But as well, a war would give U-Thant and the international community which he represents, an opening to deal with the basic problem of Pakistani cruelty. Everyone can see the death by starvation or cholera, in whatever numbers, and perhaps the greatest trans-border migration of peoples in modern history, and the imminent threat of war. Yet none of these has been adequate to mobilize Mr. Thant and the United Nations. But if a few people of one nationality were shot by a few soldiers of another, then the Security Council presumably would meet and the whole ponderous apparatus of international conciliation and problem-muffling might grind into gear.
The other alternative, as we see it. can only come either from an immediate joint appeal to Pakistan by the United States, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China or from separate but parallel appeals from these three. They would have to ask and help Pakistan to lake the steps necessary to restore normal conditions, difficult indeed impossible as that task may seem now. The mechanics of American-Soviet-Chinese pressure are hard for an outsider to imagine (hard for an insider, too, no doubt). Yet it is plain that together the three countries, and only they, have the requisite influence to induce Pakistan to change the course, and the problem is to find a way to bring it to bear.
There are, of course, a dozen reasons diplomats and politicians can give you why such a proposal is unrealistic, unworkable. Basically, it would require three extremely wary mutual rivals to collaborate, as they have never done, and to collaborate in an important arena of their rivalry. The argument for trying out the proposal though, is quite simple; it could spare 10 or 20 or 80 million people terrible additional suffering, not to say for many of them their lives. Forlorn or visionary as it truly be, on possibility for limiting the effects of the Pakistani tragedy ought to be abandoned out of hand. And if the United States is not to make a real and positive contribution, then at the least it ought to end its current policy of aid, however limited, to Pakistan.
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