Yes, America quarrels with its allies. And worse than that: it has a history of abandoning them. The parallels between Ukraine and South Vietnam come to mind, two regimes encouraged by the US to fight an invader – at an enormous cost in money and human lives – and then abandoned by it.
By Tim STANLEY
A common reaction to that infamous Trump/Zelensky press conference is: “We’ve never seen anything like this before.” The key word is “seen.” Clashes and demonstrative departures happen in diplomacy, but the difference is that Donald Trump does in public what usually happens behind closed doors. One example: in 2022, NBC reported that Joe Biden had spoken to Zelensky on the phone about a $1 billion aid package, and when Zelensky started asking for more, the US president “lost his patience” and told him to show more gratitude.
So, yes, America quarrels with its allies. And worse than that: it has a history of abandoning them. The analogy between Ukraine and South Vietnam comes to mind, two regimes encouraged by the US to fight an invader – at an enormous cost in money and human lives – and then abandoned.
America’s commitment to Vietnam was much greater (it lost some 58,000 soldiers trying to drive out the Viet Cong), and Richard Nixon, unlike Trump, tried to shore up his ally through devastating bombing. But Nixon had promised his voters peace, and in December 1972, his administration proposed terms to South Vietnamese President Thieu. If you want to understand how diplomacy really works, read the transcripts of Nixon’s conversations with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Thieu, it seems, rejected a peace deal that was too favorable to the Viet Cong; Kissinger called him “a self-serving bastard,” “a criminal,” and “crazy.” He suggested cutting off economic and military aid to Thieu and making him a “Diem” – a reference to the 1963 coup that ended with the assassination of one of Thieu’s predecessors, Ngo Dinh Diem.
Henry and Dick Nixon were discussing the assassination of an ally, but that was part of the job. To maintain the facade of support, they decided to bomb the Viet Cong some more—then offered ceasefire terms that were clearly unfavorable to their ally. “We bombed them until they accepted our concessions,” Kissinger explained. Thieu was left with only a promise of continued US funding—a kind of backup guarantee—but the US Congress, including a young Joe Biden, quickly voted to turn off the tap.
South Vietnam fell in 1975. Some American politicians opposed accepting Vietnamese refugees with almost as much vitriol as Trump does today. A decade later, Biden applied the same method of withdrawal to Afghanistan, believing that voters were tired of building democracy in distant lands.
All foreign policy is, at its core, domestic policy. And rightly so. Presidents are elected to represent Ohio and Alabama, not Kabul or Kiev, and as circumstances change, it would be foolish to perpetuate a failed policy. What confuses foreigners about America is that its ideals are universal – “all men are created equal,” etc. So it often sounds as if the US is acting out of benevolence.
“We will pay any price,” said John F. Kennedy, “we will confront any enemy to ensure the survival and success of freedom.” (Ironically, the coup against Diem occurred under his leadership.) Historian Mark White, in his recent book, “Icon, Libertine, Leader,” suggests that Kennedy truly believed that phrase, that he came into office inspired by his generals and the novels of Ian Fleming. He approved a disastrous invasion of Cuba and, most likely, some plans to assassinate Fidel Castro. His strategy probably alarmed the Soviets and gave them a pretext to send nuclear missiles to Cuba in 1962, bringing us closer to World War III than ever before. Some argue that Kennedy’s diplomacy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, brilliant as it was, defused a crisis that he himself had helped create.
Trump would have been 16 during this period. Does he remember it? Most people of my generation have no memory of living under the fear of a nuclear exchange, but it has shaped their attitudes toward Russia for a generation – and Trump often mentions these risks. That is why he is hesitant to provide security guarantees to a country outside NATO, which puts him on the line of non-intervention during the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Today, it is taken for granted that Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO if it wants to, but even in 1998, when senators were discussing NATO expansion, politicians of a less utopian era warned against “teasing the Russian bear”.
As for Trump’s apparent liking for Putin, even Harry Truman, the wisest American president, wrote in his diary: “I can deal with Stalin. He is honest – but smart as the devil.”
That didn’t stop him from defending Europe or Korea when the communists attacked, but the point is that politicians can be influenced, impressed, fooled, or irritated by choices as small as not wearing a tie. While many historians agree that Trump is unprecedented, some might conclude that he is the most American president we have ever had—his defining characteristic is transparency. The press conference audience was shocked by his volatility, but when he said “you don’t have any cards in your hand,” he was expressing the way countless American administrations have treated smaller countries.
The reason British policy is based solely on trying to persuade the US to support our objectives is because the Americans once undermined Britain’s ability to act as an independent power. They made the destruction of the British Empire an implicit condition for their support during World War II.
The US insisted on creating a unipolar world – and now complains that it has to oversee it almost single-handedly. Ironic. (The Telegraph)
