Has America Bitten onto More than it Can Chew by Taking on Russia and China Simultaneously
(And 3 huge examples of how hard-nosed, aggressive American foreign policy has paradoxically helped America’s enemies)
By
David Gottfried
The title of this essay poses a question with an obvious answer: America may have bitten onto more than it can chew by challenging Russia over Ukraine and China over Taiwan. Since Russia has fared so miserably in battling Ukraine, one might think the winning bets are with America. However, wars often turn out in a manner that is diametrically opposed to the preceding war. America did wonderfully in World War Two, and then, puffed up with pride, did poorly in Korea and Vietnam. Russia did hideously battling Finland in 1939 and 1940, but then proved to be among history’s most valiant fighters when it massacred the Wehrmacht. So much of war is dependent on chance and variables that most combatants have barely begun to perceive. A few things, however, seem certain: Our actions will tend to enhance Sino-Russian cohesion, amity and strategic planning which may do us harm. When Hitler invaded Russia, after having gone to War with England, he united the capitalist West and the Communist East against him. America may be making the very same mistake that Hitler made.
Of course, what I said in the immediately preceding paragraph is really quite obvious, and this newsletter was not conceived to propagate obvious, tiresome points. I am not here to reiterate the boring conventional wisdom or the canned and crappy commentary of our brain-dead political discourse.
And in this era in which Democrats have discovered their inner Joe Mc Carthy, and are chomping at the bit for a battle against China and Russia, I think the following idea is quite timely:
On three occasions, since World War Two, American policies which were considered aggressive, hard-nosed and guaranteed to boost American power actually made America weaker and boosted the power of America’s enemies. Hence, we ought to think a little bit more before we start shooting.
1) American cold warriors were unanimous in their desire to help Islamic militants defeat the Russians in Afghanistan. And our help bequeathed 9/11.
American cold warriors always knew that we should always fight the Russians. Just as Neville Chamberlain let Hitler take the Sudetenland because he hoped that Hitler could march east and attack Russia, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were salivating for the slaughter of Soviets at the hands of half-crazed Islamic militants. (Footnote 1)
America did not really give a damn that those Islamic militants often spouted genocidal and fascistic nonsense. America was wedded to the age old and simplistic theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And the big boys in Washington, who always knew that America could be defended with blistering aggression, and was ready to shoot even if it hadn’t determined whom we should shoot and who was the bigger enemy, decided that those nice boys in white sheets, let by Osama Bin Ladin, were our boys. After Reagen gave them shoulder-fired missiles which brought down Soviet aircraft, Osama’s boys conquered Afghanistan.
After Osama and the Taliban seized Afghanistan, they were intoxicated with delusions of grandeur. They fancied themselves successors to Saladin (Who conquered Christian holdings, in what is today Israel, that had been seized by the Crusaders) and were ready to rebuild the Caliphate.
They reasoned that since they had smitten the Russians, they would know bring down America and not let a trivial issue, such as American support in their fight against Russia, get in the way of their glorious jihad against the decadent United States.
And thus sayeth Osama Bin Ladin: there shall be 9/11
And 9/11 led to a spate of terrorist attacks throughout the world
And 9/11 led to our unjustified attack on Iraq.
And our destruction of Iraq led, ineluctably, to the ascendance of Iraq’s historical enemy, Iran.
And today Iran is on the verge of attaining the capacity to set off thermonuclear detonations and challenge America’s interests throughout the Levant
And the preceding parade of horrors would never have occurred if we had let the Soviet Union dominate Afghanistan, a nation on Russia’s border that had been dominated by Russia for decades. Under Soviet rule, women were doctors, the people had a healthy array of goods and services, and Afghanistan was relatively peaceful. Of course, the Islamic militants considered the Soviets evil incarnate. But why did our defense establishment decide to bow to the moral compass of Muslim Malcontents.
Of course, liberal democrats, who did not want to help the Islamic fundamentalists, were deemed pussies who were afraid to be tough and wanted to sell out freedom. I suppose the manly far right considers the Taliban a fount for human freedom.
2) By Fighting the Communists in Vietnam, we made the Communists stronger
In October 1972, when I was fifteen, I was reading an article in the Sunday New York Times. The article said that most policy and political experts agreed that both the Soviet Union and The Peoples Republic of China hoped that Richard Nixon would win the Presidential elections of November 1972.
I had trouble understanding this. Richard Nixon was running against George Mc Govern. Richard Nixon wanted to continue fighting the communists in Vietnam and the whole of Indochina. George Mc Govern wanted to withdraw. China and the Soviet Union backed their communist proxies in Indochina. It seemed to be a given that Richard Nixon, the diehard anti-communist and fervent bomber of Indochina, would be hated by Russia and China.
But then again the whole of 1972 was strange. In the beginning of the 1972, North Vietnam launched yet another Tet offensive. America retaliated with increased bombing. America proceeded to mine Haiphong Harbor, and the media told us that Russia would definitely cancel a summit meeting with Nixon if the United States mined Haiphong Harbor. Nevertheless, the summit meeting was not cancelled. Why was Russia being so good to Richard Nixon, the biggest anti-communist in American politics.
Fast forward to 1975: The pro American government in Saigon falls. The Communist have complete control over all of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
The greatest victory of the communists gave them their greatest defeat.
