and began covert assistance to Bengali former members of the Pakistani army. Indian and East Pakistani political leaders also began a campaign to mobilize public opinion against Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Indian military developed plans for a military response in the winter.Footnote 49
By November 1971, the situation in East Pakistan reached a tipping point. Guerrilla fighters were attacking Pakistani military forces in East Pakistan, often with Indian artillery support. In the United States, Nixon had chosen to “tilt” U.S. policy in favor of Pakistan, and Kissinger was pushing the foreign policy apparatus hard to implement the tilt.Footnote 50 In early December, after attacking Indian airfields, Pakistan declared war on India. India moved against Pakistani forces in East Pakistan while mounting operations in the west to prevent the arrival of reinforcements. Within two weeks, the fighting in East Pakistan ended as 93,000 soldiers surrendered to Indian forces. While few in government agreed with them, Nixon and Kissinger grew concerned that India would continue the war effort and attack West Pakistan. Despite assurances from both the Indian government and the Soviets that such an attack was not in the offing, Nixon ordered the Enterprise battle group to the Bay of Bengal, a display of military force intended to deter India from expanding the conflict. Ironically, Indian political and military leaders did not get the deterrence message, instead assuming the carrier was there to evacuate West Pakistanis from East Pakistan.Footnote 51 The U.S. approach to the crisis angered Indian leaders and public. A member of parliament said India should not hesitate to “blast it out of the water,” should the Enterprise intervene in the conflict.Footnote 52 Reports of Indian reactions included representations of Nixon burned in effigy and daily protests outside the U.S. embassy. Gandhi wrote to Nixon, reprimanding him for paying only “lip service” to the need for a political settlement.Footnote 53 The events of 1971 set back U.S.-India relations for decades and strengthened the hand of those within India who wanted to move forward on nuclear testing.Footnote 54
Nixon and Kissinger: Private Security Construction
There is no ambiguity regarding Nixon and Kissinger's position on the events in East Pakistan. Both supported the military government of Yahya against the democratically elected Awami League and India. While other major powers condemned West Pakistan, Nixon and Kissinger tilted U.S. policy toward it.Footnote 55 Despite the fact that Yahya's government was brutally repressing East Pakistan, and that India struggled with millions of refugees, Nixon and Kissinger marked India as the principal threat:
Nixon: The Indians need—what they need really is a—
Kissinger: They're such bastards.
Nixon: A mass famine. But they aren't going to get that … But if they're not going to have a famine the last thing they need is another war. Let the goddamn Indians fight a war [unclear].
Kissinger: They are the most aggressive goddamn people around there.Footnote 56
Remarkably, the threat assessment Nixon and Kissinger made on May 26, 1971, came at a time when India and Pakistan were not engaged in direct combat and not long after India had been deluged by refugees. While India was helping train Bengali resistance fighters, assistance was limited.Footnote 57 By November of that year, the animosity toward Gandhi and the general perception of threat by Kissinger and Nixon hardened:
Nixon: This is just the point when she is a bitch.
Kissinger: Well, the Indians are bastards anyway. They are starting a war there. It's—to them East Pakistan is no longer the issue. Now, I found it very interesting how she carried on to you yesterday about West Pakistan … I mean, she will not be able to go home and say that the United States didn't give her a warm reception and therefore, in despair, she's got to go to war.Footnote 58 [emphasis added]
In the eyes of Nixon and Kissinger, India posed a two-fold threat. First, India indirectly threatened containment: Indian support for an independent Bangladesh would result in a state vulnerable to communist “infiltration.” Second, Nixon saw the ultimate Indian aim as the destruction of Pakistan, an ally to the United States and a component of containment policy.Footnote 59 In November, Kissinger warned Nixon that India had become a Soviet client:
Kissinger: I'd give her [Gandhi] five minutes of the Tito talk because it will go right back to the Russians as well as to the Vietnamese.
Nixon: Will it?
