Worst American president since 1954 (Foreign Policy division)

From the thread what are barack Obama's flaws

aimless, who is the worst american president of your lifetime in foreign policy terms?

― nakhchivan, Thursday, September 25, 2014 12:20 PM

I thought I'd give all of the political mavens of ILX a shot at this one. My own answer would be Richard Nixon, with a nod to the machinations of Henry Kissinger. Among Nixon's signal foreign policy achievements:

• sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks aimed at bringing a negotiated end to the Vietnam War when he was a candidate in 1968.
• oversaw the continuation of the Vietnam War, despite having no discernible policy objective aside from 'not being seen as weak'.
• initiated bombing of Cambodia, a neutral country, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Later he invaded, too.
• engineered the coup in Chile bringing Pinochet to power.
• gave green light to the massacres in Timor, Indonesia.

Excellent thread for reference: U.S. Presidents - Cold War and New Millennium Edition

the scale and destructiveness of the bombing of indochina outside of vietnam seems to be rather forgotten

Estimates vary widely on the number of civilian casualites inflicted by the campaign; however,as many as 500,000 people died as a direct result of the bombings while perhaps hundreds of thousands more died from the effects of displacement, disease or starvation during this period

johnson's culpability here also understated because of his relatively efficacious and benign domestic achievements

Nixon has some vile stuff on his resume for sure, but there are some positives in there too, no? (Obvious stuff--detente, opening of China--and not that his motives were necessarily admirable.)

Does LBJ have anything to counteract Vietnam?

Bush II's manufacturing lies to invade Iraq, and his endorsement of torture and rendition lift him into the two spot for me. After 9/11 Bush was given a huge opportunity to forge an international consensus and he squandered it.

Purely on foreign policy issues, LBJ would be my number three choice, based on his escalation in Vietnam alone. That's a shitload of blood on his hands.

Does LBJ have anything to counteract Vietnam?

uh is this a joke. the Civil Rights Act, Medicare/Medicaid, Immigration and Nationality Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Higher Education Act, NEA, PBS, Head Start the list is pretty fucking long. Most successful liberal domestic agenda since FDR by quite a wide margin.

anyway this is Bush II by miles and miles, probably the worst president in the history of the country, and his disastrous foreign policy with its far-reaching consequences is part of that.

Worst American president since 1954 (Foreign Policy division) [Started by Aimless in September 2014, last updated 1 minute ago by Οὖτις on I Love Everything] 7 new answers

agree with aimless -- nixon, bush II, and lbj were the worst, in that order. lbj deserves the praise he gets for everything else but allowing the u.s. to slide into an entirely avoidable full-scale war in vietnam ranks as one of the worst things any president has ever done.

i believe clemenza meant a 'counteract' in foreign policy, per the thread topic.

LBJ also invaded the Dominican Republic in '65 on behalf of United Fruit, right?

what a fun thread this'll be

Reagan's record is vile too:

- very good evidence that it engineered an October Surprise on Jimmy Carter
- defending rightist government in El Salvador
- funding of Contras
- Beirut
- Grenada
- using charlatans, bounty hunters, and Arab countries to fund Contras after Congress rescinded funding with Boland Amendment
- creating an atmosphere around the National Security Council so lax that a fourth rate lieutenant colonel could draw up battle plans on how to impose martial law on the United States in the event of a holocaust and, three years later, in another "neat idea" sell weapons to Iran at inflated prices -- which inspire these Iranian "moderates" to instruct Hezbollah to kidnap a couple more -- and funnel excess profits to Contras.

There's more!

Reagan had his death squads and contras in central America, plus Granada invasion, plus a certain culpability in prolonging the Iran-Iraq bloodbath of a war for as long as both sides could stand the strain. Compared to the really large scale atrocities of several other presidents these undoubted crimes begin to seem strangely minor league, like a serial killer who only manages a half dozen victims being compared to Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy.

Least worst is a more interesting question. Alex Cockburn said Ford.

