Once the war began, the best thing that could have
happened was a swift Indian victory in East Pakistan.
Therein lay the victory in East Pakistan. Therein lay
the best promise of limiting further suffering and
carnage preventing spread of the war in the West, and
creating a political authority in the East to express
Bengali national aspirations. That "best" has now come
to be. Pakistan has surrendered in the East. Political
and diplomatic work can proceed at full steam to ensure
the safe repatriation of both the surrendering Pakistani
soldiers and the Bengali refugees in India. With the
surrender, India has no further reason to tighten
military pressure in the West. Its unilateral cease-fire
pronouncement there and Mrs. Gandhi's assurances that
India has no territorial designs East or West are
welcome in that regard. One must hope that Pakistan, in
its bitterness, retains the sense not to attempt a
retaliatory strike.

India is the immediate winner. It humiliated and cut in
half its arch rival Pakistan fathered the new client
state of Bangla Desh, positioned itself to unload the
intolerable refugees, and secured from all of this
considerable lifts of spirit and pride. The costs will
not be measured until they materialize as they will,
later: the impetus to separation within India itself,
the drain on Indian resources which a desperately poor
and unstable Bangla Desh wall surely be, and the
Jeopardy to its traditional profitable friendship with
the United States.

Pakistan, not only defeated but dismembered, must make
painful adjustments in its self-image, domestic policies
and subcontinental and world roles. The Bengalis may not
be the last of the dominant Punjabis' subjects to demand
autonomy. Islamabad is not likely to appreciate soon the
possible advantages in being trimmed back to more
appropriate size.

The Soviet Union, which had spent a decade working to
loosen Delhi's ties to Washington and to harden India's
detachment from Peking, consummated this effort in a:
geopolitical coup. Moscow supplied India with the arms
and political protection which ensured its triumph. It
did this, moreover, while Washington and Peking strove
ineffectively in their respective ways to relieve
Pakistan. The Kremlin will now doubtless incur the
"benefits," questionable as they are, of great-power
success: pressure from its own flag-wavers to throw more
weight around in India and the Indian Ocean, and
pressure from its debtors in Delhi to supply them with
more aid.

Where the United States comes out is hardest of all
to figure. South Asia's general poverty and its
remoteness from major areas of great-power concern makes
a decline of American influence tolerable-some would say
desirable. Anyway, as suggested by Mrs. Gandhi's letter
to Mr. Nixon, excerpted on this page today, Delhi needs
Washington-to offset Moscow and for aid-a lot more than
Washington needs Delhi. That alone makes it doubtful
that we have "lost" India, much as some might like to at
the moment. That Mr. Nixon seemed indifferent to Bengali
and Indian distress during the "refugee phase" hurt him
politically at home and hurt the United States
internationally. That American diplomacy was shown to be
futile and American friendship for Pakistan ineffective
are additional debits. Whether American political and
moral influence was enhanced by the administration's
condemnation of the Indian cross-border attack remains
to be seen .

The whole sequence beginning (to be arbitrary) last
March and ending (to be arbitrary again) with Pakistan's
surrender in the East yesterday has been an immense
tragedy. Regardless of whether any of the parties
emerges with any real or geopolitical gain, none of them
emerges with any particular honor. Nations and men acted
out of narrowly conceived self-interest. The common
interest, if such exists, was degraded. Too much
suffering, too much violence was committed and condoned.
The disintegration of the subcontinent took eight
months. Putting the pieces back together will take a
much longer time.