Leaving Vietnam: Nixon,Kissinger and Ford, 1969–1975. Part one: January 1969–January 1972

Some have suggested that Richard Nixon's narrow victory in the US presidential election of November 1968 was due to his persuading the Government of South Vietnam (GVN) to boycott the Paris peace talks for the settlement of the Vietnam War between the US government, that of the Democratic Republic of North Vietnam (DRV) and the representatives of the communist guerrilla movement in South Vietnam. This seems doubtful. The new president had abandoned the hawkish stance he had adopted when vice‐president in the Eisenhower administration and was anxious to bring the unpopular war to an end. The question was: how? The president, together with his influential National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, adopted a policy of ‘Vietnamization’, which involved the progressive scaling down of the US military presence and the handing over of responsibility for waging the war to the GVN. At the same time, the president recognized that too precipitate an American withdrawal and, above all, one which took place under the terms of an agreement which was too favourable to the communists, would have a deleterious effect upon its allies and its own position as a Great Power. In order to bring about a satisfactory agreement with the DRV, the US employed a twin strategy: secret talks between Kissinger and senior DRV representatives in Paris, coupled with veiled threats of an escalation of the war if the communists acted unreasonably and occasional displays of military strength, such as the incursion into Cambodia in 1970. Although it seemed, briefly, that there might be a breakthrough in Kissinger's secret negotiations with the DRV later in 1971, they broke down mainly as a result of the communists' insistence that the US in effect dismantle the South Vietnamese government for them. An angry Nixon secretly considered retaliation against the DRV to force it to modify its demands and publicly revealed the existence of the negotiations and much of their content to the American people in a speech on 25 January 1972. At the same time, however, he insisted that Vietnamization would continue.     

Nixon,Kissinger and the rapprochement with China, 1969–1972

Few would have predicted in 1969 that the new Republican administration of Richard Nixon would initiate a rapprochement between the United States and communist China during his first term as president. That he succeeded in doing so was helped by the severity of the Sino‐Soviet dispute, which erupted into armed clashes in the spring and summer of 1969. By the end of 1970 China made it clear that it would not only be willing to receive a presidential envoy, but also the president himself. Two missions to Beijing by Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger—one secret in July 1971 and the other public in the following October—paved the way for a presidential visit in February 1972. The talks in July and October 1971 and February 1972 covered a whole range of issues including the war in Indochina, the potential threat from Japan and relations with the Soviet Union. The most dif cult problem, however, proved to be that of Taiwan, where the American‐backed Nationalist government not only laid claim to be the legitimate government of the whole of China, but occupied the Chinese seat in the United Nations. A modus vivendi was eventually reached in February 1972, helped perhaps by the United Nations General Assembly vote in October 1971 which unseated the Taiwan regime in favour of mainland China. The US negotiating position was not made any easier by the intense rivalry between Kissinger and the State Department and the latter's exclusion from much of the negotiation process led to a last‐minute crisis which threatened the success of the entire project. While neither the United States nor China achieved all that they had hoped, Nixon's visit to China had an enormous symbolic impact and contributed to a reconfiguration of the global balance of power.     

Leaving Vietnam: Nixon,Kissinger and Ford, 1969–1975 Part three: January 1973–July 1975

The final volume of the Foreign relations series of documents on Indochina during the Nixon and Ford presidencies is not as detailed as those which preceded it. However, the documents do not support the view that, once the January 1973 Agreement between the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam and the United States had been concluded, the US was prepared to accept DRV's hegemony over the rest of Indochina, provided only that there was a ‘decent interval’ before it occurred. In fact, both the Nixon and Ford administrations did seek to prevent this from happening, but found their hands tied by congressional opposition. In the case of Cambodia, the United States also found itself the victim of its own illusions about the willingness of the People's Republic of China to support an alternative government led by the former ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Following the more or less total collapse of American policy in April 1975, some interesting ‘post‐mortems’ from various government departments on the history of US involvement in Indochina are also printed in the volume under review.     

