Posted on 07/06/2021 8:47:44 PM PDT by eekitsagreek
Speaking at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, on July 23, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attempted a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, Pompeo repudiated more than four decades of American policy toward China. Pompeo argued that the days of the U.S. holding out hope for political liberalization was over. And he called on free nations around the world to lock arms against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) various schemes and threats.
On the other hand, Pompeo said he did not want to “seem too eager to tear down President Nixon’s legacy.” While Nixon’s presidency ended in disgrace, he is still widely considered something of a foreign policy success—the man who initiated America’s great opening to China. Pompeo didn’t want to directly undermine Nixon’s supposed accomplishment. “I want to be clear that he did what he believed was best for the American people at the time, and he may well have been right,” Pompeo said of Nixon’s diplomacy with the Chinese.
Pompeo’s use of the word “may” was telling. Maybe Nixon was right—or maybe he wasn’t. Given the substance of his speech, it is quite possible that Pompeo thinks Nixon was wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at fdd.org ...
“According to Mr. Spock, the Vulcans in 2550 considered Nixon’s China policy to be genius, because it split the communist alliance.”
Tell that to Gorbachev and Deng as they dined luxuriously in the Zhongnanhai before they has sacred the citizens if Beijing in 1989.
Nothing personal, but do you guys work to be so ill-informed on topics you comment on?
Hindsight is always clearer. But Nixon’s strategy needs to be judged in the context of what he knew and what his plan was. Not by how it developed years later under subsequent Administrations.
In the 1950s Communist China and the USSR were thought to be a dangerous unified bloc at war with the Free World. Collaborating on the Korean War. On the Indochina Wars. Looking to topple all of Southeast Asia, maybe including the Philippines and Australia.
But there was tension between the two Communist giants and by 1962 the ‘Sino-Soviet Split’ was official. Nixon in the late 60s early 70s was trying to make that split even bigger by luring China into a rapprochement with the US. Nixon’s role in it ends with his resignation in 1974.
The policy of turning China into an industrial powerhouse, a most favored trading partner, and the gutting of American manufacturing occurs in the 1990s with the GHW Bush and Clinton presidencies. A policy continued by Bush junior and Obama. Richly rewarded by campaign donations from corporations enriched by that trade.
China is ramping up the construction of a blue water navy at a pace unseen since WWII. We are dangerously reliant on Chinese manufacturing for many basic needs that we used to manufacture ourselves. None of that is Nixon’s fault. The two major parties collaborated on it in the years after he was long gone. And other than Trump they still are.
“Nothing personal, but do you guys work to be so ill-informed on topics you comment on?”
Sense of humor much? Sheesh.
Domestically Nixon was very much a liberal President. None of Johnson’s massive domestic programs were curtailed and several more were added. He was was an adherent of the liberal internationalism that dominated the foreign policy of both parties in the years after WWII.
Nixon implemented wage & price controls. Abolished the Bretton Woods agreement and the last vestiges of the gold standard. Inflation had been simmering all through the 1960s but largely unnoticed by the public. Nixon’s policies threw gasoline on the fire and it got even worse under Ford and Carter.
The Soviet Union was NOT “close to nuking the Chinese”.
Also “it worked out pretty well with the collapse of the USSR”. NOPE. Kissinger sold out SE Asia to the Reds in a Machieavellian play to pit the Red China against the Soviets. It didn’t happen. Red China continued to be the major arms/transportation conduit for the No. Vietnamese army (PAVN) and their allies in the Pathet Lao (Laos reds) and for a while, the Maoist Khmer Rouge.
[I was studying in Taipei when Nixon made the announcement that he would be going to Red China in the future. Helped to organize the first foreign demonstration against Red China in their history. It was nice to be a “hero” to the whole country (my fellow younger students were the key people in the polite protest at the US Embassy. I was there but in the background. We old guys (I was 26) let the kiddies have the limelight.]
I was a short-term journalist in both So. Vietnam and Cambodia, which included military briefings in both countries as well as talking to high ranking NVA/VC officers/soldiers POWs and Defectors. This was in 1970 and one NVA senior officer said that to win the war against Hanoi, we had to take out “Haiphong Harbor”, which was one of the PAVN’s major Communist Bloc supplies entry points; the other was Red Chinese arms and men/transportation workers and anti-aircraft crews at the entrance to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, known as Mughia Pass.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was due to a strong US military build-up AFTER the Soviets started theirs in the late 60s thru 70’s.
Our “High Frontier”/”Star Wars - Strategic Defense Initiative” re building up our offensive and DEFENSIVE missile programs, helped to drive the economically poor Soviet Union into a grave financial status that threatened to collapse the whole Soviet system. Gorbachev was smart enough to recognize this and back-off, even if he had to “tear down this Wall” and pull Soviet troops out of most Eastern European Captive Nations.
One of my graduate seminar classmates on Strategic Policies etc, was Lt. Gen. Danny Graham (CIA, DIA, High Frontier) and an architect of the SDI idea. One of our lecturers had flown in the B-2 bomber, new at that time but a total game-changer versus the Soviets.
Also, our introduction of the very successful Stinger missile in Afghanistan totally took the Soviet’s “air” advantages off the battlefield - lost at least 60 jets, bombers and helicopters, thus denying the successful Soviet Spetnaz forces their ability to seize mountain tops above Mujahedeen forces they were blasting below. I had friends who were reporting about this from inside Afghanistan.
