On Dec. 15, 1971, the USS Enterprise, the largest aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy at the time, entered the Bay of Bengal as the spearhead of a naval task force of the U.S. 7th Fleet. The task force had been dispatched to help evacuate beleaguered Pakistani forces in East Pakistan as the Indian military steadily advanced toward Dhaka, the regional capital. But Dhaka fell to Indian forces on Dec. 16, and the task force’s entry into the Bay of Bengal seemed to be futile. East Pakistan soon became Bangladesh, and India gained a grateful new regional ally.
Washington’s main goal, it turned out, was to send a signal to Islamabad and Beijing that it was a reliable ally that would stand by its commitments at a time of need. The message to China was especially important because Henry Kissinger, then-secretary of state, had recently made a clandestine trip to Beijing using Islamabad as an interlocutor. Kissinger’s mission, as is now well known, was the opening gambit in Richard Nixon’s outreach to China.
