Jeffrey Lord: How to Handle a Bully ... Nixon vs. Khrushchev
[Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa@aol.com.]
Fifty years ago it was the picture heard around the world.
The young Vice President of the United States standing up to the bullying Russian tyrant, his right index finger literally poking Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the chest.
For the rest of his political career, the photograph -- and the incident that prompted it -- would visually enshrine the world's view of Richard Nixon as the American politician who would quite literally never blink when it came to standing up to America's enemies.
In the aftermath of President Barack Obama's timid performance when face-to-face with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez -- who has cast the United States as, among many things, an "imperialist monster" even as he goes about systematically repressing his own people and making alliances with American enemies -- it is worth recalling just what happened when Nixon found himself in a similar situation.
The date: July, 1959. The background: The Cold War between the Soviets and the United States was ratcheting up almost daily, as it had since the close of World War II. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already coined the term "Iron Curtain" to describe the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. In 1949 President Harry Truman had set in motion the Berlin Airlift to overcome Stalin's blockade of railway and highway entrances into West Berlin, the sector of the once-and-future German capital controlled by the allies -- in the heart of the Soviet-controlled East Germany. Every day for almost a year the United States had fought the Soviet blockade by airlifting 4,000 tons of food a day -- a day! -- into West Berlin, finally humiliating the Soviets and breaking the back of the blockade. Then came the Russian announcement they had exploded their first nuclear weapons, next the Korean War, followed by more Russian threats on Berlin.
By 1959, tensions were still high and going higher. The following year would be President Dwight Eisenhower's last in the White House, and Nixon -- a youthful 46 - was the presumed frontrunner for both the Republican Presidential nomination and the presidency itself. His strongest selling point was his experience as Ike's vice president, specifically his foreign policy experience.
Sitting in the Kremlin was Stalin's successor, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. A wily, blustering brutal totalitarian, by 1959 he had consolidated his power over his Kremlin rivals, earning a reputation as a bullying murderer who never hesitated to have competitors shot. It was Khrushchev who had ruthlessly suppressed the people's revolt against Communists in Hungary in 1956. So too was it Khrushchev who began the massive Soviet nuclear build-up, launching what would become known as the "arms race." Likewise it was Khrushchev who began the Soviet offensive in the so-called "developing world," beginning with an attempt to take over the Congo in Africa....
Writing in his first book Six Crises, he said later that as he listened to the translation of what was being said by the red-faced Khrushchev, "I knew that now was the time to strike back. Otherwise I would leave the impression to the press and through them to the world that I, the second-highest official of the United States, and the government I represented were dealing with Khrushchev from a position of weakness -- militarily, economically and ideologically. I had to be firm without being belligerent, a most difficult posture to preserve."
With that, Nixon stuck his own finger in Khrushchev's chest. The Russian narrowed his eyes, jutting his chin forward. The cameras went crazy all over again. Nixon, finger in the Soviet leader's chest, was leaning into his adversary, staring, unblinking. His voice rose. "No one should ever use his strength to put another in the position where he in effect has an ultimatum....If war comes, we both lose." Nixon was off and running now, determined to make the American case. He hoped, he said, that Khrushchev understood the implications of what he, Khrushchev, had been saying. Forcing a powerful nation to fight was playing with "a very destructive thing." Khrushchev's words and actions were "very dangerous. When we sit down at a conference table it cannot be all one way. One side cannot put an ultimatum to another. It is impossible."...
The Nixon-Khrushchev "kitchen debate" was an iconic moment in the history of the Cold War.
What should Obama have learned from this episode before he placed himself in the same room with the bullying, boasting Chavez, the Venezuelan tyrant not so unlike Khrushchev?
That if you are an American leader, it is a mistake of magnitudes to let tyrants make a fool of you period, whether in private but especially in public. The photo of a grinning Obama yukking it up with Hugo Chavez, unchallenging as he accepts a book glorifying socialism, is surely being closely studied by less than scrupulous men from Tehran to Afghanistan, from Beijing to Moscow to Havana. Chavez self-evidently sought to publicly tweak the President, to pull his chain, and see what resulted. Just as Khrushchev tried the same with Nixon fifty years ago this July. Chavez got a notably different response from Obama than Khrushchev did from Nixon. For that there will, almost certainly, be repercussions....
