October 17, 2017--Jack's Reading

Jack has returned to the diner. But he is careful to avoid coming when Betty is working.

"You've got me reading," he said, clearly feeling proud of himself. I decided to just listen.

"You mentioned it in one of your thingies," that's how he refers to my blog, "The book about Nixon and Kissinger. I forget the exact title." I restrained myself from supplying it.

"I'm sure you're not surprised that I'm a big Nixon fan. Not that I liked Watergate or some of his other capers. He's lucky they didn't put him in jail. But nobody's perfect." He chuckled.

"Look what he did with China and Russia and Vietnam. He got us out of that one." I resisted saying that Nixon escalated the war in Vietnam, kept it going for at least three too many years and during that time 22,000 American soldiers were killed not to mention hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Or, off course, that we lost.

"Until I read that book of yours I thought he did all this pretty much by himself. I totally forgot about Kissinger. Henry Kissinger, who was his Secretary of State." Again, I restrained myself from correcting him--during Nixon's first term Kissiner was National Security Advisor. It wasn't until Nixon's second term that he also became Secretary of State. Nixon and Kissinger hated Nixon's first Secretary of State, William Rogers. They managed to keep him out of the loop, not telling him what they were up to in Vietnam or for that matter China and the Soviet Union.

"From the book it seems they were close partners. They were crazy, I'll admit that, but they were brilliant and quite a team. Both were insecure, needy, a little paranoid [A little?], and very competitive with each other. Both wanted sole credit for all they accomplished. Kissinger sucked up to a whole lot of newspaper columnists and would leak to them what they were up to. Claiming that he was the lead partner. The brains of the operation. Turns out not to be true." 

Jack did get that right. "From the tapes of their conversations and from documents the author [Robert Dallek] turned up it's pretty clear that Nixon was the boss. At least until near the end when the world was collapsing on Nixon and he was drunk and raving most of the time."

He paused, trying to draw me in. I was still into just listening.

"I admit the book [Nixon and Kissinger: Partners In Power] made me thing about my boy Trump." I couldn't wait to hear this. "It looks to me he could use a secretary like Kissinger. This Tilletson guy [Tillerson] is no Kissinger. In fact, I want to check his claim that he was the CEO of Exxon. He feels like a zero. How did he ever get that job? Assuming he's not lying about it. I know, he really was with Exxon. There's no way he could lie about that. But, boy, what a moron. I know, that's funny since he called Trump a moron, actually, a 'friggin moron.' I love the idea that Trump wanted to compare IQs. I'll give you that Trump isn't a Mensa candidate, but Tilletson's the moron, if you ask me. And I know," he smiled, "that you didn't. I mean ask me."

I had no idea where Jack was going with this monologue. I would have thought that since he's so enamored with Trump that he believes he can do anything on his own, including relating to the rest of the world. Or intentionally not relating to it. I would have thought Jack would hope that Trump would be his own Secretary of State. As Nixon was.

"Reading about what was possible to do about Vietnam, forget Russia and China for the moment, I realized that the situation was much more complicated than either bombing them back to the Stone Age or cutting and running. There were a lot more moving pieces, including that China and Russia separately--since even though they were both communists were rivals--were supporting and arming the Viet Cong. Nixon had to figure all that out. If he wanted to make a deal with China he had to figure out a way to either ignore the Chinese helping the North Koreans or make part of the deal that they would be sort of OK with what we were doing there. He knew it was all about self-interest and that the Chinese were probably all right with letting Nixon do his thing in Vietnam so not to screw up the possibility of a deal between us and them. Whew."

I continued to look at him, impressed that he had the outline right about what was going on. The complicated juggling that was required.

"And," Jack continued, "Nixon needed Kissinger to bounce ideas off and needed his hands-on help, including flying back and forth to have secret meetings with the Chinese and also the Russians since they had to be OK with us cozying up to Red China."

He took a deep breath, "And so my point after all this rambling is that even Trump, who is not as smart or knowledgeable as Nixon, I'll admit that, also needs someone other than Steve Bannon, who I assume he still talks with, and his daughter, whatever happened to her--as you said she and the son-in-law have pretty much disappeared--to try ideas out on. Tilletson's clearly not the one. So, to tell you truth [with him telling the truth can be a rarity], I'm a little worried. I don't want to get in a shit fight with Kim-whatever-his-name-is without thinking out all the options and complications."

I smiled. "I did notice," Jack said," that the other day Trump had Kissinger in to the White House to I assume talk some of this over. Kissinger scrunched in a chair in the Oval Office looked like he's 115 years old and has shrunk to four-feet tall. But I assume his big brain is still working. Maybe Trump got some good ideas from him."

If only that were true, I thought.

"One more thing and then I have to run. I wrote it down from the book. It scared me I admit. It comes from one of Nixon's Oval Office tapes. Students were protesting the war and Nixon was trying to coopt them by occasionally meeting with some of the leaders."

Jack pulled a paper out of his fleece pocket. "It's about one of these meetings."

Jack cleared his throat and read--"The meeting left him with a sense of hopelessness about changing minds. 'It's just crap, you know,' he told [his chief of staff] H.R. Haldeman. 'We have to sit and talk to these little jackasses . . . Why don't I just . . . scratch all this crap, really bullshit, all these meetings, this therapy meeting with the little assholes . . . and recognize that we have a crisis in the country in terms of understanding, recognizing that nobody can solve it.'"

"Incredible," I finally said. "I remember reading that and was shocked that . . ."

"That a president could talk this way in the Oval Office? And think this way? Again, he was brilliant, but as I said, also crazy. This is all very scary." He paused.

"Scary?"

"Yeah because who knows how they're talking these days in the White House." This was hard for Jack. "Probably the same way. And how they're thinking," He sighed. "Also probably the same."