One of the problems with American foreign policy and our leaders is that they do not know about communism (and later Islamic Extremism) and their sole goal of dominating the world “By Any Means Necessary” (BAMN). Their concessions and weaknesses, witness Biden and Afghanistan, Obama and Iraq/the rise of ISIS, and the sellout of our people in Benghazi, only confirmed to our communist and Islamic enemies that we were weak in will, in our knowledge of who they were and what they wanted, and how long they were willing to fight to obtain their goals (witness the Taliban in Afghanistan right now).
Glorgau: Hate to bust your chops, but I’ve probably been around a lot longer than you, been involved in a few things re internal security and national security (even made the cover of a few magazines), and had great, brave, patriotic friends as well as a relative who fought in WW2 - Iwo Jima, (OSS), CIA, DIA, ASA, Korea, VN, Kosovo, Desert Storm and my son was one of the first American troops into Iraq on 3/20/2003. I learned to listen to them and then ask questions. You’ve be surprised at what is NOT written in history books except for those my friends have written about what they have been involved in (I would say well over 100-125 books at minimus including national best sellers, Military History Book awards, similar to the Pulitzer Prize)), even a few movies.
Life is stranger than fiction but often more fascinating. A collective “we were there” is very often better for learning than reading what backbenchers and armchair historians wrote post-hoc the events.
I couldn’t remember if Red China slowed their materiel support to North Vietnam. I doubt that Nixon and Kissinger even asked for it, or that Vietnam even entered into their plan for China.
Nixon may not have said it but he allowed people to believe during the 1968 campaign that he had “a secret plan for ending the Vietnam War”. I don’t think he ever had any plan other than to bug out gradually.
It always looked to me like he continued Johnson’s half baked defensive policy that allowed Hanoi to set the pace of the war with no fear that they would get flattened like Berlin and Tokyo. So all they had to do was bide their time and wait until Americans were fed up with a never ending war.
Somehow in the 1940s we could defeat two major powers in 3 1/2 years but in 25 years couldn’t defeat one second rate power. Politicians who commit us to war without a plan and will to quickly defeat our opponent are little more than criminals IMO.
I think, at the time, Nixon was right to engage China in a limited & symbolic way.
The problem is that, starting with Clinton, they handed China the keys to the front door.
I thought uncle Ho was a Stalinist. After the USA departed Vietnam didn’t the Chinese army attempt to intervene on behalf of Pol Pot and were summarily kicked out of the Cambodian frontier by the communist Vietnamese forces?
“Somehow in the 1940s we could defeat two major powers in 3 1/2 years but in 25 years couldn’t defeat one second rate power.”
In the 40’s we were fighting THREE nations, Germany, Italy and Japan, that had large standing armies and navies that fought in a conventional manner. At the time the entire world was laser focused on defeating those three nations. NOTHING MATTERED except the defeat of the Axis powers.
In Vietnam we were fighting what was largely a guerilla insurgance financed by China and the USSR. Hard to win when your average enemy soldier melts into the background of faces you see every day. Even harder when a former ally, now an enemy, the USSR was using Vietnam as a testing ground for every weapon idea the had. Hardest when your own press is of the same political bent as your enemy.
We never got in to Vietnam to win, just not to lose. It was called containment. Don’t invade and overthrow the communists, just contain them within their present borders. A sure recipe for defeat.
“Politicians who commit us to war without a plan and will to quickly defeat our opponent are little more than criminals IMO.”
AMEN!!
.
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Nixon was right to open basic diplomatic relations with China, but we should not have gone beyond that unless the Chinese abandoned communism, when they are yet to do.
Our policies toward China since have been the dumbest and most dangerous is US history.
Little late,as Mr. Bobulinski stated Joe Biden is a compromised President.
China obviously has him under their control
A bunch of our China policy was rooted in LAZINESS, and even Reagan played a part. We wanted to use China to tie up the Soviets, in part because the Democrats (then controlled by the Soviets) wouldn’t let us properly arm-up in the 1960s and 1970s. It worked well enough to win the Cold War, but it also started China on their path to world domination.
“Also, our introduction of the very successful Stinger missile in Afghanistan totally took the Soviet’s “air” advantages off the battlefield.”
It’s ignored in American history books, but China played a huge role in the 1980s Afghan War. We gave the Afghans a small number of missiles, but China delivered a vast collection of AK-47s, ammo, and RPGs.
Without Chinese involvement the USSR would have won easily in Afghanistan and would not have collapsed.
Ho was a nationalist Vietnamese first.....we should not have allowed the french to try to reclaim Indochina after they lost it to the Japs
It cost us and the locals plenty
Ho was a collectivist but I don’t think he was the hegemon we painted him as .
He likely if allowed his election after WWII would have remained a USA ally
We don’t know if any of that is true. Commies were as good with disinformation back then as they are now.
Hollywood went all out for China in the 1980s.
Even the movie “Red Dawn” painted China as the good guys.
No. Recognition of Red China in any way was one of the 45 communist goals for the USA.
It was Carter who really gave Nixon’s ill-advised move a great push, with his full recognition at the expense of Taiwan.
Nixon’s insight was that he could play china off against russia.
Today the insight is the reverse we can play off russia against china. after all russia has more to fear from china than the usa.
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