Kissinger: Oh, yeah. They have the closest diplomatic ties now with Russia. They leak everything right back to them.Footnote 60
Neither Nixon nor Kissinger had any qualms about Yahya's efforts to quash democratic reforms and abuse the citizenry in East Pakistan. On March 29, after the repression of East Pakistan had begun in earnest, Nixon and Kissinger showed no concern:
Kissinger: There's nothing of any great consequence Mr. President. Apparently Yahya has got control of East Pakistan.
Nixon: Good. There're sometimes the use of power is …
Kissinger: 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.
Nixon: 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 India … But anyway I wish him [Yahya] well.Footnote 61
The violation of human rights on a massive scale—described in a March 28 cable as “selective genocide”Footnote 62—and the complete disregard for democracy were irrelevant to Nixon and Kissinger. In fact, the nondemocratic aspects of Yahya's behavior seemed to be what impressed them the most. As the evidence of military atrocities mounted in East Pakistan, Nixon and Kissinger remained unmoved. In a Senior Review Group meeting, Kissinger commented at news of significant casualties at a university that, “they [the British] didn't dominate 400 million Indians all those years by being gentle.”Footnote 63 This logic typifies how Nixon and Kissinger viewed the world. Democracy never mattered for them in the formulation of foreign policy. Instead, the Cold War and realpolitik balance of power calculations dominated their worldviews.Footnote 64 It was this logic that drew the administration into a regional conflict, and it makes their restrained securitization efforts all the more puzzling. It also lends strength to the democratic peace explanation offered here.
By December, Kissinger became more explicit in linking India to the Soviets in his threat assessment: “What we may be witnessing is a situation wherein a country equipped and supported by the Soviets may be turning half of Pakistan into an impotent state and the other half into a vassal.”Footnote 65 At one point, Kissinger went so far as to call the crisis “our Rhineland” in a reference to Hitler's militarization of German Rhineland at the outset of World War II.Footnote 66 This kind of powerful imagery indicates how strongly Kissinger and Nixon came to see India as a threat.
By the time the war started in earnest in December 1971, Nixon and Kissinger had strongly constructed India as a threat. Kissinger actively disseminated his belief to other government officials that India was aggressing against Pakistan, and that the Soviet Union was pulling the geopolitical strings. Kissinger had also begun to use a heavily security-laden term with respect to the situation: rape. Before the war started, Kissinger was concerned that Pakistan would “get raped” if the crisis was brought before the UN.Footnote 67 Kissinger repeated the rape metaphor in a discussion with Secretary of the Treasury John Connally: “The thing that concerns the President and me is this; here we have Indian-Soviet collusion, raping a friend of ours … Thirdly, if the Soviets get away with this in the Subcontinent, we have seen the dress rehearsal for a Middle Eastern war.”Footnote 68 As for restraining India: “No matter what we do, we can't do as much for them [India] as the Soviets have already done on the thing that interests them which is to rape Pakistan.”Footnote 69
By the time India and Pakistan engaged in direct military confrontation, Kissinger and Nixon used the rape metaphor regularly to describe their fears for Pakistan.Footnote 70 The rape language conveys the impression that innocent, vulnerable Pakistan was being assaulted by the aggressive, endangering nexus of the Soviet Union and India. This posed a threat not only to Pakistan—in the logic of containment, the destruction of Pakistan would embolden the Soviets to strike at far more geopolitically and economically precious territory in the Middle East. On December 8, 1971, Nixon and Kissinger acted to move U.S. policy outside the realm of normal politics. In a phone conversation with Pakistan Ambassador to the United States N.A.M. Raza, Kissinger instructed Raza to invoke Pakistan's “mutual security treaty” with the United States.Footnote 71 In fact, there was no mutual security treaty, only the 1959 Agreement of Cooperation—which obligated the United States to take action only “as may be mutually agreed on” to defend Pakistan.Footnote 72 Kissinger would later argue with Secretary of State William Rogers over the matter as Rogers insisted that the agreement in no way committed the United States to militarily aid Pakistan.Footnote 73 Two days later, Nixon deployed the Enterprise.
