WASHINGTON—For American officials, the war between India and Pakistan has underscored a sad fact about today's world: The big powers, in their effort to avoid a nuclear confrontation, seem unable to prevent minor powers from engaging in tragic, bloody and wasteful conventional conflicts.

Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union nor Communist China wanted the Indo‐Pakistani war, the third on the subcontinent in 24 years.

If the big powers had been united, a war might have been averted, because then neither India nor Pakistan could have counted on needed military help or political backing in the United Nations Security Council. But diplomacy these days is based largely on the fact that while the United States, the Soviet Union and China may share a desire to avoid nuclear holocaust, their rival political and strategic interests make unity very hard to achieve.

The Soviet Union's overriding strategic interest on the subcontinent has been to maintain close relations with India, the most populous country in the world after China, both to protect Russia's southern flank and to maintain a degree of pressure on Peking. China, to offset the Soviet influence in India, has built up good relations with Pakistan and supplied her with sizable amounts of arms. The United States, which has sought through the years to win favor in both India and Pakistan, has given military and economic aid to both.

Thus, when the crisis began to rise last spring, the big powers played their expected roles. The Russians backed the Indians with a treaty of friendship and condemned the Pakistan repression. The Chinese backed West Pakistan and disregarded their ideological fondness for “national liberation” movements like Bangla Desh. The United States gave humanitarian aid to both India and Pakistan and avoided taking sides.

When skirmishing broke out last month on the East Pakistan border, the United States was trying to get Pakistan to make political concessions to the Bangla Desh movement. According to the White House last week, President Nixon believed that the United States was close to success and that an accord might have been reached if the Indians had maintained the peace.

The Administration did not provide conclusive evidence of this, and inevitably there was some skepticism. At any rate, the President was so irritated by the Indian invasion of East Pakistan that he ordered the State Department to pin the blame on India publicly for the war, and George Bush, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, to call on the Security Council to order a cease‐fire and withdrawal.

The Russians, committed to the Indian side, vetoed the proposal. The Chinese, although wanting stronger anti‐Indian language, voted with the United States for it—and the Security Council proceedings were enlivened last week by an exchange of ideological invective between the veteran Soviet envoy, Yakov A. Malik, and Huang Hua of China. The Chinese delegate — pointedly referring to the Soviet delegate as “Mister” rather than “Comrade” — charged the Soviet “social‐imperialists” with backing India in order to take control of the subcontinent. Mr. Malik in turn called Mr. Huang a “jester for the imperialists.”

The United States Government, while on the sidelines in this slanging match, found itself under attack in Congress. Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and Frank Church said the United States had, no business being so pro‐Pakistan. It was this that led to the special White House briefing Tuesday at which the Administration's reasons for calling the Indian invasion unjustified were detailed under strict conditions of anonymity—although Senator Barry Goldwater, with apparent unconcern for such rules, identified the briefing official three days later as none other than Henry A. Kissinger.

There was also a linguistic adjustment. Mr. Bush and some other officials had spoken informally of Indian “aggression”; this led to a furor in India and an appeal from Ambassador Kenneth Keating in New Delhi to soften the language. By the end of the week the State Department had complied. “The word ‘aggression’ has not been authorized for official use,” said spokesman Robert J. McCloskey.

On Tuesday night, the United States led the fight for a cease‐fire resolution into the General Assembly, where the world body by an overwhelming vote rebuked the Indians.

In olden times, before nuclear weapons, a war such as this might have been prevented — even without big ‐ power accord — if China had pledged to send troops to Pakistan's defense, thereby threatening India with a war on her borders. But with the Soviet Union possessing a nuclear arsenal of devastating proportions, China clearly could not risk a clash with India.

The United States could have given Pakistan its protection, but no one in this Government wanted to risk nuclear confrontation with the Russians either. So the way was clear for India to invade Pakistan, with the big powers concerned but unable to stop the war.