Read entire article at American Spectator
Fifty years ago it was the picture heard around the world.
The young Vice President of the United States standing up to the bullying Russian tyrant, his right index finger literally poking Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in the chest.
For the rest of his political career, the photograph -- and the incident that prompted it -- would visually enshrine the world's view of Richard Nixon as the American politician who would quite literally never blink when it came to standing up to America's enemies.
In the aftermath of President Barack Obama's timid performance when face-to-face with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez -- who has cast the United States as, among many things, an "imperialist monster" even as he goes about systematically repressing his own people and making alliances with American enemies -- it is worth recalling just what happened when Nixon found himself in a similar situation.
The date: July, 1959. The background: The Cold War between the Soviets and the United States was ratcheting up almost daily, as it had since the close of World War II. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had already coined the term "Iron Curtain" to describe the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. In 1949 President Harry Truman had set in motion the Berlin Airlift to overcome Stalin's blockade of railway and highway entrances into West Berlin, the sector of the once-and-future German capital controlled by the allies -- in the heart of the Soviet-controlled East Germany. Every day for almost a year the United States had fought the Soviet blockade by airlifting 4,000 tons of food a day -- a day! -- into West Berlin, finally humiliating the Soviets and breaking the back of the blockade. Then came the Russian announcement they had exploded their first nuclear weapons, next the Korean War, followed by more Russian threats on Berlin.
By 1959, tensions were still high and going higher. The following year would be President Dwight Eisenhower's last in the White House, and Nixon -- a youthful 46 - was the presumed frontrunner for both the Republican Presidential nomination and the presidency itself. His strongest selling point was his experience as Ike's vice president, specifically his foreign policy experience.
Sitting in the Kremlin was Stalin's successor, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. A wily, blustering brutal totalitarian, by 1959 he had consolidated his power over his Kremlin rivals, earning a reputation as a bullying murderer who never hesitated to have competitors shot. It was Khrushchev who had ruthlessly suppressed the people's revolt against Communists in Hungary in 1956. So too was it Khrushchev who began the massive Soviet nuclear build-up, launching what would become known as the "arms race." Likewise it was Khrushchev who began the Soviet offensive in the so-called "developing world," beginning with an attempt to take over the Congo in Africa....
Writing in his first book Six Crises, he said later that as he listened to the translation of what was being said by the red-faced Khrushchev, "I knew that now was the time to strike back. Otherwise I would leave the impression to the press and through them to the world that I, the second-highest official of the United States, and the government I represented were dealing with Khrushchev from a position of weakness -- militarily, economically and ideologically. I had to be firm without being belligerent, a most difficult posture to preserve."
With that, Nixon stuck his own finger in Khrushchev's chest. The Russian narrowed his eyes, jutting his chin forward. The cameras went crazy all over again. Nixon, finger in the Soviet leader's chest, was leaning into his adversary, staring, unblinking. His voice rose. "No one should ever use his strength to put another in the position where he in effect has an ultimatum....If war comes, we both lose." Nixon was off and running now, determined to make the American case. He hoped, he said, that Khrushchev understood the implications of what he, Khrushchev, had been saying. Forcing a powerful nation to fight was playing with "a very destructive thing." Khrushchev's words and actions were "very dangerous. When we sit down at a conference table it cannot be all one way. One side cannot put an ultimatum to another. It is impossible."...
The Nixon-Khrushchev "kitchen debate" was an iconic moment in the history of the Cold War.
What should Obama have learned from this episode before he placed himself in the same room with the bullying, boasting Chavez, the Venezuelan tyrant not so unlike Khrushchev?
That if you are an American leader, it is a mistake of magnitudes to let tyrants make a fool of you period, whether in private but especially in public. The photo of a grinning Obama yukking it up with Hugo Chavez, unchallenging as he accepts a book glorifying socialism, is surely being closely studied by less than scrupulous men from Tehran to Afghanistan, from Beijing to Moscow to Havana. Chavez self-evidently sought to publicly tweak the President, to pull his chain, and see what resulted. Just as Khrushchev tried the same with Nixon fifty years ago this July. Chavez got a notably different response from Obama than Khrushchev did from Nixon. For that there will, almost certainly, be repercussions....