Sajit Gandhi posted an electronic briefing book titled The Tilt: The U.S. and the South Asian Crisis of 1971 in the National Security Archives. There is some fascinating stuff in there for people from my part of the world. I hope to get down to posting my thoughts on the subject after I go through it.

It reminds me of a casual dinner conversation I had some months back with a senior Indian administration officer who was travelling through US. He had a meeting with the powers that be in the US defence ministry. They were pushing him to say that India will side with US in the event of a conflict with China. They were mostly kidding around. But this was right after China grounded the US spy aircraft. So there was also underlying tension. This guy refused to committ himself. He joked. "You guys would go away whenever the latest crisis is over. But we would have to continue to live with our giant neighbour". He was wise. 9/11 happened and now both China and Pakistan are close partners of US again.