Word: upholding
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...presents Washington with a triangular dilemma, wrapped in official mythology, encased in old enmities, and enshrouded in the shaky precedents of international law. The U.S. cannot recognize Peking's claim to Taiwan without disavowing an old ally and denouncing a solemn treaty commitment to defend the island. To uphold Chiang's contention that he represents the 800 million Chinese on the mainland, as well as those on Taiwan, is simply no longer tenable. To recognize the claims of both governments is impossible. The major questions...
...begin with, there was the survival of the regime in Saigon. It was a regime that past American policy-makers had installed and then sworn to uphold, and though the new American leaders probably had little real use for General Thieu-and were suffering the domestic consequences of what little use they had-they also felt it essential that no American policy precipitate the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime. For that would impugn their honor and damage their credibility, and those were concepts that did not come cheap to them. And in the absence of the regime's guaranteed...
...assumption that the overpowering weight of the U. S. military stood behind America's negotiators at every step of the way. And in a situation of fixed objectives-that of the NLF and Hanoi, to bring about a revolution in their country, and that of Washington, to uphold the Saigon regime-the use of force would be bound to increase...
...decent interval" approach would yield startling insight into Kissinger's later policy recommendations on the war. To begin with, the Saigon regime was not being defended out of any real sense of principle. Kissinger was willing and eager to uphold a corrupt totalitarian government with the most brutal possible methods for the mere sake of diplomatic gain. Thousands of lives could be sacrificed and whole civilizations destroyed in the name of opposing a takeover which Kissinger had earlier been prepared-and was probably still prepared-to accept...
...smaller, more vulnerable men like Lt. William Calley can be sentenced for killing women and children in Vietnam, then there must be a higher tribunal for statesmen like Kissinger, who uphold the policies which make such atrocities necessary. But then, there is always the danger of lapsing into academic exercises about old atrocities when other deeper lying ones have yet to surface. And if Henry Kissinger can be accused of anything, it is playing his power game so well that his policy threatens to explode the very balance of forces which he has so ruthlessly defended...