Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 4,379
and look what happened to the protagonist
"..Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Richard Nixon, Watergate and leaving office in disgrace be damned.
But the president has taken his tribute act to new levels in threatening to erase Iran as a civilization, only to step back from the brink when the Tehran regime agreed – at a price – to reopen the economically vital strait of Hormuz.
The template is Nixon’s “madman theory” of diplomatic engagement – shorthand for prompting your adversaries to doubt your sanity and mental instability to the point where they are intimidated into otherwise unlikely concessions.
Nixon expounded on the idea to his future White House chief of staff Bob Haldeman in the incongruous setting of a walk on the beach beside the Pacific Ocean in 1968 before he was elected president, suggesting it might end the war in Vietnam.
“I call it ‘the madman theory’, Bob,” he told Haldeman, as recounted by Anthony Summers in The Arrogance of Power, published in 2000. “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 Nixon is obsessed about communists. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry – and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ – and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two weeks begging for peace.”
It was a theme Nixon returned to several times in the years that followed, instructing aides to communicate to Soviet officials that their boss was “somewhat crazy” and “capable of the bloodiest brutality”. Some felt little exaggeration or invention was necessary.
In 1972, with war in Vietnam still raging despite Nixon’s affectations of madness, he told Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, that he wanted to use nuclear weapons against the communist north.
“I’m going to destroy the goddamn country, believe me?” he said. Later, he said to Kissinger: “I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?”
“That, I think, would just be too much,” replied Kissinger only to be told that he was “so goddamned concerned with civilians”.
Evidence that Nixon’s insane posturing was a productive instrument of diplomacy is patchy at best.
His approach to Moscow produced a period of detente in US-Soviet relations that led to the signing of two arms-control treaties.
But applying the tactic to Vietnam culminated in a ferocious bombing onslaught against Hanoi and other targets in the Christmas period of 1972 to destroy vital infrastructure and bring the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. The result was a peace treaty whose terms, critics argued, were roughly the same as those agreed to before the bombing.
Some suggested that Nixon’s dalliance with madness extended beyond the theoretical; Summers’s book records that the president’s psychiatrist of more than 40 years expressed concern that he “might not be the right man to have his finger on the nuclear trigger”.
www.theguardian.com
comrade stalin
moscow
"..Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Richard Nixon, Watergate and leaving office in disgrace be damned.
But the president has taken his tribute act to new levels in threatening to erase Iran as a civilization, only to step back from the brink when the Tehran regime agreed – at a price – to reopen the economically vital strait of Hormuz.
The template is Nixon’s “madman theory” of diplomatic engagement – shorthand for prompting your adversaries to doubt your sanity and mental instability to the point where they are intimidated into otherwise unlikely concessions.
Nixon expounded on the idea to his future White House chief of staff Bob Haldeman in the incongruous setting of a walk on the beach beside the Pacific Ocean in 1968 before he was elected president, suggesting it might end the war in Vietnam.
“I call it ‘the madman theory’, Bob,” he told Haldeman, as recounted by Anthony Summers in The Arrogance of Power, published in 2000. “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 Nixon is obsessed about communists. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry – and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ – and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two weeks begging for peace.”
It was a theme Nixon returned to several times in the years that followed, instructing aides to communicate to Soviet officials that their boss was “somewhat crazy” and “capable of the bloodiest brutality”. Some felt little exaggeration or invention was necessary.
In 1972, with war in Vietnam still raging despite Nixon’s affectations of madness, he told Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, that he wanted to use nuclear weapons against the communist north.
“I’m going to destroy the goddamn country, believe me?” he said. Later, he said to Kissinger: “I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?”
“That, I think, would just be too much,” replied Kissinger only to be told that he was “so goddamned concerned with civilians”.
Evidence that Nixon’s insane posturing was a productive instrument of diplomacy is patchy at best.
His approach to Moscow produced a period of detente in US-Soviet relations that led to the signing of two arms-control treaties.
But applying the tactic to Vietnam culminated in a ferocious bombing onslaught against Hanoi and other targets in the Christmas period of 1972 to destroy vital infrastructure and bring the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. The result was a peace treaty whose terms, critics argued, were roughly the same as those agreed to before the bombing.
Some suggested that Nixon’s dalliance with madness extended beyond the theoretical; Summers’s book records that the president’s psychiatrist of more than 40 years expressed concern that he “might not be the right man to have his finger on the nuclear trigger”.
Trump may be using Nixon’s ‘madman theory’ – and similar infamy may await
Nixon’s Vietnam strategy appears at play in Trump’s Iran threats, but he may want to ponder the ex-president’s fate
comrade stalin
moscow
