A must read: Henry Kissinger's "Diplomacy"

[Sava]

It's sad to listen to the victims of anti-Communism propaganda.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Tuomerehu
I hope you realise that this will be held against you.

Why? It is true.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Imran, I think Bush is very realpolitik. why would you say he's not?

Because he actually (and foolishly, I think) believes in an ideology. He has 'vision'. He actually believes the US is there to be a crusader for good.

[Ned]

Well Imran, are you actually endorsing a foreign policy devoid of ideological content?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yes, and I always have. I don't think ideology should play a role. I rather think our national interest should be more important. Our national interest may seem to support an ideology, but it shouldn't simply be driven by ideology.

[Az]

Ned:I don't say it's the way it should be ( I suggest a unified world government, so all this sucks really ) , What I do say is this is the way it is.

Imran: I'd say that when the SU started to support non-socialist countries, was the beginning of the end to the SU, together with the arms race. Your post on Bush seems to take a certain think as a given:" Bush believes in what he says". I don't believe this, because the politicians that do are rather rare. I think bush is out to strengthen US positions in the world, physically, Buying it with political capital that the US has gained over the years. IMO, the treasury is still overflowing. How do they say in the arab world? "Yankee go home, and take me with you. "

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why? It is true.

I think the better question is, "By whom?"

Once you know that, you may not care.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Berzerker
How do you know you're reading the truth from Kissinger?

The man is intelligent and analytical. Plus he knows and has done a lot. Plus he is a good writer. Even if you disagree with his views (or fear that he may lie on some facts...although I don't know many people who've shown him to be sloppy or dishonest as an academician) you will gain something by reading what he has to say.

Try to read with a bit of a skeptical attitude...if you are so terrified of being led astray.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Graag

How exactly did Kissinger slow the spead of communism?
Why did so many more Americans have to die than previously in the war in order to pull out?

He slowed the spread of the NVA by widening the war, and forcing them to defend, at least somewhere. Look at the difference between fighting heavily in our base area, South Vietnam, with over 500,000 U.S. troops in 1968-69, and fighting in Cambodia, Laos and the border zones with fewer and fewer U.S. troops afterward. That the South Vietnamese could even survive on their own until 1975 is something of a miracle, and they could have held on longer with more U.S. material support (as opposed to troops), the cutoff of which severely demoralized the government and turned the NVA's limited offensive in 1975 into a rout.

By the end of the war in South Vietnam in 1975 the NVA was a spent force, and limited itself to consolidating its gains in Laos and South Vietnam. It got sucked into Cambodia afterward it's true, but that had more to do with its relationship with China than anything the U.S. did. It was not an idelogical battle, as the Khmer Rouge were already Communists, but rather a battle over who was going to be the "father" of the new Cambodia, Vietnam who had fought there for decades and who had provided much direct aid to the Khmer Rouge, or China who supplied them with weapons and economic aid.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Static23


Knocking on Australia? About as likely to go communist as Japan, i.e. not at all!

It's all but proven that Kissinger stalled the peace talks to make LBJ look bad and get Nixon elected as the guy with the secret plan to win the war. What was the secret? Hey, guess what, no plan!

Then Kissinger kept Nixon in a war that he knew we wouldn't and couldn't win so Nixon wouldn't look bad before the next election.

Kissinger didn't slow the spread of communism in SE Asia at all. If anything he sped it up by years.

Bullsh!t. If you have some proof that the Kissinger sabotaged the peace talks, then I'm sure we'd all like to see it. I mean who was this non-entity to take it upon himself to sabotage peace talks in order to help one candidate against another? It seems funny that he appears only as an apolitical academic previous to this, I guess that he was just so certain of his path to true evil that he made sure to remain above suspicion from the time he was young. Then, he screws Johnson, throwing the election to Nixon (barely). Then Nixon pays him off by making him national security advisor, and before you know it Henry Kissinger is outfoxing Richard Nixon and forcing him to stay in the war for the good of his own reelection. Right. So Kissinger was not only an evil foreig policy genius, he was also a domestic political expert of such import that Richard Nixon himself was dazzled. What is your source for this wonderful stew of unlikelihood, "Profiles in Cowardice", or "Conspiracy A-Go-Go"?

As for speeding the spread of communism, again you are out of your depth. One third of Cambodia was already occupied by the NVA, and at least that much of Laos was controlled by the NVA and the Pathet Lao. All of Indochina was about to fall to the Communists, and it was only the distraction provided by the U.S. that gave those opposed to them a chance to keep fighting.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Ned
Just for starters, I think Vietnam was totally FUBAR. The problems did not start with Nixon/Kissinger, they started with Kennedy. It was Kennedy who decided to take over the war in South Vietnam. It was Kennedy who decided to assassinate Diem. It was Kennedy who decided to take over the command structure of the army of the Republic of South Vietnam. It was Kennedy/Johnson who supported the corrupt military regimes that succeeded Diem. It was Johnson who built the American military presence in South Vietnam to 550,000 troops. It was Johnson who in 1965 told American troops that they could not fire into Cambodia even though the NVA were basing there and firing on them from Cambodia with heavy mortars and artillery.

In contrast, as soon as Nixon/Kissinger came to power they began to withdraw American troops and to build up the South Vietnamese army. By the end of 1972, United States had only 25,000 troops left in Vietnam.

