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The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

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Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#181

Post by lisasays »

chrysler wrote: post #178
lisasays wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The matter is murky in the details, but it certainly isn't a "conspiracy theory". Not surprisingly -- different participants have different recollections of what was said, and in what context. As a counterpart to the above, we also have Baker's assurances, made to the Soviets at the time “neither the President nor I intend to extract any unilateral advantages from the processes that are taking place". And that the Am…

Soviet leadership, including Gorbachev himself, have explicitly denied that any assurances existed. Like Shevardnadze, he denied that they even talked about it with western counterparts. In his own words: "The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that a…

Soviet leadership, including Gorbachev himself, have explicitly denied that any assurances existed.

As regards Gorbachev -- what did he say actually, and when?

And why would he say the exact opposite in his RBTH interview in 2014? (Granted, this is RBTH -- but I think we can be reasonably confident that the interview is not a fabrication and that he is being quoted correctly). Here's his quote again, in full context - and it's clear he's not not referring to the Common European Home:

The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#182

Post by bequanna »

woodpanel wrote: post #106
the_af wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting how Mao claimed he preferred "rightists" in power in the West, because leftists were usually pro-Soviet. > Mao: That is to say, I voted for you [Nixon] during your election. [...] I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath is also to the right. [...] They also say the Christian Democratic Party of West Germany is also to t…

Along those lines runs the delimiter of the often times blurry spectrum of today's western-leftism: The Pro-Soviet western marxists of the past often became today's western pro-Russian "populists", while the western Maoists of the 1968s became today's Pro-NATO "progressives".

> The Pro-Soviet western marxists of the past often became today's western pro-Russian "populists"

Please expand on that. The only thing that backing the Soviet Union and current day Russia seem to have in common is that they are both aggressive, authorities regimes. Maybe I’m missing some nuance here.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#183

Post by chrysler »

lisasays wrote: post #181
chrysler wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviet leadership, including Gorbachev himself, have explicitly denied that any assurances existed. Like Shevardnadze, he denied that they even talked about it with western counterparts. In his own words: "The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that a…

Soviet leadership, including Gorbachev himself, have explicitly denied that any assurances existed. As regards Gorbachev -- what did he say actually, and when? And why would he say the exact opposite in his RBTH interview in 2014? (Granted, this is RBTH -- but I think we can be reasonably confident that the interview is not a fabrication and that he is being quoted correctly). Here's his quote again, in full context…

My quote is from the same interview. I repeat: "The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years."

If that interview leaves anything unclear, then Spiegel tried to get a "yes, assurances existed" answer from foreign minister Shevardnadze from several different angles, but he replied to every attempt with a "No."

Spiegel: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e...

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#184

Post by adrian_b »

hguant wrote: post #122
H8crilA wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. He just meant that old people find it hard to learn to speak Mandarin, even if they can read the Chinese script (which is the same for all Chinese languages). He likely saw this as a major obstacle to his vision of a grand, unified China. He's also responsible for the simplified Chinese script, which was introduced everywhere but in Hong Kong and Taiwan. They are still very mutually intelligible, from wha…

Just to touch on this - Cantonese is not really mutually intelligible with modern Chinese, that's CCP propaganda. They're big on the idea that there's only one Chinese language, and there are "regional dialects" but...those dialects meet an awful lot of criteria for being a different language. It's very similar to their push to make all Chinese culture and history Han Chinese. The mandarin spoken in Taiwan is 1:1 wit…

Moreover, I doubt that the use of Mandarin was widespread in Taiwan before 1949 when Kuomintang occupied Taiwan.

Before that, most people from Taiwan were either natives, who spoke an Austronesian language, or Chinese immigrants who had come during the previous 4 centuries from Fujian, who spoke a Hokkien dialect very different from Mandarin.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#185

Post by lisasays »

chrysler wrote: post #183
lisasays wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soviet leadership, including Gorbachev himself, have explicitly denied that any assurances existed. As regards Gorbachev -- what did he say actually, and when? And why would he say the exact opposite in his RBTH interview in 2014? (Granted, this is RBTH -- but I think we can be reasonably confident that the interview is not a fabrication and that he is being quoted correctly). Here's his quote again, in full context…

My quote is from the same interview. I repeat: "The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years." If that interview leaves anything unclear, then Spiegel tried to get a "yes, assurances existed" answer from foreign minister Shevardnadze from several different angles, but he replied to every attempt with a "No." Spiegel: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interv…

Mmm -- my sense is that you're also "arranging scraps" here to get them to line up and support the narrative that you like.