The Missionaries' Position: Polygamy and Divorce in the Anglican Communion, 1888–1988

This article explores the Church of England's engagement with polygamy through a survey of policy debates about plural marriage that took place from the 1880s to the 1980s. With few exceptions, nineteenth and early‐twentieth century missionaries refused to allow men in polygamous marriages to convert to Christianity. This decision was formalised at the 1888 Lambeth Conference, but reversed one hundred years later at the 1988 Conference. The article uncovers factors that led to the recognition of alternative forms of marriage, and begin to expose the dynamics of repression and toleration in Anglican marriage discourse. Following recent postcolonial feminist scholarship, it argues that the church's inability to resolve its parallel but conflicting oppositions to polygamy and divorce formed a paradox which implicitly provincialized British Anglican gender understandings, and that the 1988 Lambeth Conference decision represents a tacit acknowledgement of the fundamental epistemic divide represented by this paradox.     

Leaving Vietnam: Nixon,Kissinger and Ford, 1969–1975, Part two: January 1972–January 1973

Although anticipated, the North Vietnamese ‘Easter offensive’ against South Vietnam in 1972 created problems for the United States. Having reached a rapprochement with Communist China, President Nixon and his foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, believed that the attack could have serious repercussions for their attempt to balance it with détente with the Soviet Union, not to mention the US's credibility as a Great Power. They also feared it would damage Nixon's prospects for re‐election in November 1972. Despite opposition from his Defense Secretary, Nixon renewed the bombing of North Vietnam which had been stopped by President Johnson in 1968. This helped to bring the North Vietnamese back to the conference table and after complex negotiations, a draft peace agreement was ready for initialling in October 1972. However, President Thieu of South Vietnam saw significant drawbacks in the agreement and refused to go along with it. The North Vietnamese chose to have one more attempt to win on the battlefield and President Nixon, who had scaled down the bombing when peace seemed closer and won a landslide victory in the presidential election, launched another eleven days of concentrated bombing raids on North Vietnam at the turn of the year. This led to the final agreement initialled on 23 January 1973, which President Thieu reluctantly acceded to. Thieu's reservations were justified, but Nixon realized that, despite his electoral victory, he could not count on the continued support of Congress and the American people for the war. Far from bringing ‘peace with honor in Vietnam and Southeast Asia’, the January agreement was a fig leaf to cover American withdrawal.     

The Search for National Identity and Japanese Industrial Policy, 1950–1969

Abstract. Economic nationalism reflected in Japanese industrial policy experienced two distinctive stages during 1950–69. It was fragmented in the 1950s as political actors held competing perceptions of national interest and consequently asserted contesting strategies for industrial policy. The tensions between the conservative and the progressive eventually led to a clash in 1960 on the issue of the renewal of the Japan–US security treaty. Economic nationalism began to unify the country in the 1960s as political actors were able to build a consensus on national interest based on economic growth and united around a grand strategy of high growth and liberalisation of trade. During this transition, the perceived external threat to the nation was a major force in generating the momentum for economic nationalism in policy-making, while a fair distribution of economic welfare among social classes through industrial policy was indispensable for economic nationalism to obtain public support.     

