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How to be gracefully thrown out: The Nixon Doctrine

By Don Carson

The United States Information Service brings foreign affairs "experts" to New Zealand with the frequency of any self respecting leftist group. Latest import, carrying the message from the White House, was Professor But well, author, advisor and lecturer at many prestigious American universities including Rangoon, who talked to the select of the Political Science Department plus some intruders last week. The topic of the lecture was that milestone in US foreign policy, the 'Nixon Doctrine', first enunciated in Guam in 1969.

The basis of this philosophy is that the regimes set up during the late forties and early fifties in the Far East which were brought together by the United States military alliances, could now no longer rely on the unqualified support of the United States in the seventies, especially the availability of ground forces to fight the international communist conspiracy. Instead, such governments were supposed to survive and stabilise by increasing their popular basis and a continued reliance on American economic and military supplies.

Butwell's talk was infused with liberal doublethink and charades of objectivity. South Vietnam was a 'friendly' country even though he wouldn't like to live under Thieu himself and he didn't much like the Cambodian bombing or the Vietnam bombing of Christmas last year, finding it "unnecessary". Thus Nixon, the epitome of the middle road, would appear to be following an extremist policy in Cambodia. The 'anti war' posturing of so many US politicians and political advisors makes one wonder if there ever was a war at all.

For Butwell, the future is the continued success of the implementation of the Nixon Doctrine, bravely bearing with patient resignation the accusations of 'friendly' countries that the United States was selling them out by "lowering her profile" and withdrawing in a "responsible" manner from the areas of the world where she was once so predominant. The turning over of a whole base in Japan to the Japanese after they had only asked for its golf course was cited as an example of the withdrawing policy. Perhaps so. It is also an indication of growing Japanese military potency too.

Butwell didn't say too much about Vietnam or the January Peace Agreement, being mainly concerned with the opportunity that the Thieu government had been given to stand on its feet without American military presence. It seems he was not really convinced that the Peace Agreement could stand up to too much scrutiny as the glowing embodiment of the "stable government" aspect of the Nixon Doctrine. For Thieu and other American appointees in Government, the Nixon Doctrine and the Peace Agreement means the beginning of the end for their regimes.

Cambodia was admitted to be a failure of the Nixon Doctrine but was dismissed as an untypical and inconsequential example. Cambodia was a difficult case to arrange negotiations with because of the disunity of the "insurgent" forces and the pathetic quality of the Phom Penh administration. Just like Norm Kirk, Butwell cannot comprehend a government without the grandiose trappings of a bureaucracy and a capital.

The most preposterous statement was that Prince Sihanouk was a "political dillettante" and "did not lead the insurgents". While it is quite obvious that Sihanouk's relations in the past with the Khymer Rouge have been very abrasive at times, this fits in with an extremely consistent pattern that Sihanouk has followed throughout the years. This is his quest for national soveriegnty and neutrality, taking as his touchstone Ho Chi Minh's maxim that "Nothing is more precious than independence." Sihanouk has now realised that the intention of the Khymer Rouge is to also maintain national independence rather than to tie Cambodia to Hanoi. Such realisation has been forced upon Sihanouk by the activities of the Americans, who have never accepted that Cambodia should be neutral or at peace. Pressure to change began with the brothers Dulles, various ambassadors and military personel, and continued with briefing and encouragement of Lon Nol in Paris by the CIA prior to the March 18 1970 overthrow of Sihanouk and culminated in the establishment of the Lon Nol, Sirik Matak, Son Ngoc Thanh mayoralty in Phnom Penh. To claim, as Butwell does, that Sihanouk is controlled lock, stock and mitre by China on one hand and that he doesn't control the insurgents on the other is an arrant contradiction. Nixon has no need to make trips to China to convince Chou En Lai and Mao to keep their puppets under control it he thought that the puppets weren't controlling any movements. Moreover the Americans can't really decide who is Sihanouk's puppeteer — Hanoi or Peking. Sihanouk's history would belie either.

Butwell places great emphasis on the roles of the Philippines and Indonesia in the future of American foreign policy. He find common ground in emphasising this aspect with journalist Wilfred Burchett, which is not surprising for they both take as their sage Henry Kissinger, the man who decides Nixon's foreign policy for him. This is the man who has stated in reference to Vietnam, "For a backward peasant country like Vietnam not to loose a war is to win it, and for America not to win a war against such a country is to loose it." Thus Kissinger is only too aware that Vietnam is lost and the real task is to build a second line of defence in the Philippines and Indonesia. This second line enables some long term capitalist planning and consolidation which was impossible in Vietnam due to the Americans taking over from a colonial power there which had already been defeated. Kissinger again is only too aware that the foreign policies of successive American presidents have been watered down by the realities of the political situation, the "roll back the borders of socialism" went to the next stage of "containment" and then to the Kennedy stage of "counter insurgency". All these attempts have been abject failures as have been the continuing methods of "stopping the communists" in Vietnam, "destroy the sanctuaries","strategic hamlets","blockade Haiphong" and "bomb Hanoi back to the stone age". The harsh, yet never uttered, reality for the likes of Butwell is that the people of South East Asia do not enjoy being dominated by America and not only that, they are quite capable of doing something about it. The Nixon Doctrine was born out of the ebbing of the great westward expansion of America which has flowed for four centuries, it was conceived within eighteen months of the trauma of the Tet offensive. It is an attempt to make that wave rise and move again in the distant future.

The Nixon Doctrine is not only for preparatory consolidation. Former Secretary of State, Dean Rusk said that Vietnam was an example to the rest of the world to show that fighting the United States was "expensive and doomed to failure". This example backfired and a way had to be found to disguise the failure.

This is Henry K's job. The Nixon Doctrine is a device for making it appear that Nixon is walking out of South East Asia when in fact he is being thrown out.