Nixon Administration

Former Assistant Secretary of State William D. Rogers disputes charges of U.S. complicity in the rise and rule of Pinochet; Kenneth Maxwell replies.

After Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election, a new political force -- the neoconservatives, former anti-Nixon liberals now bent on total victory over the Soviet Union -- emerged to undermine his diplomacy. Nixon and his heir, Gerald Ford, sought to carefully wear the Soviets down, but the neocons yearned to vanquish communism with a burst of ideological elan. The new right's insistence on smearing detente as appeasement led them to ignore subtle Soviet encroachments and abandon Ford when he urged Congress to aid Indochina and Angola. The neocons undercut the real foreign policy debate, which was between the White House and the liberals.

The summary victory over Iraq was hailed by no less a figure than President Bush as a once-and-for-all elimination of the 'Vietnam syndrome' -- which shows how powerful was the memory of that defeat even 15 years after the fall of Saigon. Addresses thre questions (1) why the USA invested so much in contesting communism in Vietnam (2) why its efforts failed -- even today, US explanations tend to assume that it could have been 'done right', overlooking now as then the formidable disadvantages facing US policy (3) the economic and political consequences of the defeat for the USA.

While the past decade of Sino-American relations has been largely constructive, the ten years have not been on a steady incline. Rather, there have been two strong forward spurts, from spring 1971 through May 1973, and from May 1978 through early 1980. The relationship has also endured two periods of some acrimony and erosion: from the fall of 1975 to late 1976 and from mid-1980 to the effort to stabilize the relationship reflected in the communiqué on arms sales to Taiwan that was agreed in August 1982. In addition to the periods of rapid forward movement and retrogression, several periods are best portrayed through metaphors such as "plateaus" or "mixed pictures." Even the best periods were punctuated by moments of doubt and uncertainty, while the phases of deterioration were constrained by a common desire to limit the erosion and to preserve a more positive public facade than the private exchanges warranted.