'Fessing up to foreign (policy) failure is first step to protecting West

Jewish World Review ^ | 8/17/2012 | Caroline B. Glick

[Former Fetus]

Full title:'Fessing up to foreign (policy) failure is first step to preventing more dangerous disasters, protecting West

In 1949, the Communist takeover of China rattled the US foreign policy establishment to its core. China's fall to Communism was correctly perceived as a massive strategic defeat for the US. The triumphant Mao Tse Tung placed China firmly in the Soviet camp and implemented foreign policies antithetical to US interests.

For the American foreign policy establishment, China's fall forced a reconsideration of basic axioms of US foreign policy. Until China went red, the view resonant among foreign policy specialists was that it was possible for the US to peacefully coexist and even be strategic allies with Communists.

With Mao's embrace of Stalin this position was discredited. The US's subsequent recognition that it was impossible for America to reach an accommodation with Communists served as the intellectual architecture of many of the strategies the US adopted for fighting the Cold War in the years that followed.

Today the main aspect of America's response to China's Communist revolution remembered is the vindictive political hunt for scapegoats. Foreign Service officers and journalists who had advised the US government to support Mao and the Communists against Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists were attacked as traitors.

But while the "Red Scare" is what is most remembered about that period, the most significant consequence of the rise of Communist China was the impact it had on the US's understanding of the nature of Communist forces. Even Theodore White, perhaps the most prominent journalist who championed Mao and the Communists, later acknowledged that he had been duped by the Communist propaganda machine into believing that Mao and his comrades were interested in an alliance with the US.

[Former Fetus]

Great comparison! I would only add that, while the rise of communism in China was misunderstood at the time, I fully believe that this administration's middle east policy is fully informed and purposeful.

[TEXOKIE]

bfl