The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama - Softcover

Colodny, Len Vary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1634240561 ISBN 13: 9781634240567

Verlag: TRINE DAY, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

This groundbreaking book chronicles the little-understood evolution of the neoconservative movement'from its birth as a rogue insurgency in the Nixon White House through its ascent to full and controversial control of America's foreign policy in the Bush years. In eye-opening detail, The Forty Years War documents the neocons' four-decade campaign to seize the reins of American foreign policy: the undermining of Richard Nixon's outreach to the Communist bloc nations; the success at halting détente during the Ford and Carter years; the uneasy but effectual alliance with Ronald Reagan; and the determined, and ultimately successful, campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein'no matter the cost.

Drawing upon recently declassified documents, hundreds of hours of interviews, and long-obscured White House tapes, The Forty Years War delves into the political and intellectual development of some of the most fascinating political figures of the last four decades. It describes the complex, three-way relationship of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Alexander Haig, and unravels the actions of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz over the course of seven presidencies. And it reveals the role of the mysterious Pentagon official Fritz Kraemer, a monocle-wearing German expatriate whose unshakable faith in military power, distrust of diplomacy, moralistic faith in American goodness, and warnings against 'provocative weakness' made him the hidden geopolitical godfather of the neocon movement. The authors' insights into Kraemer's influence on the neocons'will change the public understanding of the conduct of government in our time.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Len Colodny co-wrote Silent Coup: The Removal of a President with Robert Gettlin. Tom Shachtman is an American author, journalist, filmmaker, and educator. He has published more than thirty-five books across a variety of topics, including histories, biographies, and books for children. He lives in Connecticut.

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The Forty Years War

The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama

By Len Colodny, Tom Shachtman

Trine Day LLC

Copyright © 2015 Len Colodny
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-63424-056-7

Contents

Cover, 
Title page, 
Copyright page, 
Dedication, 
Epigraph, 
Foreword by Roger Morris, 
2016 Update – The Forty Years War: Now 48 Years and Counting, 
Prologue – Is This the Beginning of the End of the Neocons?, 
Book One – Opposing Nixon, 
Section I – The Road to China, 
1) Nixon's Foreign Policy Dreams, 
2) The Anti-Nixon, 
3) Sending Signals, 
4) Young Men in a Hurry, 
5) "Actual or Feigned", 
6) Cambodia and Echo, 
7) Crises Expose Fissures, 
8) Approaching the Zenith, 
Section II – Undermining the Presidency, 
9) Making Allies into Enemies, 
10) "A Federal Offense of the Highest Order", 
11) "Three out of Three, Mr. President", 
12) A Meeting of Mind-Sets, 
13) Actions and Reactions, 
Section III – The Haig Administration, 
14) Three Quick Strikes, 
15) Nullifying Nixon, 
16) Protecting the Flanks, 
17) Endgame, 
Book Two – The Triumph Of The Neocons, 
Section IV – The Post-Nixon Years, 
18) A Short Honeymoon, 
19) Yielding to the Right, 
20) Primary Battles, 
21) The Carter Interregnum, 
Section V – The Reagan Evolution, 
22) Fits and Starts, 
23) The High Tide of Anti-Communism, and After, 
24) Not Going to Baghdad, 
25) The Post — Cold War Dilemma, 
Section VI – Full Power, 
26) Neocons Versus Clinton, 
27) From Candidate to Bush 43, 
28) The Neocon Hour of Triumph, 
29) The Cheney Regency, 
30) Losing Power, 
Epilogue – Foreign Affairs and the Election of 2008, 
Acknowledgments, 
Notes, 
Selected Bibliography, 
Contents, 
Landmarks, 

CHAPTER 1

Nixon's Foreign Policy Dreams

All American presidents, as they enter office, have big dreams. Some approach the presidency wanting to alter the social structure of the country. Richard M. Nixon wanted to change the international alignment of nations. His blueprint for American foreign policy entailed radical changes to the status quo based on what he considered a realistic assessment of the world. He was planning to pursue détente with America's main Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union; to bring about a rapprochement with "Red China," the People's Republic of China, a country that for decades he had pushed the United States to isolate from world affairs; and to negotiate a quick settlement to the war in Vietnam, a war he had supported from the sidelines and had repeatedly urged the U.S. government to win on the battlefield. Nixon's foreign policy dreams had been in formation for a decade. They affected how he ran his campaign, how he chose personnel for his administration, and how he conducted its affairs once in office.