The Administration's Securitization Move
Throughout the early months of the crisis, the Nixon administration largely kept quiet. In August 1971, despite strong constructions of India as a threat, Kissinger and Nixon did not securitize India publicly. During a news conference, Nixon's only comments on the East Pakistan crisis were to emphasize U.S. aid to India ($70 million) for dealing with the refugees generated by the conflict. No mention was made of Nixon's belief that India sought to dismantle Pakistan or that India posed a threat to U.S. interests.Footnote 74
By the end of September, Nixon and Kissinger were moving to securitize India while justifying their failure to securitize Pakistan. In a conversation with British diplomats, they presaged public arguments, explicitly pointing to India as the primary reason that the crisis had not been resolved. Kissinger claimed that India had “totally thwarted it [meeting between Bengali resistance and Yahya]. They made it impossible for these people to deal with us; they're forcing them to check everything with them, they are padding demands, which are totally incapable of fulfillment.”Footnote 75 At the same time, Nixon repeatedly defended Yahya, leader of a government responsible for thousands of deaths and millions of refugees as a “decent man.”Footnote 76
Despite Nixon's and Kissinger's growing effort to securitize India within the halls of government, to the American public, they maintained a façade of neutrality. In October, in a statement on aid to south Asia, Nixon once again focused on relief efforts rather than security concerns and specifically mentioned India as a primary recipient of emergency aid.Footnote 77 In greeting Prime Minister Gandhi during her November 1971 visit to the United States, Nixon immediately brought attention to India's democratic system:
Our distinguished guest here today has the unique distinction, through the parliamentary system of India, that more people have voted for her leadership than for any leader in the whole history of the world. Madam Prime Minister, we welcome you because you represent the world's largest free nation, the world's largest democracy. We welcome you also for another reason … India and the United States are bound together by a higher morality [than treaties], a more profound morality that does not need a legal document to make it live. I speak of the common devotion that the people of India and the people of the United States have to the cause of freedom, to the cause of representative government … to the cause of peace.Footnote 78
Nixon used the language of shared democracy to mask the pro-Pakistan position of the U.S. government. By appealing to Indian democracy, Nixon was communicating that claims that the United States had chosen (autocratic) Pakistan over India were false. The democracy rhetoric also served to mask Nixon's failure to address the ongoing and deepening crisis in East Pakistan and the massive burden imposed on India by the resulting refugee outflow. Nixon expected the rhetoric of democracy to resonate with his primary audience, the American public. This political strategy was double-edged: by publically highlighting India's democratic credentials, Nixon constrained his ability to act on his private construction of India as a threat.Footnote 79
The conflict's intensification in November and December made it increasingly difficult for the Nixon administration to mask its policy. The public agenda shifted from obscuring U.S. policy to a securitization move. Nixon and Kissinger, in their effort to securitize India, attempted to de-emphasize Indian democratic identity and reframe India as undemocratic. In a December public-relations strategy session, Nixon emphasized that India was defying the will of the United Nations (determined through a democratic process):
The general tone is that in view of India's refusal to accept the terms of the General Assembly resolution passed by the overwhelming majority of 104–10 calling for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of armed forces, the United States has now decided again to take this grave issue to the Security Council…. All right. Add one sentence. “If India defies,” put it this way, “If India should defy the overwhelming weight, defies, should continue to defy the overwhelming weight of world opinion as expressed by a blankety blank vote in the UN General Assembly.”Footnote 80
By focusing on India's refusal to heed world opinion and the will of the UN, established through a democratic voting process, Nixon was targeting the core pillar of American public support for India: shared democratic identity. Nixon also sought to reframe India's identity, casting it not as a democracy, but as part of a communist system posing an existential threat to the United States:
Nixon: Now, “Pakistan has accepted. India has refused. India, supported the Soviet Union”
…
Nixon: “India, supported by the Soviet Union, has refused”—now we are going.
Kissinger: Supported only by the Soviet Union.
Nixon: Supported only by the Soviet Union. Well, some other Communist countries.
Kissinger: Supported by the Soviet Union.
Nixon: Supported by the Soviet Union. Can we say other Communist countries? Use the word Communist for a change. And, well that throws in the Chinese and the Romanians. All right, supported by, at any rate, supported by the Soviet Union.Footnote 81
By linking India with the Soviet Union, Nixon sought to remove India from the community of democracies.
