Pierre Asselin
speaker
562 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 3d ago
Pierre Asselin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, food stamp expansion, all of these programs, it's all Johnson in one term, in one single term.
But then Vietnam just that, you know, it makes it very tragic.
Yeah.
And that's the thing, right?
King initially doesn't want to oppose the war because he feels Johnson has been so good to African-Americans.
But in 67, the pressure on King is such that he turns against the war.
And, you know, and that's a huge blow to Johnson.
I mean, that, you know, we talked about some of the elements that make him turn against the war himself, that losing King, losing civil rights supporters.
I mean, Johnson essentially felt betrayed by that.
Really deeply, profoundly hurt by that.
Anytime, my honor.
The End
So Nixon had a very clear understanding of the situation in Vietnam. I think for all of his flaws, we really need to give Nixon credit for understanding what was happening in Vietnam and what that meant for the larger international global Cold War context.
From the moment he assumes the presidency, Nixon is cognizant of the fact that the American military enterprise in Vietnam is not going to meet its stated objective of effectively providing for a South Vietnam that will be forever protected from the communist menace. Nixon understands that in light of previous failures, the U.S.
is likely to lose in South Vietnam, to not meet its political objective of, again, preserving the South as a non-communist entity. So then the question becomes how to end the commitment while salvaging American credibility and honor so that the U.S. can continue fighting the Cold War in other parts of the world.
So for the U.S., right, Vietnam is certainly important, but it's one battle within the larger context of this global Cold War. So for Nixon, the idea here is to deal with defeat in Vietnam, but deal with it in such a way that the United States will have the staying power to remain in the larger context Cold War fight against the Soviet Union, China, and other rivals.
Exactly, exactly. And that's the thing, right? I mean, credibility, prestige, those are really, really important currencies in international relations. You know, it doesn't matter if you have big guns or a powerful economy. It's always about how you use these things. Right. And where are the people believe that you're going to use your economic might, your military might to meet your objectives?
And that's how Nixon approaches it. The other element, I think, Don, that that accounts for the length of the disengagement is the model that Nixon is using. Nixon was always a big fan of Charles de Gaulle. And specifically, he admired the way de Gaulle had gotten France out of Algeria. Algeria was such a mess, right, for the French.
And Nixon, rightly or wrongly, believed that de Gaulle had indeed achieved what de Gaulle himself called la paix dans l'honneur, right, the peace in honor in Algeria. And just as it took de Gaulle four years to extricate France from Algeria, again, with a view to maintaining French credibility internationally after Algeria, Nixon would take four years to get the United States out of Vietnam.
And that's not coincidence. Nixon is very closely following the Gaullian playbook in Algeria when he's looking at Vietnam.
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