Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (110 page)

24
Nixon, Vietnam, and the World, 1969–1974

Nixon, a student of international relations, was confident that he could allay world tensions. Although he had been one of the nation's most partisan Cold Warriors, he had gradually softened his rhetoric in the 1960s. He came to the presidency with the hope of bringing about better relations, later billed as détente, with the Soviet Union, and of opening dialogue with the People's Republic of China.
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During his years in office Nixon made a little progress toward these goals, enhancing greatly his image in time for the presidential election campaign in 1972. Triumphantly returned to power, he managed to reach a cease-fire in Vietnam in January 1973. In the process, however, he pursued policies—notably concerning Vietnam—that prolonged and sharpened rancor in the United States. Many of his efforts in foreign affairs, like those on the home front, were designed to win personal political objectives, not to break decisively with policies of the past. When he left office in August 1974, the Cold War—a constant of the years since 1945—remained about as frigid as ever.

T
HE
P
RESIDENT'S ALTER EGO
in foreign policy-making was Henry Kissinger, his National Security Adviser. Kissinger, a Jew, had been forced to flee his native Germany in the late 1930s. After serving in the American army during World War II he became a brilliant student and then professor of government at Harvard University. By the 1960s he was chafing for public office. He was a gregarious, arrogant, and extraordinarily egotistical self-promoter who carefully cultivated good relations with journalists and who was ready to work for almost anyone who would give him access to power. Having ingratiated himself with Nixon—he had great talent at obsequiousness—he got his chance as security adviser in 1969.
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Kissinger embraced a "realistic" view of international relations. Rejecting what he considered excessively moralistic approaches to policy, he admired statesmen who sought instead to broker a stable and orderly balance of power in the world. An early book, A
World Restored
(1957), lauded the efforts of Metternich, Castlereagh, and other conservative proponents of
Realpolitik
who designed the post-Napoleonic agreements at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
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The wise and realistic architect of foreign policy, Kissinger believed, must not try to change the internal systems of other nations; he must not be sentimental; he must accept limits and work within them. Kissinger hoped to promote a manageable relationship among the United States, the USSR, and the People's Republic of China, as well as a balance of power in the non-Communist world among the United States, western Europe, and Japan. With the big powers in place, the rest of the world could be stabilized.

Nixon, having moderated his moralistic anti-Communism by 1969, had come to share this approach. In July 1969 he enunciated what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, the essence of which was that the United States must first consider its own strategic interests, which in turn would shape its commitments—rather than the other way around. Other nations must normally expect to assume primary responsibility for their own defenses. Although the Nixon Doctrine did not change much in practice, it signaled that the new administration would not try to save the world. What mattered was carefully defined strategic interests, not moralistic attachments. Nixon, like Kissinger, liked to think of himself as tough and analytical. To be sentimental in dealing with other nations, he thought, was foolish.
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Nixon also shared Kissinger's passion for secrecy and intrigue. Kissinger, as suspicious a man as Nixon, so feared leaks that he authorized unconstitutional wiretaps on members of his own staff. Both men were contemptuous of government bureaucrats, even in the National Security Council itself. They had scant respect for Congress, which they thought played to the voters when it concerned itself with world affairs. Nixon had special scorn for so-called experts in the State Department: they were the very sort of eastern Establishment people who had sneered at him all his life. For these reasons Kissinger and Nixon deliberately bypassed Secretary of State William Rogers, a friend of the President's who had little knowledge of foreign problems.
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To manage these evasions Kissinger and Nixon set up a maze of secret "back channels" connecting them to loyalists in various offices and embassies around the world. Through these channels they could conduct elaborate negotiations and hide them from the State Department bureaucracy. These channels remained in place after Kissinger replaced Rogers as Secretary of State in 1973.
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Needless to say, this was a cynical and high-handed way of managing foreign relations. In evading official channels—and largely ignoring Congress—Nixon and Kissinger narrowed their scope of advice, and they further entrenched already centralized procedures in the making of policy. An imperial presidency, ascendant under Kennedy and Johnson, had arrived. On many occasions Nixon's reach for personal control sabotaged ongoing negotiations undertaken by Rogers and others at State.
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Moreover, Kissinger and Nixon deeply distrusted each other. Kissinger was sometimes contemptuous (behind Nixon's back) of the President. He called Nixon "our drunken friend," a "basket case," or "meatball mind." Kissinger was also given to fits of temper. After one of these tantrums Nixon confided that he might have to fire Kissinger unless he got psychological help. Nixon apparently added later, "There are times when Henry has to be kicked in the nuts. Because sometimes Henry starts to think he's president. But at other times you have to pat Henry and treat him like a child."
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This volatile personal chemistry nonetheless survived a range of acid tests and produced what seemed to be tangible results, especially with the Soviet Union. In September 1970 Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, reached an understanding concerning Cuban issues that had festered since the missile crisis of 1962. The Soviets agreed to stop building a submarine base in Cuba and to refrain from arming Castro with offensive missiles; the Americans promised in return that they would not invade. Characteristically Nixonian, the agreement was reached in secret; even after it was made virtually no one in government even knew of it. It therefore had no legal standing. Still, it indicated the search by both men for common ground on an inflammatory issue. In September 1971 the two leaders also accepted a four-power agreement that lessened tensions over Berlin, another of the world's flashpoints. Although these moves toward détente did not stop the Cold War, they moderated hostility to some degree.
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By 1972 the administration's
Realpolitik
seemed to be working wonders. In February, Nixon, his way paved by secret journeys that Kissinger took in 1971 to Peking, made a lavishly televised week-long visit to the People's Republic of China, thereby dramatizing his commitment to better relations with one of America's most determined foes. That Nixon, a life-long Cold Warrior who had assailed Truman for "losing China," could and did make such a journey staggered and excited contemporaries. The rapprochement promised to soften hostilities between the two countries and to enable the United States to play off China against the Soviet Union, whose relations with Mao Tse-tung remained unfriendly. The warm reception that Nixon received in Peking also suggested that the Chinese might turn a blind eye or two if the United States resorted to escalation in North Vietnam.