Despite these indications of a public securitization move, through early December the Nixon administration policy remained remarkably low-key. For example, it moved quickly to cut off all military export licenses to India.Footnote 82 This stands in stark contrast to the hesitant handling of military export licenses to Pakistan, a point made by the Indian ambassador to the United States.Footnote 83 Charles Bray, the State Department spokesperson at the time, indicated that the suspension was due to “continuing Indian incursions into Pakistan,” implying that India, not Pakistan, bore responsibility for the crisis. Unidentified U.S. officials began to suggest that India was untrustworthy—for example, claiming it was “hard to believe” Indian reports of Pakistani air strikes against Indian airfields.Footnote 84
The administration's rhetoric attempting to securitize India became more explicit on December 4, when a State Department official blamed India for the crisis:
India bears the major responsibility for the broader hostilities [between Pakistan and India]. We believe that since the beginning of the crisis Indian policy, in a systematic way, has led to the perpetuation of the crisis, a deepening of the crisis, and that India bears the major responsibility for the broader hostilities that have ensued.Footnote 85 [emphasis added]
Secretary of State Rogers made the final connections for the American public, claiming that the crisis “posed a threat to international peace and security.” The public argument was set: India posed a threat to the United States because the crisis it had perpetuated and deepened posed a threat to international security. The administration also highlighted uncooperative and undemocratic Indian behavior. The United States had not received even “minimal” cooperation from India. India had also refused the good offices of the UN Secretary General and “refused U.S. requests to urge the guerrillas not to attack United Nations ships and trucks carrying relief supplies.”Footnote 86
Less than a week after the Nixon administration initially announced the cutoff of military aid to India, the New York Times reported the elimination of economic aid, a move that Nixon had refused to make against Pakistan. In announcing the cut, a dramatic act against a country as poor as India, the State Department now labeled India as the “main aggressor.”Footnote 87 Now India was not just to blame for perpetuating and deepening the crisis; it became an active threat.
Starting on December 14, in line with the planning sessions between Nixon and Kissinger, the administration stepped up efforts to recast India's identity as a “client” to the communist USSR. Unnamed state department officials “expressed puzzlement” at the Soviets' “willingness to forsake possible dramatic improvements in relations with the United States,” by continuing to back India,Footnote 88 implying that the Soviet Union had deep roots sunk into India. Otherwise, the Soviets would be willing to reduce tensions with the United States. Moreover, the improvement in relations was described as “dramatic”; by inference, the Soviet stake in India must be truly significant to forego such a boon. A day later, the New York Times reported that the Nixon administration was considering canceling a summit with Soviet leaders if they did not pressure India to cease hostilities, further linking India and the Soviet Union.Footnote 89 In a postbellum attempt to justify Nixon's policy, well-known syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop—citing Kissinger—again attempted to restructure Indian identity in terms of its association with the Soviet Union and to highlight the threat posed by India. According to Alsop, Kissinger indicated that there was “a strong possibility” that India would become a “vast new Soviet strategic base area.”Footnote 90
The shift in Nixon's reference to Indian democracy is remarkable. While Nixon and Kissinger maintained a façade of neutrality, they used shared democracy as a veil to obscure U.S. policy. When the administration made a concerned effort to securitize India, India's democratic qualities disappeared.