Nixon and Haldeman

October 10, 2017--Madman Theory

Desperately looking for some evidence that the Trump administration's foreign policy is not totally out of control, I have been speculating (hoping) that somehow in regard to his apparent unhappiness with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Trump's seemingly irrational, out-of-cotrol behavior includes some larger logic. 

I have written here that though Trump appears to know nothing whatsoever about history or the ways of the world, he apparently does meet occasionally with Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and from Kissinger may be accepting some tutoring about how to act tough and be effective when it comes to international policy.

With the glaring exception of the Vietnam War, Kissinger and Nixon were able to do that. There was detente with the Soviet Union and the opening to China.

To that end perhaps Trump is learning about Nixon's Madman Theory. I was reminded of this earlier in the week when reading Robert Dallek's excellent, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners In Power, where he makes reference to that.

From Wikipedia, here is a succinct overview--

The theory was a feature of Richard Nixon's foreign policy. He and his administration tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Block nations think Nixon was irrational and volatile. According to the theory, these leaders would then avoid provoking the United States, fearing an unpredictable response. 

Nixon's Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman wrote that Nixon confided to him: 

"I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'For God's sake, you know that Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry--and he has his hand on the nuclear button.' Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."

In October 1969, the Nixon administration [via Kissinger] indicated to the Soviet Union that the "madman was loose" when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness alert (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population) and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days. 

The [Nixon] administration employed the madman strategy to force the North Vietnamese government to end the Vietnam War. Along the same lines, American diplomats, especially Henry Kissinger, portrayed the 1970 [illegal] incursion into Cambodia as a symptom of Nixon's supposed instability. 

In 1517, Niccolò Machiavelli argued that sometimes it is "a very wise thing to simulate madness."

For the record, Nixon, though through traditional forms of diplomacy was able to make deals with the Soviets and China, the madman strategy itself did not work. 

Attempting to convince our adversaries in Southeast Asia he was crazy did not "force" the North Vietnamese to negotiate the end of the Vietnam War. We in effect lost the war. Over time we unilaterally withdrew our troops; failed to support the ongoing efforts of the South Vietnam government and military; and the North in less than a year triumphed and unified Vietnam into one country, which they then as now control.

So much for my hope that Trump's "madness" might be intentional and prove to be effective. 

January 16, 2014--Bomb, Bomb, Bomb

I am reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis in Robert Dallek's excellent biography of John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life.

During the 13 days that it lasted, as the United States and the Soviet Union came eyeball to eyeball, facing the all-too-real possibility of a massive nuclear exchange, the unanimous advice JKF got from his military leaders, including Strategic Air Commander Curtis LeMay, the inspiration for General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, was to take the opportunity to launch a full-scale nuclear attack on the USSR. They felt that we still had the military edge but only if we attacked them preemptively.

Thankfully, for the sake of human life and civilization, JFK resisted that advice and here we are living to tell the tale.

Kennedy had been burned by a version of the same kind of advice 18 months earlier when the CIA and his generals advised the new president to support the invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles in an ill-fated attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

From that fiasco, JFK learned to be suspicious of his military advisors. Their job, he realized, was to wage war. Not peace. And as commander in chief, with the wisdom of our Founders that the military should be under civilian control, he needed to be leery of predictable advice to attack and invade.

I was reminded of those fateful times the other morning when former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared on Morning Joe to promote his memoirs, Duty.

As has been widely reported in the press, not only does Gates take frequent swipes at Joe Biden (inaccurately claiming that in 40 years of public life he has always been wrong in his policy recommendations) but also one of his presidential bosses, Barack Obama. Obama, he claims, not only did not "passionately" support the mission of soldiers mired in Afghanistan, but also was to "suspicious" of his generals' advice.

To that I say, "Thank you President Obama."

Let us recall that it was his generals who pressed him to send more troops to Afghanistan in another ill-fated effort to defeat the insurgents and stabilize the Afghan government under corrupt President Hamid Karzi. And beyond that, as Obama became more aggressive in declaring that we would withdraw all combat forces from there by the end of this year, it was his generals who went public, advocating that we leave a residual force in Afghanistan for 20 more years.

As JFK said in January, 1961--

When at some future date the high court of history sits in judgement on each of us, it will ask: "Were we truly men of courage--with the courage to stand up to one's enemies--and courage to stand up, when necessary, to one's associates?"

Gates should know that history as well as that of the Eisenhower presidency before taking a too causal look back on his service under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. At least eight times during his presidency, former Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower faced down advice from his generals to preemptively wipe out the Soviet Union with massive strikes. They pressed what became a familiar mantra--that the U.S. would for only a few more years have the nuclear edge and that since war with the USSR was inevitable, we should get it over with while we had the advantage.

And at least eight times, Eisenhower, who more than any president was skeptical about such military advice, declined to launch the nukes. Better than anyone else, Ike knew that as surgeons will more often than not say, "Operate," generals will invariably say, "Bomb. "

Under the radar right now, while focusing most of our attention on Governor Chris Christie's exquisite agony, members of the U.S. Senate are quietly advancing legislation to ratchet up the sanctions against Iran. At the very moment that for the first time in decades there is a glimmer of hope that we may be able to negotiate our way to some sort of accommodation with them about their nuclear weapons program. Iran has already signaled that if this new sanctions bill is approved by Congress, overriding what would be a certain presidential veto, they will back out of further negotiations.

Maybe this is a geopolitical example of bad cop (Congress), good cop (Kerry-Obama); but with the Israeli leadership doing what it can to derail negotiations and Congress, very much including many Democrats under the influence of the Israel Lobby, we would be faced with another dangerous situation where bombing not negotiating threatens to become policy.