This is a post I had on another blog after President Ford died.
The late President Gerald R. Ford entered office at a time of great turmoil in the United States and in the world. Richard Nixon left Ford the mess of the Vietnam War, which was coming to an inglorious and futile conclusion, while the Soviets and Chinese were testing the waters by meddling in post-colonial Africa and other areas of the world.
Ford had to deal with the leftovers from the Vietnam War, while also deciding how to respond to Soviet incursions in southern Africa in the wake of Portugal’s exit from the imperial stage. While his hands were largely tied on the Vietnam issue by the failed policies of his predecessors, Johnson and Nixon, he did have to handle a unique situation which arose in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge (French for "Cambodian Reds"), seizure in May, 1975 of the American merchant vessel the Mayaguez. Less than two weeks after the embarrassing spectacle of American helicopters fleeing the Communist conquest of Saigon, Ford ordered American troops into combat against the Khmer Rouge. In pitched battles on islands off the Cambodian coast, 41 American Marines and Airmen lost their lives and another 50 were wounded. The crew of the ship was released, and the United States finally closed the book on the Indochina/Vietnam War. See also The Mayaguez Incident.
Ford also had to deal with the fall of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, specifically; he had to respond to the turmoil in Angola, where Marxist rebels, with substantial aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba, were fighting against non-communist forces for control of the newly independent Angola. Ford decided to order the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to arm and direct mercenaries to aid the non-communist forces. While this decision met with quite a bit of public scorn, and the Senate voted to cut of funding for this project, Ford made the right decision to stand up to Soviet expansion in a valuable and strategic part of the world that was experiencing a power vacuum. Read an interview with President Ford on this topic.
Given the setbacks the U.S. later experienced in the Carter years (Angola, Nicaragua, Ethiopia/Somalia, Iran, the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan), it would be interesting to speculate how a more experienced and geopolitically realistic leader like Gerald Ford would have reacted differently than the inexperienced and geopolitically naive Jimmy Carter. Alas, that is not how history works. Gerald Ford was a president with a strong spine and a good head. We shall miss him!