Based on the permanence of drone warfare and future vengeance upon our homeland, I am confident in Obomber's potential to retrospectively move into the top three.

Obvious stuff--detente, opening of China--and not that his motives were necessarily admirable.

I see these as deeply cynical and ultimately detrimental to long-term US interests frankly fuck Nixon for going to China.

sorry for misunderstanding your pt about LBJ, yeah I got nothin positive for him on the foreign policy front.

xxp

Ford had Mayaguez, Clinton had bombing of pill factory in Sudan.

Ford had Mayaguez

I think he got it from unwashed grapes

holy god: Clinton is least worst foreign policy guy

I never see anyone really discuss what was so great about Nixon going to China. It legitimized Mao at a time when he badly wanted/needed it on the foreign stage, and it paved the way for the US's currently completely fucked up relationship with China where we basically use them as slave labor to manufacture crap while polluting the world. In a different scenario, Nixon doesn't go to China, Mao and the Communist Party's grip loosens/collapses, they don't prop up North Korea, they lose HK, the country doesn't ascend to its position as capitalist manufacturing powerhouse in the 80s granted that's a lot of ifs and I wouldn't lay them all at Nixon's feet but sucking up to Mao is equivalent to sucking up to Stalin in my book, and Nixon did it for pretty self-aggrandizing reasons. At best it drove a bigger wedge between China and Russia but that was hardly necessary as the regimes basically hated each other already anyway.

xp

Ford had Mayaguez

I think he got it from unwashed grapes

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius)

a less contagious version of indochinitis

Nixon put China on the UN security council, what a great idea that turned out to be

xp

sucking up to Mao is equivalent to sucking up to Stalin in my book

right wing meme since Yalta. FDR and Churchill had no choice but to suck up to Stalin and his Red Army -- and they suffered no illusions about the sort of person he was.

Does "globalization" count as foreign policy? cuz Clinton is a fucking monster.

Oh, I think Nixon's maneuvering with China and Russia was 98% about Nixon--his view of himself as a master of intrigue and gamesmanship--with maybe 2% residual Quaker concern for the future of mankind.

(Yes, I was looking at LBJ strictly in terms of foreign policy.)

really, armchair analysis of politicians' motives, endlessly innnnteresting

right wing meme since Yalta. FDR and Churchill had no choice but to suck up to Stalin and his Red Army

yeah but the stakes were higher and the ends more justified. There was no overriding need for Nixon to go to China, no crisis that would be averted, no lives that would be saved.

fwiw reading the separate Russian, British and American accounts of Yalta is pretty fascinating

Man--and here I was, that close to personally thanking you for clarifying my LBJ post. (xxpost)

We could do a whole 'nother discussion on the worst foreign policy advisors to presidents and pull in Kissinger, John Foster Dulles, McNamara, Cheney, et. al. By counting Kissinger's influence across both the Nixon and Ford administrations, he could earn extra credit, even though Ford was much less adventurous than Nixon.

I didn't mean to impugn FDR btw I was coming at it more from the angle that people/commentators seem to totally forget and/or gloss over what an absolute monster Mao was

xp

and Kissinger's influence on Ted Koppel.

Dick and Mao had quite a chuckle party re dealing with internal foes at their one-on-one, it seems.

the moral avatar of Bubba's foreign policy:

http://williamblum.org/essays/read/madeleine-albright-ethically-challenged

I bet they compared enemies lists

not that he's a contender for any of the top spots, but JFK deserves a shout-out here for the "missile gap," the Bay of Pigs, and of course Viet Nam ... you could also make a case that the Cuban missile crisis was largely the result of his prior mistakes re Cuba and the commies

Not the right place for it, but John Foster Dulles was Ike's prat boy, much like Nixon was. Ike did all the foreign policy thinkin' himself. Despite Mossadegh and his belief in the CIA, he's probably the best all around president of the last sixty years.

Nixon admirer and confidante Bill Clinton certainly relished an open China.

JFK conducted a relatively restrained foreign policy, i've come to realize.