Congressional Counternarratives
During the crisis, the Nixon administration confronted efforts to defuse its securitization move, particularly in Congress. These narratives focused strongly on the shared democracy of the United States and India. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) argued that Pakistan, with the “military regime's brutal repression of democracy,” and “jail[ing] of a political leader whose only crime was the winning of a free election,” posed the real threat. Kennedy also desecuritized India, arguing that the refugees generated by Yahya's policy threatened the “economic stability and well-being of the world's largest democracy.” Kennedy contrasted Nixon's efforts to open up China with his apparent willingness to “alienate one-sixth of mankind in India—a democratic nation with whom we have had years of productive relations.”Footnote 91 Senator Fred Harris (D-Okla.) excoriated Nixon's policy and argued that, while India could be difficult to deal with at times, it was still “the largest nation in the world following our notions of political freedom.”Footnote 92 Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) pointed out that not only had West Pakistan imposed massive suffering, but it had done so in response to elections. Church, citing India as the “only major democracy on the continent of Asia,” quoted one East Pakistani to exemplify his claim against Pakistan: “We voted for freedom; we were the majority in the whole country, East and West. We voted for freedom and we were killed.”Footnote 93 Representative Cornelius Gallagher (D-N.J.) explicitly cited Indian democracy in challenging Nixon administration policy:
And we must never forget that India is the largest country in the world with a democratic tradition. Prime Minister Gandhi's electoral victory gave her nation new hope and new faith in India's hard-won traditions of democracy…. For the sake of our own oft-expressed traditions, should we not be disposed to consider India's position with sympathy and understanding?Footnote 94
Gallagher's claim here is representative of the counter-narratives. Its desecuritization draws on the power of shared democratic identity, tapping into the very social structure Nixon sought to downplay.
Public Response
Direct evidence of public acceptance or rejection of the Nixon/Kissinger securitization argument is sparse. Part of the scarcity of data no doubt arises from the timeframe of the early 1970s, but other factors play a role as well. Nixon and Kissinger were reticent to discuss the matter in public despite good reasons to adopt a more public approach to the situation. Challenging a perceived Soviet proxy publicly would be in keeping with containment policy as well as the deterrent goal of the Enterprise deployment. Pakistan was a long-standing, if neglected, American ally and the primary conduit for negotiations with China. As indicated in some of Nixon and Kissinger's comments, the administration was keen to demonstrate to China that it would be a reliable partner against the Soviets—the raison d'être of the nascent relationship. In light of these good reasons for a high-profile response, Nixon and Kissinger's self-censorship and policy secrecy suggest that they felt strongly that they would be unable to successfully securitize India.
The administration's evasiveness had the effect of depressing public focus on the Bangladesh crisis. Polling on the matter was limited. The only public opinion survey on the crisis occurred after the war's conclusion. When questioned about which country engendered more sympathy, neither India nor Pakistan fared very well. Fourteen percent of the respondents felt sympathetic toward India while 23 percent felt sympathetic towards Pakistan. An overwhelming number of respondents (63 percent) indicated that they had no preference between the two countries.Footnote 95 Given the foreign policy context, these results are not surprising. The public simply did not engage deeply on the issue because they were not asked or forced to do so. A question on Nixon's handling of the crisis also indicates a high level of the public's disengagement. Nearly a quarter of the respondents (24 percent) were not sure of their opinion on Nixon's handling of the war. Similarly, roughly a quarter of respondents held a poor (23 percent), only fair (25 percent), or pretty good (23 percent) opinion of Nixon's efforts.Footnote 96 Since the poll gives no indication of whether the respondents thought Nixon had been too hard on India, the question only highlights that public engagement on the issue was minimal. More importantly, securitization did not take place.
Another poll, positing a hypothetical situation of a communist attack against India, also presents indirect but supportive evidence. A plurality of the respondents (48 percent) indicated they would send troops (8 percent) or material support (40 percent). A smaller number (38 percent) indicated they would refuse to get involved.Footnote 97 What is striking about this poll is not the “no involvement” rate; that would be expected to be sizable in light of the popularity problems the war in Vietnam suffered from during its final years. The poll was, in effect, asking Americans if they would be willing to venture money and/or manpower for a similar war. Given that context, the high willingness to get involved is noteworthy. Again, while there is no indication why a near majority of the respondents were willing to engage in another war while still fighting an unpopular one, shared democratic identity and the common security construction that attends it may have played a role.
