Informed Speculation

The Bush Doctrine may have stumbled badly in Iraq – though the ultimate outcome of that intervention has yet to be determined – but it least it’s based on idealism rather than cynicism. Some see that as a flaw – but those who would return to the realpolitik that dominated the Cold War era need look no further than the latest unsavory revelation relating to Henry Kissinger to disabuse themselves of that desire.

Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops — even as the war to drive back the communists dragged on with mounting deaths.

President Nixon’s envoy told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, “If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.”

Kissinger’s blunt remarks surfaced in a collection of papers from his years of diplomacy released Friday by George Washington University’s National Security Archive. The collection was gathered from documents available at the government’s National Archives and obtained through the research group’s declassification requests.

The notion of Americans dying for nothing has always been a potent one for anti-war advocates – and “nothing” is usually in the eye of the beholder. In the case of Vietnam, at least during the Nixon Administration, the historical record increasingly appears to support the allegation.

This latest revelation only adds to a body of evidence that begins with the overtures made by the Nixon campaign during the 1968 election, when the South Vietnamese were assured they would get a better shake under the Republicans, and promptly withdrew from the Paris Peace Talks in a self-fulfulling policy of failure.

More than the ‘two-bit burglary’ of Watergate, and its subsequent revelations of constitutional abuses in the name of paranoia, the most shameful legacy of the Nixon Administration is the thousands of additional names that were added to the Vietnam Memorial in an effort to get right back where we started in 1968.

The danger in Iraq is not that we lose – every war, even when conducted by the world’s only remaining superpower, has that possibility from the outset. The danger is that we lose for nothing. That is why we must pressure the Iraqis to defeat, disband, and disarm the militias and centralize power under the new goverment with every carrot and stick at our disposal. If the thousands of deaths result in nothing more than a power vacuum in the heart of the Middle East, then we will have lost under any definition.

Basic security is the biggest problem facing Iraq at the moment, and only a strong police and military presence that answers strictly to the central government can provide it. Factionalism is a part of democracy – but factionalism with armed might behind it is a prescription for anarchy. The Iraqis must resolve their tribal differences at the ballot box, and they’ve made a good start at it…but it all comes back to the militias.

Iran is doing its part to ensure that Iraq’s government fails, as stories like this show all too clearly. If Iran wants the U.S. to come to the negotiating table, they can start by ending their support of the militias through weapons, training, and intelligence – and by meeting the inspection demands of the IAEA. Here is an opportunity under the guise of a threat – and yet another basis for adopting a hard line towards Tehran…