Tactical Flexibility: Libyan Foreign Policy under Qadhafi, 1969–2004*

On September 1, 1969, a group of junior Libyan Army officers took control of the Libyan government in a bloodless coup d'état. After the coup, the group formed the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), chaired by Muammar al‐Qadhafi. In the four decades following, Libya faced numerous foreign policy challenges. The Qadhafi regime took on a distinctly anticolonial flavor that mirrored the revolutionary political trends of Egypt under of Gamal Abdul Nasser. This change in foreign policy posture shook Libya's relations with the United States and the United Kingdom and initiated the degradation of Libyan–Western ties. Under Qadhafi's leadership, Libya chose an ideological path for that focused on the strengthening of sovereignty while pursuing policies of unity and anti‐imperialism. This often put Libya at loggerheads with the West, and at times with its neighbors. Nevertheless, Qadhafi maintained popularity among his constituency. ¹ His domestic fame was the product of a carefully constructed persona that gave him the charismatic appeal necessary to maintain leadership during the latter quarter of the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Publicly, Qadhafi highlighted the similarities between himself and Libya's rural working class. He lived in a tent, and wore modest clothing. He fancied himself a devout Muslim, and praised the wisdom of the Libyan masses. He connected with his constituency through rhetoric that illustrated the stability of his policies over time, and their connection to the ideas that originally made him popular. This argues that the source of Qadhafi's charismatic power lay in his rhetoric, which connected Libya's foreign policy decisions to his foreign policy vision, the basis of his charismatic leadership. Qadhafi articulated his foreign policy vision during his first major speech to the Libyan people in September 1969, and he referred to it time and again when speaking about major Libyan foreign policy decisions. To demonstrate, this article describes the basis of Qadhafi's leadership authority and defines the parameters of his vision. Then Qadhafi's rhetoric surrounding major shifts in Libyan foreign policy is analyzed to show its congruence with his foreign policy vision. The rhetoric surrounding the Libya–Egypt war, the end of Libya's Chad intervention, Libya's surrendering of the two Lockerbie bombing suspects to be tried under Western authority, and Qadhafi's denunciation of the weapons of mass destruction programs—all major shifts in Libyan foreign policy—demonstrate how Qadhafi was able to maintain a single message, and thus his authority, over his first 35 years in power based on values established in the early days of his revolution. The flexibility of his vision enabled Qadhafi to maintain authority, while tactically adjusting Libyan foreign policy positions.     

Wood Chipping of Indigenous Forest on Private Land in New Zealand 1969–1993

In recent decades the international wood chip industry has been the major cause of indigenous forest destruction in New Zealand. This paper analyses how changing state forest policies have affected wood chipping of indigenous forest. Emphasis is placed on wood chipping on private land through a case study of the reactions and changing attitudes of farmers. It is argued that farmers and Maori landowners often have no other alternative but to allow wood chipping on their land. Although government policies have been tightened in recent years, and although attitudes among private landholders are shifting towards forest conservation, the pressure on New Zealand's lowland indigenous forest remnants continues unabated.     

“And They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love”: Exploring the Role of Christian Love on Maloga Mission, 1874–1888

This article investigates the power, and the politics, of Christian love on the Australian settler‐colonial frontier through the case study of two evangelical missionaries, Daniel and Janet Matthews, during their time at Maloga Mission (a non‐denominational mission to the Aboriginal people of the Murray River which they founded on its northern banks in 1874). Whether protested in private missives, professed in public tracts, or proclaimed to their assembled audiences, Christian love played a vital role in the both the secular justification, and the sacred sanctification, of the Matthews' mission. Yet in practice, the operation of this emotion was complex. Through an exploration of the role of Christian love in the life of Maloga mission and its missionaries, this article will show how the intricacies of its formulation, expression, reception, and reciprocation make this a crucial if often overlooked concept for the study of mission history, and specifically, in this case, the study of nineteenth‐century settler‐colonial missions.     

Alltagswissen – Körperwissen – Praxiswissen – Fachwissen. Zur Aneignung,Bewertungs‐ und Orientierungslogik von Wissenskulturen

Everyday knowledge – body knowledge – knowledge of experience – specialized knowledge: Acquisition, assessment and the orientation of logic concerning cultures of knowledge. – The essay explores changes in the understanding, legitimisation, and practice of midwifery. It was one of the earliest professional activities for women. During the eighteenth century a new culture of expertise emphasized theoretical knowledge and adherence to medical disciplines over the empirical practice gained by women. This early phase of professionalisation, with its hierarchies and preferred use of medically accredited knowledge, was not, however, solely divided along gender lines. Female professionalism was not just supplanted by male academic medicalisation. New ways of attaining and assessing knowledge, a different perception of how it is organised, and above all, social change created new patterns of understanding. This process achieved a new professional ethos. In pursuing the issue of gender, various examples are chosen to illustrate how changes in scientific knowledge and its relevant application are mediated. The construct of scientific knowledge and how it is used reflects gender relations and power structures. There is not only competition between female and male perceptions of knowledge, but also male stereotyping of female knowledge, in particular male notions of what kind of knowledge is necessary and how this is perceived by women. Karen Offen used the term ‘knowledge wars’ to describe how a monopoly of scientific expertise and relevant knowledge works within the professions.