Anecdotal evidence indicates that democratic identity was indeed operative within the public. For example, a July 6 letter to the editor of the New York Times highlighted the democracy-versus-authoritarianism aspect of the conflict:
By repression of the majority of the population, a mass slaughter of democratically elected leaders and a systematic decimation of the intellectuals with aid of a ruthless military machine, the Yahya regime in fact has established a historical precedent. Never before in any country of the world has a monstrosity of this magnitude been perpetrated, and never before has democracy been so blatantly violated.Footnote 98
In a letter from October 19, a writer expressed concerns that the United States continued to ship military supplies to Pakistan after the “systematic suppression of Pakistan's one democratic election.” After detailing the “cruelty, rape, murder, and massacre of children and civilians” by Pakistan and the challenges forced on India, the writer laments the fact that “India, Asia's most populous democracy” could not look to the United States for support, and was forced to turn instead to Russia. The writer's solution: “Initiating rapprochement with democratic India.”Footnote 99 A December 6 letter outlined India's moral right to intervene in East Pakistan, warning the Nixon administration that “the attitude of our Government could lead people the world over to the conclusion that it sides with any autocratic government that uses armed force against its own people.”Footnote 100 In another letter to the editor, dated December 8, the writer excoriated the Nixon administration for “comforting” Pakistan at the expense of India—”the largest democracy in the world.”Footnote 101 While this data is far from systematic, the repeated references to democracy in the context of critiquing the Nixon administration policy, combined with the congressional narratives, suggests Nixon and Kissinger's concerns over a public backlash were grounded in reality.
Explaining the Puzzle
How can we understand the Nixon administration's erratic security behavior? Behind closed doors, Nixon and Kissinger were unequivocal in their assessment of the threat posed by India to the United States and its interests, but in public the securitization move came late, and was weak when it arrived. The Nixon administration displayed an acute awareness of the difficulties facing any effort to convince the public of a security threat posed by India. In this case, it was Nixon and Kissinger's anticipation of—rather than the actual—public backlash to an attempt to securitize India that produced the foreign policy outcome.
Before the crisis, policymakers were aware that the public would not accept democracies as threats and would construct nondemocracies as threats. In 1969, after the imposition of martial law in Pakistan, Undersecretary of State Elliot Richardson told a top Pakistani official that experiences with authoritarian regimes in World War II had left the public with an “unfavorable image.” Richardson believed that, while U.S. policymakers understood military regimes to be constructive at times, communicating that sentiment to the public was “difficult.” Moreover, public and congressional opinion (for example, the Reuss Amendment limiting military sales to military dictators) could not be ignored.Footnote 102 Echoing these sentiments, Secretary of State Rogers told Yahya that while the administration was sympathetic, the imposition of martial law “presented problems for some in the U.S.”Footnote 103 Later that year during the Nixon visit to India, Kissinger also acknowledged “the strong feeling of many Americans for India,” linking this feeling with his opinion that “American liberals had over-sold Indian democracy.”Footnote 104 Nixon, in broaching the idea that Pakistan might serve as an intermediary between the United States and China, mentioned “a psychosis in this country [U.S.] about India.”Footnote 105 While Nixon did not explain why such a “psychosis” exists, it seems reasonable to conclude that India's democratic identity played a significant role.
These issues played out in the 1971 crisis. Nixon complained in November 1971 to the Pakistan foreign minister that public opinion was strongly in favor of India:
Let me say that the President [Yahya] is a good friend to me. He is a good friend to Kissinger … as the President knows, there's a huge public relations campaign here. Many of our friends in the other party, and including, I must say, some of the nuts in our own party—soft heads—have jumped on it, have completely bought the Indian line. And India has a very great propaganda line. And if you read our press, I mean, you get the whole impression that India's completely right.Footnote 106
Again, while Nixon does not indicate why he believes the public strongly favors India in the crisis, the fact that Republicans fell in with the consensus seems to indicate that public support was significant.
In conversation with Kissinger and Attorney General John Mitchell, Nixon highlighted the impact of democratic identity on threat construction:
You see this is where The New York Times and the rest are wrong, where they said that if aggression is engaged in by a democracy it's all right. But where it's engaged in by a dictatorship, it's wrong … then they say but India is a democratic country, and Pakistan is a totalitarian country, a dictatorship, and therefore India—we shouldn't be on the side of a dictatorship but on the side of the democratic country.Footnote 107
In discussions regarding moving an aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal, Kissinger expressed some concern regarding public backlash:
Kissinger: I would be reluctant—you know you should [unclear—consider?] both courses. From the Chinese angle I'd like to move the carrier. From the public opinion angle, what the press and television would do to us if an American carrier showed up there I—
Nixon: What, why—can't the carrier be there for the purpose of evacuation?
