Tag: US President Richard Nixon

Kissinger’s Attempt To Airbrush Nixon’s Fallacies

By Kunal Bose

The scholar, diplomat and public intellectual that the 99-year old Henry Kissinger is, has unwittingly done himself an injustice by including the disgraced US President Richard Nixon on more than one count in his recently released 528-page tome Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy. Nixon and Donald Trump will remain engaged in a competition as to who was the worst President in modern history of the United States of America. If featuring Nixon in a select group of world leaders is not a bad judgement in itself, the exacerbation of the scholar diplomat becomes complete by giving the besmirched President under whose charge happened the break-in at the Democratic Party’s National Committee headquarters a lot more space in the book than the other five leaders.

Ahead of his becoming national security adviser to President Nixon in 1969 (followed by many other assignments under Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan), Kissinger graduated summa cum laude from Harvard where he was also a faculty member. Perhaps he didn’t care, but Kissinger has never been liked by liberal Harvard professors and woke students there for his political views.

At the same time, Kissinger will not be unaware that many in the Republican Party agree with the late British author and journalist Christopher Hitchens’ description of Nixon as “duplicitous, gloating, insecure”… and “a small man who claimed to be for the little guy, but was at the service of the fat cats.” But that doesn’t stop him from confirming himself as a hagiographer as he gloats over Nixon’s “wealth of foreign policy experience,”… “his enormous appetite for information”… and his “long view.”

Such is his deference to Nixon – is it because the President’s foreign policy ideas were a mirror image of his own espousal – that Kissinger will staunchly argue to exonerate the President, on occasions going to the extent of putting the blame on his underlings, for all the wrong doings. Let’s take Watergate where the President was found complicit in break-ins in a rival party’s headquarters and all the transgressions that followed. Kissinger would say all these deserved “censure; they did not require removal from office.” Never mind, there would never be a buyer for such arguments.

Using his unique argumentative skills, Kissinger makes attempts in the book and also in a long interview with his biographer Niall Ferguson in Sunday Times to make the President appear like a victim in the Watergate case. You have Kissinger quoting Brycle Harlow, Nixon’s liaison man with Congress, in the book: “Some damn fool got into the Oval Office and did as he was told.” Developing on the point, Kissinger says: “As a general proposition, assistants owe their principals in politics not to be held to emotional statements (about) things you know they wouldn’t do on further reflection.”

Ferguson was given to understand there would be times, in the heat of the moment, or to impress present company, Nixon would give “intemperate verbal orders. But Kissinger learnt quickly not to act every time Nixon ordered him to ‘bomb the hell’ out of someone.” Kissinger’s apologia for shenanigans during Nixon Administration will be no exoneration for the President, for he alone was finally responsible for the doings of his underlings.

ALSO READ: Nixon To Trump – India’s Long Journey

The unravelling of Watergate put paid to the foreign policy ambition of Nixon-Kissinger to bring to an end the conflict in Vietnam on honourable terms, give the Atlantic alliance a new strategic direction, avoid a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union through arms control policy and highly innovatively bring the US closer to China and Russia than they were to each other. Domestic standing of the national leader will underpin foreign policy success of a government. Ferguson writes that “the Nixon that emerges from Kissinger’s Leadership” is nothing less than a “tragic figure.”

Watergate “destroyed not only his presidency but also doomed South Vietnam to destruction… It was defeat in Vietnam… that set the US on a downward spiral of political polarisation.” At this stage, it will only be pertinent to ask if a President who invited charges of perfidy should find a place in a book on role model national leaders of the last century. More appropriately, as Ferguson asks: “Isn’t he (President Nixon) a case study in how not to lead?”

