American Elections and the Politics of Peace - part 1

Peace as an Election Ploy

In his 1968 run for the White House Richard Nixon declared himself as “the peace candidate” and the American people, disgusted and confused by the Vietnam War, ascended him to the Presidency primarily on that promise. History proved however that his declarations as being “the peace candidate” during that election were a cynical ploy to win; he actually had intended to “bomb the hell out of them” and force the North Vietnamese into surrender.

“Peace with Honor”

Five years later in 1973, and after a brutal bombardment campaign failed to break the will of the Vietcong, Mr. Nixon began to talk about “Peace with honor.” Saigon was about to fall and the president was looking for ways to acknowledge the failure of American interventionism in South East Asia. Nixon however, could not bring himself to use words such as failure, defeat, settlement or anything else that acknowledged the reality of the situation. Had his approval rating been higher or had he been a more self assured five star general and war hero like his previous boss, Dwight Eisenhower, he may have been confident enough to admit the realities to the American people.

Peace Linked with Failure

“Peace with Honor” were the words Richard Nixon used to describe the goal of the negotiations with North Vietnam in 1973. Mr. Nixon’s misuse of the word peace in his election campaign, and his subsequent manipulation of it as he tried to extricate us from Vietnam, devalued its power and virtue in our minds. The tragedy in using the word “peace” in the context of ending the war with Vietnam, was that the negotiations with the North Vietnamese were actually negotiations for military retreat and disengagement rather than creating a co-operative and peaceful relationship. The relationship with Vietnam was not normalized until 1995. Peace was linked with failure.

Loss of Honor Conflated with Peace in the American Psyche

In the context of a military retreat, Mr. Nixon calculated that the word “peace” did not carry with it enough virtue. He needed to add another virtue to give it weight - “honor”. But the president’s considerations did not take into account that the concept of peace is a deeply held universal drive for humanity. It has spiritual and deeply rooted existential origins within the species. Honor however, is an ego-based virtue. It is personal and  not inclusive, born out of a need to be more than humble and more than equal.

Protecting Our Pride

The problem with this virtue upon virtue exercise was that it created confusion in the American psyche. Peace by itself was no longer enough. It had to be attached to something else in order to protect our pride. A new subconscious connection was created in the psyche of the American people that equated the word “peace” with the absence of victory, i.e. “failure”. Thus began our uneasy and confusing relationship with one of the most psychologically powerful aspirations of humanity.

The question is why was the American psyche so readily open to make the connection between the words “peace” and “defeat” and why have we not been able to overcome it since then?

Part 2 of this blog will be published on Friday, October 24th. Look for it!