George H. W. Bush: Difference between revisions

After the 1970 Senate election, Bush accepted a position as a senior adviser to the president, but he convinced Nixon to instead appoint him as the [[U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations]].{{sfn|Meacham|2015|pp=153–154}} The position represented Bush's first foray into foreign policy, as well as his first major experiences with the Soviet Union and China, the two major U.S. rivals in the [[Cold War]].{{sfn|Meacham|2015|pp=152, 157–158}} During Bush's tenure, the Nixon administration pursued a policy of détente, seeking to ease tensions with both the Soviet Union and China.{{sfn|Herring|2008|pp=773–775}} Bush's ambassadorship was marked by a defeat on the China question, as the [[United Nations General Assembly]] voted, in [[Resolution 2758]], to expel the [[Republic of China]] and replace it with the People's Republic of China in October 1971.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Austin |first1=Anthony |title=Crushing Defeat for the U.S., or A Blessing In Disguise? |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/10/31/archives/crushing-defeat-for-the-us-or-a-blessing-in-disguise-enter-peking.html |work=The New York Times |date=October 31, 1971 }}</ref> In the [[Indo-Pakistani War of 1971|1971 crisis in Pakistan]], Bush supported an Indian motion at the UN General Assembly to condemn the Pakistani government of [[Yahya Khan]] for waging genocide in [[East Pakistan]] (modern Bangladesh), referring to the "tradition which we have supported that the human rights question transcended domestic jurisdiction and should be freely debated".{{sfn|Saunders|2014|p=39}} Bush's support for India at the UN put him into conflict with Nixon who was supporting Pakistan, partly because Yahya Khan was a useful intermediary in his attempts to reach out to China and partly because the president was fond of Yahya Khan.{{sfn|Saunders|2014|pp=38–39}} In 1972, during a controversy over whether the United States was intentionally bombing civilian hydrological infrastructure in [[Vietnam]], Bush was sent by Nixon to convince [[Kurt Waldheim]] of the United States' position. Bush, who was himself a fighter pilot in the Second World War, was "unwilling to press his assigned case that the dikes had been spared," and told reporters "I think that the best thing I can do on the subject is shut up."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Perlstein |first=Rick |url=http://archive.org/details/nixonlandriseofp0000perl |title=Nixonland : the rise of a president and the fracturing of America |date=2008 |publisher=New York : Scribner |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-7432-4302-5 |pages=707}}</ref>