Kissinger: Yeah, but against whom are we going to use the planes…. Are we going to shoot our way in?
Nixon: So what do we move? Move a little helicopter ship in there? What good does that do? And why do it?
Kissinger: Well it's a token that something else will come afterward. Gets our presence established there.Footnote 108
Clearly, anticipation of public refusal to securitize India was strong enough to cause Kissinger to harbor concerns about the political backlash should the U.S. move to threaten India.
There are indications of opposition within the administration to Nixon and Kissinger's assessment of the crisis and their policy response. Columnist Jack Anderson, in discussing how he received internal government documents on administration policy during the crisis, highlighted the internal opposition:
During the India-Pakistan war, one of my sources told me we were bungling. Here was a conflict between a military dictatorship and the world's second [sic] largest democracy, and whose side did we—the largest [sic] democracy—come out on? The dictatorship.Footnote 109
The comment of Anderson's source suggests that the operative hypothesis of this article, that democratic identity influences threat perception and construction, which in turn limits the security options of leaders in democracies, has strong explanatory potential.
Conclusion
In 1971, Nixon and Kissinger clearly saw India as a threat to U.S. interests and the policy of containment. Yet, despite the perceived threat, they sought to hide a policy clearly favoring Pakistan. Only when events on the ground made it impossible to mask the “tilt” policy did the administration make a half-hearted securitization move that failed. In the end, Nixon dispatched the Enterprise battle group in silence, damaging Indo-American relations without achieving policy goals.
Nixon's and Kissinger's anticipation of public backlash arising from democratic identity was a brake on the ability of political leaders to claim that external democracies pose an existential threat. As long as leaders are convinced that they operate in a domestic environment characterized by joint democratic identity, they will be careful in constructing a fellow democracy as an existential security threat. The framework advanced in this article makes specific predictions about the nature of security discourse—actors seeking to make a securitization move against an external state should emphasize the state's lack of democracy or nondemocratic aspects, while those seeking to prevent securitization should emphasize shared democracy. The case bears out these predictions. Indeed, Nixon's and Kissinger's lamenting the public's affinity for other democracies, which limited their ability to pursue realpolitik policies, clearly supports the theoretical approach detailed in this article. While public engagement on the subject was limited, public democratic identity played a very strong role in determining security policy, thwarting securitization by shaping Nixon and Kissinger's expectations of their ability to succeed in a securitization move.
This article forwards an explicitly mechanisms-based approach to the democratic peace, thus addressing a significant weakness in the democratic peace research program. In doing so, it suggests that the democratic peace should be viewed as part of a broader exploration of security dynamics within democracies rather than an isolated phenomenon. The article also redirects analytical and theoretical focus to the political dynamics within the state. By linking securitization theory and the social identity approach, this article begins to thicken securitization's analytical power by highlighting a set of discourses—identity—that political actors use to make securitization claims. It also contributes to understandings regarding ways in which social contexts can act as boundary conditions on securitization moves. With respect to the social identity approach, the framework proposed here aids in establishing external validity.
These findings have implications for today. Contestations over the democratic qualities of external states have real ramifications for the foreign and security policy of democracies. The presence or absence of democracy plays an important role in shaping threat constructions. The 1971 case highlights the way democratic public identity—in the context of metastable identity constructions—can shift the universe of possible policy options as well as attendant political calculations of democratic political leaders. However, these influences are predicated on intersubjective constructions of the self and the other, which is where we may observe the headwaters of future streams of foreign and security policy. The framework outlined in this study also stresses the importance of the public in the security process, reinforcing the long-standing admonition to democratic publics to be educated and politically involved as well as the importance of a vigorous, independent press. The peace among democracies depends on it.