By my reading, Gorbachev's later statement -- "definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990" (referring to NATO's decisive steps towards expansion starting in 1993) -- is more holistic, and seals the matter.

Not that there was "conspiracy" to hoodwink the Soviets from the beginning, per your straw-man argument. But still -- against the spirit of the statements and assurances made at the time, 'twas. Shevardnadze's statements might seem to contradict this, but not really -- Shevardnadze is focusing on the details; Gorbachev is talking about the bigger, "moral" picture if you will.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#186

Post by FreshStart »

l3mure wrote: post #177
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #32

Looks like some game of chess: China stopped supporting North Vietnam, but that didn't stop North Vietnam from invading South Vietnam, after the pullout. However at that point no one in the US cared about any domino theory, because the US was now friends with China against the Soviet Union. I wonder what the chess pieces were all thinking...

> because the US was now friends with China against the Soviet Union The US also got the anti-communist genocide and friendly dictator it desired in Indonesia, which was considered a major win for its interests in the region.

It was mostly anti-Han resentment of the empires citizens and collaborators that last conquered them. The average citizen is very unidrologic during a genocide, mostly in it for discrimination - revenge or profit.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#187

Post by kristopolous »

cryptonector wrote: post #43
throwawqy99 wrote: post #37

Was this before mao killed millions of Chinese or after?

After.

I think this is what is being referred to

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

AFAIK, the biggest problem is some influential "scientists", especially this guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko, advocated for a kind of "communist farming" with some really strange idea of how plants work which led to some horrible results.

I'm sure it's more complicated but upon closer inspection I haven't seen any real evidence of the deaths being an intrinsic result of leftist ideology

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#188

Post by KwisatzHaderack »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #80
tumanian wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have the source at hand, but soviets also preffered republicans to the left, since they could always make a dral with republicans while the lwft was too ideological.

Depends on what do you mean by the ‘left’ bolsheviks often viewed social-democratic and (to a lesser extent) liberal parties as their greatest threats. They were all appealing to the same demographics but were diametrically opposed on certain core points (democracy, free speech, political oppression etc.) making any real cooperation impossible. The Weimar republic was a great example of that, the liberal/socialist go…

> the liberal/socialist government which was in power during it’s entire lifetime was so unstable and eventually collapsed because a significant proportion of the electorate continued voting for the bolsheviks

Seems to still be the case today: the far left fighting with the moderate left.

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#189

Post by qwytw »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #89
the_af wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very interesting how Mao claimed he preferred "rightists" in power in the West, because leftists were usually pro-Soviet. > Mao: That is to say, I voted for you [Nixon] during your election. [...] I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath is also to the right. [...] They also say the Christian Democratic Party of West Germany is also to t…

This is normal pragmatism and real-politik. Mao is looking after his and China's interests. The public are usually fed simplistic, emotional propaganda by their governments, all of them: good vs evil, right thing to do, freedom, whatever. But in fact policies are based on interests and cold calculations.

> Mao is looking after [..] China's interests

Yes, just like during the "Great Leap Forward" and the cultural revolution. Sure...

Re: The Mao-Kissinger Meeting of 1973

#190

Post by kjkjadksj »

panosfilianos wrote: post #71
shakil wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. There's people responsible for not paying their parking tickets on time, and then there's folks such as Kissinger and Madeleine Albright that have the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on their hands. Lets not sweep it all under the same rug.

The issue here is that, when you live in the same society, the effects of these killings tend to trickle down to benefits towards you. Not being able to see that the shoes we wear can be the product of child exploitation on the other side of the world is the problem, that allows people on the top to act the way they do.

Plenty of people today are aware of things like clothing being made in unsavory conditions. Few can afford clothing themselves in the alternatives, however. Even in the grocery store, you have to pay sometimes double for free range eggs. Not everyone has the disposable income to pay extra for the morally conscious choice. We are limited to what the market makes available at our own price points, you never have much choice in the matter.
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