This is the best and most detailed overview I've found anywhere. I'm a bit biased because I've thought all along that Biden was trying to keep the lid on a situation that both sides (to some degree) wanted to explode. The denial by critics of Israel that a discipline called Diplomacy exists bothers me almost as much as Israel's blind faith in brute force as a solution to their dilemma.
Wow, thanks. Foer's piece is extraordinary, though I think he hides some of the patterns from himself by an approach that's too strictly chronological (unpacking it in just a slightly different way is what's taking me so long).
I think you may be taking the image he crafted for himself in the 1980s, rehabilitating himself as a gray eminence instead of a criminal, too seriously. As president, he certainly didn't know enough about Vietnam or China, though with China that wasn't a disaster. The Machiavellianism was more supplied by Kissinger, who was extraordinarily dominant, and Nixon mostly did as Kissinger told him.
Especially with all the African and Latin American dictatorships, I don't think he understood Kissinger's point but remained the simple-minded anti-communist he'd been in the 1950s.
Nixon always styled himself a player in the Great Game, and no doubt Kissinger's superpower of sucking up to power played a role in convincing Nixon he was in control of all the pieces on the board. I think Nixon deserves more than "simple-minded anti-communist", though that was his foot in the door. His chess moves were heavy-handed, but he had the wit to understand an alliance with China was possible and had some advantages for the US against Russia, the "real problem" at the time despite the echos of the howls about who lost China. Given the world he came up in, that was a huge leap of faith.
The “leap of faith” argument is different from the “he was the most sophisticated” argument, and contradicts it. Obviously Nixon dropped his traditional anti-communism with regard to China but clung to it with regard to Angola, Zaire, and Chile instead of trying to learn anything about those countries. As your scare quotes acknowledge, USSR wasn’t the “real problem”. How Nixon “styled himself” is the point—his foreign policy expertise was his (and Kissinger’s) invention.
Yeah I think he very much saw Statesmanship more or less exclusively in terms of Great Power status competition, in which those places you name were not places where real people lived. Not people that a Great Power Statesman was obligated to take into account anyway.
Speaking as a student of the arms race and the arsenals it produced. Nixon did not "remain the simple-minded anticommunist" from the '50s. He recognized that the Soviet Union was not going away, and that constantly upgrading the Doomsday Machine was not a tenable way forward. I mean yes, he never stopped being anticommunist. But he recognized there were limits.
He (and Kissinger) could be monumentally dumb. Like for example failing to anticipate what the world would look like after the Russians followed American suit and put MIRVs on their missiles. Scrupfairly the MIRV program for Minuteman would have been something inherited from LBJ, but I think that when they saw the consequences of deploying it, both Kissinger and Nixon learned some things that your modal movement conservative is not capable of grasping.
Nixon was a pretty bright guy, I think, in terms of "he would have scored high on a verbal IQ test" sort of way, and he was not totally ignorant of history.
Of course another R President who was a Pretty Bright Guy was Hoover, and after 4 years of him America was ready to deny another R a shot at the job for 30 years.
I'm begging you to understand that the meaning of the sentence includes all of its words, starting with "with all the African and Latin American dictatorships". Obviously his attitude as president to USSR and China (not to mention Hanoi) was very different from the 1950s.
The missus always said every time anyone suggested that a glimmer of hope for peace was on the horizon her Lebanese dad would exclaim "The Arabs would never allow peace to break out! Never! They can't even keep peace among themselves!"
This is the best and most detailed overview I've found anywhere. I'm a bit biased because I've thought all along that Biden was trying to keep the lid on a situation that both sides (to some degree) wanted to explode. The denial by critics of Israel that a discipline called Diplomacy exists bothers me almost as much as Israel's blind faith in brute force as a solution to their dilemma.
Wow, thanks. Foer's piece is extraordinary, though I think he hides some of the patterns from himself by an approach that's too strictly chronological (unpacking it in just a slightly different way is what's taking me so long).
" ... I found myself wondering if it wasn't because of the Saudi-Israeli negotiations that the Hamas organization had done the thing they did; ..."
Always my suspicion, too: the extremists on both sides will do anything to stop a compromise that the middle 80-90% would be happy to live with.
> the best informed foreign policy president since Franklin Roosevelt's third term
Hmm. Richard Nixon was pretty well-informed. It's just that he was so straightforwardly Machiavellian in his overall program.
I think you may be taking the image he crafted for himself in the 1980s, rehabilitating himself as a gray eminence instead of a criminal, too seriously. As president, he certainly didn't know enough about Vietnam or China, though with China that wasn't a disaster. The Machiavellianism was more supplied by Kissinger, who was extraordinarily dominant, and Nixon mostly did as Kissinger told him.
Especially with all the African and Latin American dictatorships, I don't think he understood Kissinger's point but remained the simple-minded anti-communist he'd been in the 1950s.
Nixon always styled himself a player in the Great Game, and no doubt Kissinger's superpower of sucking up to power played a role in convincing Nixon he was in control of all the pieces on the board. I think Nixon deserves more than "simple-minded anti-communist", though that was his foot in the door. His chess moves were heavy-handed, but he had the wit to understand an alliance with China was possible and had some advantages for the US against Russia, the "real problem" at the time despite the echos of the howls about who lost China. Given the world he came up in, that was a huge leap of faith.
The “leap of faith” argument is different from the “he was the most sophisticated” argument, and contradicts it. Obviously Nixon dropped his traditional anti-communism with regard to China but clung to it with regard to Angola, Zaire, and Chile instead of trying to learn anything about those countries. As your scare quotes acknowledge, USSR wasn’t the “real problem”. How Nixon “styled himself” is the point—his foreign policy expertise was his (and Kissinger’s) invention.
Yeah I think he very much saw Statesmanship more or less exclusively in terms of Great Power status competition, in which those places you name were not places where real people lived. Not people that a Great Power Statesman was obligated to take into account anyway.
That’s so entirely Kissinger’s whole shtik though. Literally his PhD.
Speaking as a student of the arms race and the arsenals it produced. Nixon did not "remain the simple-minded anticommunist" from the '50s. He recognized that the Soviet Union was not going away, and that constantly upgrading the Doomsday Machine was not a tenable way forward. I mean yes, he never stopped being anticommunist. But he recognized there were limits.
He (and Kissinger) could be monumentally dumb. Like for example failing to anticipate what the world would look like after the Russians followed American suit and put MIRVs on their missiles. Scrupfairly the MIRV program for Minuteman would have been something inherited from LBJ, but I think that when they saw the consequences of deploying it, both Kissinger and Nixon learned some things that your modal movement conservative is not capable of grasping.
Nixon was a pretty bright guy, I think, in terms of "he would have scored high on a verbal IQ test" sort of way, and he was not totally ignorant of history.
Of course another R President who was a Pretty Bright Guy was Hoover, and after 4 years of him America was ready to deny another R a shot at the job for 30 years.
I'm begging you to understand that the meaning of the sentence includes all of its words, starting with "with all the African and Latin American dictatorships". Obviously his attitude as president to USSR and China (not to mention Hanoi) was very different from the 1950s.
Speaking as a student of the arsenals I beg in turn to be excused for a preoccupation with the US-Soviet aspect of things.
It certainly matters.
The missus always said every time anyone suggested that a glimmer of hope for peace was on the horizon her Lebanese dad would exclaim "The Arabs would never allow peace to break out! Never! They can't even keep peace among themselves!"