Whatever that is, there has always been an intense dislike for Nixon in India for his role in the 1971 India-Pakistan war that led to the creation of Bangladesh and all the bad words he mouthed in the presence of Kissinger against prime minister Indira Gandhi, unable to withstand her regal dignity and independence. But to be fair to Kissinger, he wrote about Gandhi long after the Nixon-Gandhi frosty encounter that “Mrs Gandhi was a strong personality relentlessly pursuing India’s national interest with single-mindedness and finesse. I respected her strength even when her policies were hurtful to our national interest.” Why only India, during his Presidency, Nixon courted the wrath of liberals all over the world for his brutish foreign policies in respect of Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

The other five global leaders who walked tall in the second half of last century to find places in the book are: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher. The world is aware of the heroic role played by Adenauer and de Gaulle in reconstructing Germany and France, respectively, from the Second World War rubbles. Sadat, on his part, performed the task of erasing the humiliation that Egypt suffered in the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel. The mighty city state Singapore is the result of Lee’s vision. The spell that Thatcher cast upon Britain didn’t wear thin even when Tony Blair’s New Labour government was elected in 1997, seven years after Thatcher had to quit rather ingloriously. Both Blair and his successor Gordon Brown hosted Thatcher to tea at 10 Downing Street. In the UK, a former PM could not ask for anything more. It is well known that Kissinger and Thatcher formed a mutual admiration group well before she became PM for the first time in 1979 that ended only at her passing in April 2013.

Kissinger writes: “For Thatcher, there were no sacred cows, much less insurmountable obstacles. Every policy was up for scrutiny. It was not sufficient, she argued, for conservatives to sand down the rough edges of socialism; they had to roll back the state before Britain’s economy collapsed in catastrophic fashion… Thatcher’s economic reforms changed Britain irrevocably.” In his estimate, nothing would confirm Thatcher revolution “more than Blair’s program.” This left Thatcher immensely happy for she told her friend: “I think your analysis is the correct one, but to make one’s political opponent electable and then elected was not quite the strategy I had in mind.” No denying the fact that Thatcher lifted the British economy from morass and gave it an altogether new direction.

At the same time, she gave little space to the opposition and trade unions remained an anathema to her. No wonder intellectuals treading the middle path left of centre across the democratic world never had any love lost for the US’ most gilded diplomat and they will, therefore, have reasons to demur that Kissinger is recommending Thatcher and Lee, who would never tolerate dissent within his own party and outside as role models for the present and future leaders. Democracy prospers in an environment of healthy debate and where people in power will have no hesitation in listening to saner words of the opposition. India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru would make it a point to be present in Parliament when stalwarts from the opposition would speak. He also loved to host them over a meal.

Kissinger rightly says: “Leaders think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first between the past and the future; the second between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. It is this intuitive grasp and direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down strategy.” The tragedy, however, is Kissinger could not drive home this message to President Nixon.

From Nixon To Trump, India Has Come A Long Way

By LokMarg

The “Bass Bomb” that exploded last week may not damage the Americans, even Indian Americans, as they prepare to vote in the United States’ presidential elections, come November 3, when incumbent Donald Trump has staked his all for a second term.

The ‘bomb’ is in the shape of confirmation of what is known about how the American leadership of 1971 – President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger – enforced their ‘tilt’ against India and favouring Pakistan, fully aware that the latter was ‘cleansing’ East Pakistan of ‘rebels’ who had voted overwhelmingly against the west-wing.

The duo thought India had contrived or encouraged the flow of ten million-plus refugees. With China factor looming large – Pakistan had facilitated the reach-out to Beijing – the two condoned one of the grimmest man-made disasters, and invited their own diplomatic one, that the last century’s cold war had witnessed.

What is new are official details contained in White House tapes, now declassified and acquired by Prof. Gary J Bass of the Princeton University. They unmistakably paint the two in darkest colours. As they worked their South Asia policy, they frequently engaged in racist remarks and misogyny targeting Indians in general, especially then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, calling them names.

What we know are the un-bleeped, or less-bleeped taped conversations. Should one be surprised at Trump’s racism and misogyny (he is not alone) in the current electoral discourse? It shatters the image the Americans and their successive leaderships have wanted to cultivate of them being the world’s greatest democrats.

The Bass confirmations, rather than revelations, may not impact Trump who may win. Analysts who predict this, in the same breath, disapprove of him and his policies. They point to his improving his position in the presidential race precisely for the type of racism and misogyny that his peers had engaged in the 1970s.

Analysts predict a likely Trump victory even as they criticise his turning a thriving economy into a jobless one and his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic that has killed more Americans than the two World Wars. Not just the Americans, much of the world today is witnessing strange times, of being ruled by right-wing demagogues.

It would thus be naïve to think that the American voter will be influenced by a diplomatic disasters that occurred nearly half-a-century back. As elsewhere, foreign policy does not impact American elections.

