In the national interest? Canada and the East Pakistan crisis of 1971

Abstract

Drawing upon recently declassified materials from the Canadian government archives, this article investigates how and why Canada formulated its response to the East Pakistan crisis of 1971. As a provider of substantial amounts of development aid and as a partner in Pakistan's nuclear power programme, Ottawa had established an important relationship with Islamabad. Despite knowledge of the atrocities in East Pakistan, the Canadian government chose not to exert hard influence by threatening the withdrawal of aid or technical assistance, but to adopt a four-strand policy based upon public neutrality, the private encouragement of a political settlement in South Asia, calls for restraint to both India and Pakistan, and the provision of humanitarian relief. This approach served to protect Canada's relationship with Pakistan, deemed desirable in terms of national interest, narrowly construed, and maintained Canadian neutrality with regard to a foreign secessionist issue that might have stirred unwelcome comparisons with its own separatist debate over Quebec. It was extremely unlikely, given ongoing support for Pakistan from both China and the US, that firmer Canadian action would have led to the resolution of the crisis. Nevertheless, there remained in Ottawa's policy, and in the government's failure to adjust that policy when it clearly was not working, an unfortunate absence of principle and an uncomfortable air of appeasement.