By
Robert Zubrin
Friday,
August 25, 2023
GOP presidential
hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy is the model of a high-school debate champion.
Articulate, clean-cut, and with the appearance of sophistication, he is able to
make the most absurd propositions appear plausible. Not since Barack Obama hit
the scene has a figure demonstrated so well the utility of rhetorical training
for political purposes.
The
virtue needed in a president, however, is not the ability to sell bad ideas but
to develop good ones, and to educate the public to understand and support them.
When this metric is applied, Vivek’s merit as a potential president becomes
quite questionable.
Vivek’s
flaws are particularly noticeable in the area of foreign policy. For example,
in a recent tweet he said: “I’m a George Washington America
First Conservative: act in the national interest. Just as Nixon opened China to
win the Cold War against Russia, the next president must open Russia to defeat
China — starting with a peace settlement in Ukraine.”
In other
words, Vivek is saying that if he were president, he would force Ukraine to
surrender to Russia. This gift would then make Putin so grateful that he would
become America’s firm and trustworthy ally in our effort to defend the free
world from Chinese domination.
If ever
a geopolitical strategy were based on wishful thinking, this is it. Putin
has stated in writing that he doesn’t
just want Ukraine; he wants to restore the entire Russian empire,
which included not only Russia and Ukraine but Finland, the Baltic states, most
of Poland, the Caucasus, and much of Central Asia, with said empire to serve as
the dominating centerpiece of a Eurasian Union “stretching from Lisbon to
Vladivostok.” If he is given Ukraine, why should he give up his ambition to
take the rest?
In
negotiating with an adversary, it makes sense to offer a concession only if the
overall deal involved reduces your adversary’s ability to demand still more.
Vivek’s strategy does exactly the opposite. Giving Ukraine to Russia would cure
Russia’s critical strategic vulnerability along its southwest border and delete
Ukraine’s battle-tested million-man army from the West’s order of battle.
Furthermore, it would add greatly to Russia’s material resources and technical
strength. (There is a reason why the Soviet space program —
which was led by the Ukrainian Sergei Korolev — was far more impressive in its
accomplishments than the post-Soviet Russian one.) Even worse,
it would vindicate Putin’s policy of war and conquest, consolidating his power
within Russia beyond any question and inviting him to engage in further
aggression in the most enticing way possible.
Under
such circumstances, further Russian aggression to take, at a minimum, the
Baltic states would be a virtual certainty. After all, if Vivek’s America is
unwilling to defend Europe when all it has to do is send some second-string
arms to Ukrainians who are doing the fighting, what are the chances that it
would send half a million of its own fighters to hold the line elsewhere?
The
question hardly needs to be asked because Vivek has already answered it. In
contrast to some who claim (falsely) that we need to desert Ukraine in order to
concentrate on preparing our forces to defend Taiwan should China attack it, he
has already announced that he would have no problem
with China’s taking Taiwan, provided they wait until 2029 to do so. But that is
not all. Vivek says he thinks America should be free of all “entangling
alliances” and concern itself only with defense of the Western Hemisphere,
leaving the rest to be taken over by Russia or China should they wish. (They
do.)
During
the Republican debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday, former U.N. ambassador Nikki
Haley denounced Vivek’s program of global
surrender. “You
want to go and defund Israel. You want to give Taiwan to China. You want to
give Ukraine to Russia. You would make America less safe. You have no
foreign-policy experience, and it shows!”
Haley
was far too kind. Joe Biden weakened and disgraced America by abandoning
Afghanistan. Vivek would render us nearly helpless by deserting all of our
allies.
Consider
what would happen to the United States in Vivek’s world. As a result of Trump’s
abandonment of the Trans Pacific Partnership, there are Pacific Island nations
for which U.S. Marines died to liberate from the Japanese that now, acting
under the dictates of their Chinese financial masters, will no longer do
business with American companies. (I know, because I am involved with a company
developing ocean thermal energy conversion, or OTEC, technology that was
recently rebuffed by one of them.) Well, being shut out of business in the
Central Pacific is one thing; being shut out of Europe, Asia, and Africa is
quite another. The United States is not an autarky. We need access to raw
materials, parts, and markets all over the world — on good and fair terms. If
we are forced to retreat to fortress America, we will become much poorer.
Then those whom Vivek would fabulously enrich at America’s expense via his gift
of control of the world economy will start buying up debt, equity, and
influence inside the U.S., ultimately costing us our independence as well.
Vivek’s
comparison of himself to the Cincinnatus-like George Washington is merely
comical, but his simultaneous self-identification with the Machiavellian
Richard Nixon bears scrutiny. The Nixon–Kissinger opening to China in 1972,
during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, was certainly great theater, but what exactly
did it accomplish?
It
certainly did not “win the Cold War.” In 1961, China split from the USSR in
reaction to Khrushchev’s destalinization policies and his declaration that he
wished “peaceful coexistence” with the West, and in 1969 the two nations
engaged in a shooting war along their shared border. That, however, did not
stop both of them from aiding North Vietnam in its war effort against the
United States. In fact, Chinese military aid to Vietnam continued apace after Nixon’s visit (the
number of artillery pieces China sent the North Vietnamese peaked at nearly
10,000 guns per year in 1973 and continued at high levels through 1975),
allowing North Vietnam to violate the Paris Peace Accords and inflict total
defeat on the American cause in Southeast Asia by 1975. The Chinese then
installed the genocidal ultra-communist Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, giving
Jimmy Carter’s State Department the dubious privilege of aligning
diplomatically with China and Pol Pot when the Vietnamese invaded to put an end
to the madness.
The
Carter crowd then carried the disgrace further by abandoning our recognition of
Taiwan in 1979. That, and further appeasement moves directed toward China, did
nothing to bring down the Soviet Union — which fell because our deterrence and
containment policy, pursued on a bipartisan basis for more than four decades
following World War II, denied it any opportunities for further conquests.
China, on the other hand, benefited so much from our concessions that we may
soon be facing it with our economic back against the wall.
Or we
could just accept the end of the free world, and go gently into that good
night, as George Washington Ramaswamy so convincingly recommends.
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