Games Nations Play: Dealing with the Communist Menace

Abstract

Conservative intellectuals loved Richard Nixon’s aggressive talk about Vietnam, but they loathed his apparent capitulation to communism. Détente with the Soviets and the Chinese proved an anathema to conservative beliefs about what James Burnham often called “the Third World War.” The right believed that Nixon would continue the global fight against communism upon his election in 1968. To say that his overtures to China and Russia shocked them would be putting it mildly. Conservatives thought that opposition to the Vietnam War was part of a greater malaise affecting the country—a malaise centered on the reluctance of American leaders to take a global role. When Nixon indicated he wanted to improve relations with the communist powers, many conservative intellectuals felt he too had succumbed to this sickness. Détente in and of itself was not the problem for conservatives; the measures taken to achieve it were. Given the American inability to arrest the development of communism in Southeast Asia, conservatives feared the abandonment of other loyal allies, namely Taiwan. Moreover, the Nixon administration’s actions with respect to arms limitation caused concern since conservatives assumed such maneuvers would leave the United States vulnerable to attack.