Déjà vu all over again!

This Day In History | Cold War

August 31

1951 William O. Douglas calls for recognition of PRC

“Following a hiking and mountain climbing trip through Asia, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas issues a statement calling for the recognition of the communist People's Republic of China. His comments touched off an angry partisan debate in the U.S. Senate.”
Angry partisan debate in the Senate? I’m shocked! Not in our Senate! What’s interesting in this first paragraph is the type of political statement that a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court dared to make.

'Douglas spent much of the summer of 1951 hiking and mountain climbing around the borders of Russia and China. Upon his return, Douglas urged that the United States recognize communist China. America had not established diplomatic relations with the communist People's Republic of China since the establishment of that nation in 1949, following Mao Zedong's successful revolution. And by 1951, U.S. troops were battling Chinese military forces in the Korean War. Nevertheless, Douglas suggested that U.S. diplomatic recognition of China would be a "real political victory" for the West.'
Here’s where hindsight comes in handy. From this vantage point we can see that, despite much bellowing and ballyhooing from intolerant right wing assholes, our government had to come to grips with the reality of a China that was communist and would not go away; no matter how hard we tried to pretend that they didn’t exist. But it took two decades to happen. And, as it turned out, it took a major right wing asshole to be able to recognize reality without being hounded by rabid red baiters. Nixon must have recognized the wisdom in Douglas’ suggestion after he sat in the Oval Office for a few years. That was the rationale that Nixon used 21 years later. History has shown us that Douglas was right way back in ’51. But because of the right wing’s obsession with confrontation abroad and red baiting at home, the intervening decades were spent making things worse. Instead of driving a wedge between the 2 behemoths, the geniuses in John Foster Dulles’ State Department drove them together with their saber rattling and chest pounding.

'Recognition by America, he reasoned, would help split China from its dependence on the Soviet Union and perhaps stem the tide of communist expansion in the Far East. ‘Recognition,’ Douglas stated, ‘will require straightforward and courageous thinking by all Americans, but it is the only logical course.’
DISCLAIMER: The following contains offensively banal ideas expressed in extraordinarily stupid partisan manner...
'In the U.S. Senate, Herman Welker (R-Idaho) set off a furious exchange when he proposed that Douglas's comments be printed in the Congressional Record. He suggested that the justice was a ‘high Administration spokesman’ and that his statement indicated that the Democratic administration of President Harry S. Truman was considering recognition of China.'
Less than two years after Mao’s troops overthrew the previous dictators Truman would have been delinquent in his duties if he did not consider recognizing the geopolitical reality for what it was. To govern with partisan blinders limiting our options is to mismanage foreign policy. A good argument can be made for the proposition that the Soviet Empire would have collapsed much earlier if they had felt a need to defend their border with China as far back as 1951. Herman Welker is probably Satan’s bitch by now.
'Tom Connally (D-Texas)(Any relation to John Connally who was hit by the magic bullet that killed JFK?) rose to attack Welker's action as pure politics and a "purely personal attack" on President Truman. Connally then chided Douglas for his "fool statements." Douglas, he suggested, was not the secretary of state or president and should "stay home instead of roaming all around the world and Asia."'
This is two-fisted stupidity with Texas written all over it. Of course it was pure politics, that goes without saying. Sorry Senator Tom, you can’t have it both ways. It’s either purely political or a purely personal attack on Pres. Truman, it can’t be both. As for “fool statements,” “stay home instead of roaming all around the world and Asia” is the kind of jingoistic foolishness that Texans are famous for. Apparently ignorance of the world is a proud tradition in the Lone Star State. If the Senator were still alive I would feel obliged to inform him that Asia is part of the world; you see Asia when you see the world.
"Senator Everett M. Dirksen (R-Illinois) commented that Douglas's comments could not be ‘divorced from the party in power.’”
Statements made by the Chief Justice are automatically linked to the party in power? Is that because Douglas was appointed by FDR, or because Sen. Dirksen was too Republican to accept any strategy that didn’t benefit Republicans first and foremost? These were the same Republicans who were hatching a scheme that came to be known as their “Southern Strategy.” (RNC Chairman Mehlman recently apologized to the NAACP for his party’s use of that strategy to gain political advantage.)
"The firestorm set off by Douglas's comments showed that despite talk about a 'bipartisan.' Cold War foreign policy, party loyalties were a very important component of post-World War II debates on America's diplomacy. In 1951, Republicans were still blaming Democrat Harry S. Truman for having "lost" China to the communists in 1949. The Democrats had their turn, however, during the presidential campaign of 1960, when John F. Kennedy jabbed at the Republican administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower for 'losing' Cuba."
Tit for tat, tit for tat! The same kind of foolishness has been driving the two party system for far too long. Educated fools with more money than sense buy their way into office by pandering to our basest fears and prejudices. The truly insidious aspect of all the party bickering during the Cold War was the wasteful overspending on pie in the sky weapons systems. Each party threw more and more money at weapons manufacturers in their successful efforts to convince the gullible that nuclear weapons made us safe.