The problem of Cambodia was simple. So long as Sihanók allowed the Communist to use Cambodia as a launching pad for its invasions of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese kept the Khmer Rouge in check. In 1970 though, Sihanók essentially switched sides. He permitted America to go after the NVA inside Cambodia. When he did this, the Communists began to supply the Khmer Rouge with everything they wanted militarily. Eventually the Khmer Rouge won the war in Cambodia.

Actually, Sianhok was ousted in a coup backed by the U.S. while he was visiting his overlords (in China IIRC). Colonel Lon Nol led a faction of the military that was tired of seeing their country used as a staging area and supply depot for the NVA. The eastern third of the country was under the direct control of the NVA, while their allies the Khmer Rouge were building up in the north (again IIRC).

[Berzerker]

GP -

The man is intelligent and analytical.

That isn't proof he is honest.

Plus he knows and has done a lot.

Neither is that.

Plus he is a good writer.

See above. But you're free to be entertained by Henry's storytelling.

Even if you disagree with his views (or fear that he may lie on some facts...although I don't know many people who've shown him to be sloppy or dishonest as an academician) you will gain something by reading what he has to say.

You're assuming he is an academician (and assuming academicians are honest). I trust Christopher Hitchens because of his years of non-partisan and honest work. I distrust Kissinger because of his years of deception.

Try to read with a bit of a skeptical attitude...if you are so terrified of being led astray.

"Terrified"? Simple logic. A liar won't tell unflattering truthes, and Henry is a liar and a murderer.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


The problems actually began when Ike divided the country in two and imposed a Catholic pro-West regime in the South. The South was 90% Buddist, neutralist and pacifist.

It was this American-installed regime which insisted upon fighting. When Buddist priests began burning themselves alive in protest of the war, they were declare to be in sympathy with the Viet Cong. Those who resisted the oppression of the Diem brothers were imprisoned and tortured. Diem's brother (Diem Ngo [?]), the head of the secret police, was a bloody butcher, who the Kennedy administration tried in vain to curb. Kennedy did not plan nor want the Diems to be killed, but he knew they were disasters and whated them out. So when he learned of the plans of the South Vietnamese generals to oust them, he acquiested.

The tragedy of the Diem ouster and killing was that there was no one to replace them except more corrupt, oppressive generals.

Years later, Nixon was elected based upon his "secret plan" to end the war. His "secret plan" turned out to be to widen the war. He bombed and invaded Laos, which destablized it, and it fell to the communists. He bombed and invaded Cambodia, which distablized it, and it too fell to the communists.

Nixon can't be blamed for destabilizing Cambodia. The damage was already done there by that slimy toad Sianhok and the North Vietnamese. Ditto Laos, where we were very hard pressed to exert any meaningful pressure in comparison to the NVA. Both of these situations devolved into civil war, but they were interestingly not about Communism as much as local groups fighting for control of their countries, and receiving aid in return for their support of one side or the other. But it is the North Vietnamese who have to take the blame for forcing these countries into civil war by directly threatening their sovereignty by occupying them and using them as base areas. These bases were used to further their aims in South Vietnam as well as to aid the friendly parties in the civil wars on Laos and Cambodia, and were rightly targeted by the U.S.

Originally posted by Zkribbler
There was an attempt to have elections in the South, but Generals Ky and Thieu so corrupted the process that all candidates but those two pulled out in protest. So when Ford finally inherited the mess, the Thieu-Ky regime in the South was so unpopular that when the North invaded, the Army of South Vietnam collapsed, and the people of the U.S. were so disillusioned, they refused to spend anymore blood and money to prop it up.

Moral of the story: Real Politik is counter productive.

If Real Politik is so counterproductive, then why did the Commies win the war?

The ARVN did not collapse in 1975 due to the unpopularity of the regime per se, but because of the panic caused to the regime by the cutoff of U.S. military aid. Thieu got paranoid and decided to stop listening to U.S. advisors altogether, and came up with a plan to stretch his resources by giving up the least productive portion of the country (the north of South Vietnam, known in the U.S. at the time as the Central Highlands). While a reasonable economic policy in a sense, it was a military disaster. The Central Highlands were good defensive terrain far from the much more productive South. The country was very narrow there, which helped to canalize NVA attacks, or force them to make very wide movement to flank from Cambodia, which was proven to be a very difficult maneuver in the 1972 offensive.

This move would have doomed the South to defeat in fairly short order, but Thieu in the inimicable fashion of so many of history's grand dupes compounded his strategic error with unbelieveable timing. He started the pullout just as the NVA was starting a limited offensive in the Central Highlands. The results were impressive, for within a week the withdrawl had turned into a rout, and within a few weeks the U.S. was lifting off from the embassy roof.

So while I agree that the regime was horrible, I don't really see where it was any worse as far as the combat effectiveness of the troops is concerned, and indeed in many cases ARVN troops performed much better under this regime than the previous regimes. The collapse was not one of a groundswell of public hatred for the regime, or one of popularity for the Communists. It was plain fear of the immediate, and was serial in nature.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Sava
It's sad to listen to the victims of anti-Communism propaganda.

So that's what happened to you! You're right, it is sad. And dull.

[TCO]

Berz, get out of the foxhole and read something by someone that you disagree with. You might decide to change some views. Or you might find some useful information even if you retain your views.

I'm not a big fan of the US policy in the Balkans, but I still learned alot about how policy was (and is made) in EUCOM by read the book by Wesley Clark (ex-CINC) about the Kososvo war.