oted with approval General Douglas MacArthur's assessment that the Chinese military intervention in the Korean War demonstrated that the PRC had "the same lust for the expansion of power which has animated every would-be conqueror since the beginning of time" (p. 102). Nixon had openly supported American intervention to save the French at Dienbienphu in 1954, a proposal which Eisenhower squelched. Ambrose (1989) says that in 1963 Nixon commented that:
"Too many people are gloating publicly because the Chinese . . . and Soviet Communists are having an argument . . . what they fail to realize is that their argument is not about how they can beat each other, but how they can beat us" (p.23).
In 1964, Nixon supported Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, but criticized the administration for its timidity, what he called its 'Yalu River' complex. Ambrose quotes Nixon as stating in December 1965 that "the true enemy behind the Viet Cong and North Vietnam is China . . . If Vietnam is lost, Red China would gain vast new power" (1989, p. 78). However, as noted above,
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