Equally, the Indian American numbers matter but marginally, be it for partly-Indian Kamala Harris, the running mate of Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden, or for Trump who did make a bee-line to India, especially Gujarat, being hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While showing Americans the mirror, Bass’ account painfully reminds of the Americans’ low esteem when the Indians’ rush to California was gathering momentum in the 1970s and even later, in the 1980s. They can look back with some satisfaction of having done well in the last three decades. Whether they will retain their traditional Democratic preference or vote with “Howdy Modi” will need watching.

ALSO READ: From Howdy Modi To Kem Chho Trump

Of course, India is no longer the US’ Cold War adversary. Four million Indians, many of them prosperous and many related to India’s policy-making elite, enjoying visa preference over others, study and work there. The two are tied in a strategic partnership that has significantly altered geopolitics of the region well beyond South Asia.

For Indians at home, who have seen many American presidents and many premiers of their own, the “Bass bomb” could revive a measure of anti-American feelings. The Indian political class of that era, it needs reminding, was united in its criticism of the US and had wholeheartedly welcomed Bangladesh’ emergence. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, at least, had called Indira goddess ‘Durga’. The argumentative Indian was never so united – and never since.

The Bass account draws a positive picture of Indira when the Congress party she once led is at its lowest and she and her entire family are being systematically vilified. Will the party want to dwell on her 1971 role, and to what effect, in the face of the hostile Modi/media/middle class juggernaut?

Did Nixon-Kissinger know enough Indians before calling them, among other names, ‘bastards’ and wondered how Indian women “sexless and pathetic people reproduce in large numbers?” Kissinger called Indians “superb flatterers” whose “great skill” was to “suck up to people in key positions”. It is not worth exploring.

ALSO READ: The Future Of America

Some explanation for their personal peeves and prejudices is, however, available from the account of Maharaj Krishna Rasgotra, whom Indira sent as envoy to the US and was later India’s Foreign Secretary. He had met Kissinger in 1969 in the first few weeks of reaching Washington.

In his 2016 book A Life in Diplomacy, he quotes Indira as saying before posting him: “Richard Nixon means trouble for India. He dislikes India and he hates me.” The ‘hatred’, it turned out, was mutual.

For Nixon and Kissinger, often used to dictators grovelling at their feet – Pakistan’s General Yahya khan was a ‘friend’ — “it was a novel and unpleasant experience to be defied by an Asian leader”, one who led the world’s largest democracy. “In their frustration, Nixon and Kissinger heaped insults and abuses on the Indian prime minister,” writes Rasgotra whose overall worldview shows no anti-US bias.

How did Indira respond? “She bore all that with unwonted sang froid, but left no doubt in her talks with Nixon in 1971, that Pakistan’s pushing ten million of its nationals into India was tantamount to an aggression on her country and would be dealt with as such. She ignored their threats of aid cuts and made it clear that if the US were to embark on a course of hostility, she would live with that too and explore other options.”

Although India received food under American Law PL480, it was no ‘Banana Republic’. Mind you, by that time in August, India had already signed the Peace and Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union. The US was blind to its likely implications. Nixon relied on Kissinger’s doctrine about establishing ‘linkages’ of bringing in China if Pakistan was in trouble. That never happened. Today, when Pakistan’s economy is dovetailed into Chinese, Trump wants to ‘help’ India against Chinese border incursions. Times have changed.

Rasgotra recalls: “Henry knew (and so did President Nixon) that their policy was in shambles. There were rumours in Washington that Dr Kissinger was in a state of deep depression and that for three or four days, even President Nixon had shunned him.”

Till she lived, Indira never uttered a word about the duo’s ill-treatment. She showed what she and India could do in December 1971. She is no more. Nixon, who had to leave the White House in disgrace over Watergate Scandal, is dead.

Kissinger is around. He has repeatedly apologised. He has visited India and interacted with Indians. Hopefully, he has changed his views of them. Even Bass records that Kissinger may have just echoed Nixon’s prejudices probably without really believing in them.

Rasgotra, who admires Kissinger – nonagenarians both, he is a year younger — records that the latter, at one of their meetings, insisted that he was “not anti-India”. “I let that pass,” Rasgotra concludes.

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com