As Nixon was inaugurated in January 1969, the noted foreign policy historian Hans Morgenthau was just publishing A New Foreign Policy for the United States, in which he argued that American foreign policy "has lived during the last decade or so on the intellectual capital ... accumulated in the famous fifteen weeks of the spring of 1947 when the policy of containment, the Truman Doctrine, and the Marshall Plan fashioned a new American foreign policy. ... This capital has now been nearly exhausted."

The main reason for exhaustion was the apparent stalemate of the war in Vietnam, which the United States was fighting against an enemy backed by the main Communist powers, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the People's Republic of China. Recognizing the toll the war had taken, Nixon planned to supersede the goal of containment that had informed the policies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, and that had mired the United States in Vietnam, with something quite different: engagement with America's Communist enemies. He envisioned this approach bringing him a string of policy triumphs and a place in history as a grand peacemaker.

During his years as a representative, senator, and vice president (1947-1961), Nixon had become the country's leading anti-communist. Though many still considered him as such, he spent much of the 1960s decoupling himself from his earlier, inflexible stance. One landmark in this transformation came on July 29, 1967, in a speech to the Bohemian Club, a private association of Republican movers and shakers, at their annual retreat near San Francisco.

In the address, Nixon argued that more changes had taken place in a single generation than ever before in human history, and the result was a "new world" in which total Soviet dominance of Communist countries had diminished, replaced by "a bitter struggle for leadership" between the USSR and China. And this internal Communist struggle opened the door for American "discussions with the Soviet leaders at all levels ... to explore the areas where bilateral agreements would reduce tensions."

Nixon widened this opening in an article in the October 1967 issue of Foreign Affairs. "Asia after Vietnam" envisioned a series of new regional defense pacts to meet the challenges of future Vietnam-type wars and to counter the might of China. "The regional pact becomes a buffer separating the distant great power from the immediate threat. Only if the buffer proves insufficient does the great power become involved, and then in terms that make victory more attainable and the enterprise more palatable," Nixon ventured. Though "Red China's threat is clear, present, and insistently and repeatedly expressed," he wrote,

American policy toward Asia must come urgently to grips with the reality of China. This does not mean ... rushing to grant recognition to [Beijing], to admit it to the United Nations and to ply it with offers of trade — all of which would serve to confirm its rulers in their present course. ... But] we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.

Nixon's article seems to have rung few alarm bells among his anti-Communist friends, perhaps because he emphasized the need to keep one's powder dry while talking with the enemy. But Nixon recognized that his ideas ran counter to his public image, and he offered his new rationale only to sophisticated audiences. In his 1968 campaign rhetoric, he largely maintained his posture as the strongest anti-Communist candidate in the race. Nonetheless, in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention that year, he extended a surprisingly straightforward olive branch:

To the leaders of the Communist world, we say: After an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation. Where the world's superpowers are concerned, there is no acceptable alternative to peaceful negotiation. ... The years just ahead can bring a breakthrough for peace [through] intensive negotiations [and] a determined search for those areas of accommodation ... on which a climate of mutual trust can eventually be built.

To most of his listeners, and to the country's reporters and columnists, his phrases seemed no more than rhetoric, the sort of bland pledge that politicians often utter but seldom follow up with action. Nixon would manage to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TRINE DAY
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1634240561
• ISBN 13: 9781634240567
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar