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I've wanted to do this one for a while, because I've always felt that this one was underutilized in terms of Cold War flashpoints.

As the title says, come up with a way that the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 escalates into the Third World War (or at the very least, a massive regional conflict in Southwest Asia involving as many as three major powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China).

For context, the war was waged primarily over the status of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), which was predominantly Bengali and wished greater autonomy from Pakistan. Pakistan committed some pretty horrific war crimes trying to suppress the Bengalis, sparking a war for independence that eventually drew in India. As the crisis escalated, the US, the PRC, and Imperial Iran provided support to the Pakistanis, while the USSR supported India.

Of particular note is a series actions taken late in the war by the US and the USSR. The US Navy deployed a carrier battle group led by the USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal to intimidate the Indians against launching an offensive into West Pakistan; in response, the Soviet Navy deployed two groups of warships from Vladivostok to counter the American ships and reinforce a small number of Soviet warships already in the Bay of Bengal. Before those additional ships could arrive, however, Pakistani troops in East Pakistan surrendered to Indian forces, ending the war and sealing Bangladeshi independence.

So, how could the war escalate into a larger conflict? I assume that it would have to last a bit longer than the two weeks it did OTL in order to put US and SU navies in a position to potentially fight one another. That, or somehow have the Chinese get involved on the side of Pakistan (though I have seen people discredit that possibility, as the Sino-Indian War of '62 had resulted in India creating formidable defenses along it's border with China that would have made an invasion quite unpleasant).
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