When America bombed Vietnam, and the Vietcong were a ferocious bunch of sometimes half-starved men whose uniforms were torn shorts, communist revolution was a noble cause that glimmered like gold, and from the slums of Hong Kong to the finest salons of Paris, communism was having a field day, its image ennobled by the savagery of America indiscriminately bombing both North and South Vietnam and also Laos and Cambodia.
Now that the communists did not have Americans to fight, they proceeded to kill each other.
The communist movement was split down the middle between pro Chinese and pro-Russian communists. When America bombed the region, and napalmed the villages, the Sino-Soviet split was muted.
After America was gone, pro-Soviet forces and pro Chinese forces went on a killing spree that even seemed to surpass the orgiastic murdering rampages of the Sunni-Shiite split that rent the Muslim world.
Pro Chinese Cambodia, rule by the tyrant and lunatic Pol Pot, was invaded by Pro Soviet Vietnam. Actually, Vietnam’s invasion made some humanitarian sense as Pol Pot was murdering a huge proportion of his people. However, in large measure Vietnam invaded Cambodia because Vietnam was a client of the Soviet Union and, as such, was obligated to make war on pro Chinese states.
After Vietnam vanquished Cambodia, China decided to give Vietnam a whipping. I will never forget the News reports in January 1979: The foreign ministry of China said that it had to “punish” Vietnam and “teach it a lesson.” Very simply, it invaded Vietnam
Shortly thereafter, in, I think, the Spring of 1979, the Russians and the Chinese went on full nuclear alerts and enormous armies massed along their very long border. Professors I had known, who had been active in foreign policy, told me that they thought there was a substantial risk of a nuclear war between China and Russia.
(One year later, in 1980, Ronald Reagen defeated Jimmy Carter on the grounds that Carter was a pussy for not bombing the shit out of Iran – and if had bombed Iran our hostages would have been killed. Reaganites had no memory of the inter-communist aggressions of 1979 and did not recall that at least Jimmy Carter never took us to the edge of a nuclear nightmare)
There was no nuclear war between Russia and China. However, from Paris to Hong Kong to Berkley to Morningside Heights, socialist revolution had lost is luster and elan vital. The posters of Che Guevera were retired, and leftist revolution become but a glowing, glorious memory. In a few years, Asia’s selfless, brave fighters became frantic, back-stabbing businessmen and workers whose lifework was the sale of ever-increasing tons of plastic and electronic junk to the West.
3) Just as certainly as the night follows the evening, our destruction of Iraq led to the exaltation of a much more dangerous power: The ancient power of Persian Iran.
Last night, I listened, once again, to the movie, “All the President’s Man,” which portrayed the Watergate break-in and the Washington Post’s gallant fight to illuminate the truth. At one point in the movie, Deep Throat says to Bob Woodword, “The fact of the matter is they aren’t a bunch of very bright guys.”
For one reason or another, the White House usually decides to give us images of John Wayne steeliness and made for the movies macho instead of intelligence.
Didn’t any of the a-holes in the Bush Whitehouse know a damn thing about Iran and Iraq.
They are the successors of Persia and Babylon, respectively, and their hatred for one another is as ancient as the hostility between the children of Isaac (The Jews) and the children of Ishmael (the Arabs)
Iran, the successor to Persia, has always been more dangerous and potent. It is a larger state, with a longer and more glorious history, and the intellectual achievements of Persia exceed those of Iraq-Babylon (Although in comparison with the ancestors of the guys in the Bush white house, who spent classical antiquity in European caves, the Babylonian cats aren’t doing too bad).
After the area converted to Islam, Babylon-Iraq became Sunni, and Persia-Iran became Shiite. Of course, a religious schism is always good for ten or more centuries of sadistic slaughter, and the religious boys in white sheets milked their religious difference for all the splenetic sickness it was worth. According to an article in the very liberal “New Yorker” Magazine, Shiite killers often did not believe it was sufficient to merely kill a Sunni; they preferred to drill huge holes in their heads with power tools.
In any event, after 9/11, the Bush white house wanted to make a big splash some place. When Dick Clarke suggested that we should concentrate on Afghanistan, where Osama Bin Ladin was located and whose government backed Osama, Dick Rumsfeld said that Afghanistan had a shortage of good targets because it was such a desolate, preindustrial backwater. The place to make a splash was Iraq.
And Iraq not only had no affiliation with the 9/11 attacks. It was also Iran’s nemesis. When Iraq’s power was destroyed, Iranian power was unbound and surging, and Iran always posed more of a danger to our allies than Iraq.
If we hadn’t destroyed Iraqi power, Iran and Iraq would be doing what they had always done: harassing each other and neither nation would be in a position to give us, or our allies, much grief.
Footnote 1: I am sorry if this comment appears hyperbolic or ethnocentric, but I cannot cut my conscience to fit this year’s cowardly politically correct fashions. (Thank you, Lillian Hellman) I read an article in the New Yorker which noted that in some places in the Levant bands of Muslims were killing guys who sold ice and men who worked in air conditioning and refrigeration. Why? Because refrigeration did not exist at the time of the prophet Muhammed. Don’t tell me they are not crazy.