No act of Nixon's presidency was more carefully staged. None better demonstrated the flexibility that made him such a formidable politician.
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It is doubtful, moreover, that any Democratic leader could have taken such a trip without suffering severe political recriminations, for Cold War feelings remained intense. The Vietnam War still raged. The President, moreover, made it clear that the United States would reduce its military presence in Taiwan; later that year Taiwan was voted out of the UN. Nixon dared to take these steps because he knew that his reputation as a Cold Warrior would insulate him against assaults from the Right. He told Mao, "Those on the right can do what those on the left only talk about." Mao nodded cheerfully, "I like rightists."
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Three months later, in May, Nixon made another well-publicized journey, this time to Moscow for a summit meeting with Brezhnev. There the two leaders put the finishing touches on earlier negotiations that had led to a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I). The treaty placed upper limits on the future build-up of ICBMs for five years. The two leaders also signed a treaty restricting the deployment by both sides of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. Both agreements received senatorial approval later in 1972. Experts who followed the complicated, highly technical negotiations concluded that the agreements did not amount to much. SALT I did not stop the building of ICBMs already underway or prevent the situating on missiles of MIRVs (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles). The ABM treaty left plenty of room for the development of sophisticated defensive systems. Soviet as well as American arms build-ups continued at a rapid pace, especially of MIRVs and long-range bombers. Still, the agreements demonstrated Nixon's willingness to talk with an old enemy. They had large symbolic and political value for the White House.
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Not all of Nixon's foreign policies during this time evoked praise. By focusing so intently on great power relationships the President proved himself as blind as his predecessors in the White House to much of the rest of the world. Even rising powers such as Japan felt slighted. The concentration on what the Soviets and Chinese were doing caused special neglect of regional conflicts. This was obvious in South Asia, where Nixon and Kissinger were overeager in 1971 to court Pakistan as a conduit for their secret approaches to China. For this and other reasons (they thought the Soviets were masterminding Indian opposition to Pakistan) they sided with Pakistan's brutal suppression of Bengalis, who sought to secede. It was later estimated that Pakistan killed as many as a million people. Nixon's highly secretive policy, rooted in notions about great-power balance, ignored the expertise of State Department specialists in the region. It caused lasting ill feeling with the Bengalis and with India.
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The administration also revealed itself to be considerably more ideological than its professions of
Realpolitik
suggested. In Chile, Nixon and Kissinger encouraged covert American action to keep a Marxist, Salvador Allende, from gaining power. When Allende nonetheless won a democratic election in the fall of 1970, they continued to authorize the CIA to destabilize his regime, which was overthrown in 1973. Allende was assassinated in the uprising. Although there was no direct evidence linking the United States with the coup, Nixon and Kissinger rejoiced over it. American actions in Chile—as in Vietnam, Angola, Iran, and other places where Communism seemed to threaten—remained as uncompromising and ideological in the Nixon years as they had been since 1945.
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Some critics at the time grumbled that Nixon's foreign policies primarily reflected calculations of domestic political gain. Was it accidental, they asked, that the trips to Peking and Moscow took place in an election year? There was a great deal of truth to this complaint, for Nixon and Kissinger carefully timed their moves. Moreover, Nixon and Kissinger did not change the overall direction of American foreign relations. Even the opening to China was mostly symbolic; diplomatic recognition did not occur until 1978. Détente, though a worthwhile goal, did not transform Soviet-American relations, which grew especially rigid in Nixon's second term. Nixon and Kissinger, however, acted and spoke as if they were breaking dramatically and successfully with the past. "This was the week that changed the world," Nixon proclaimed in a toast at Peking. There, as in Moscow and other places, he and his aides took special pains to accommodate television, which captured his every move. When it came to foreign policy-making, the President was a master of political timing and of the art of public relations.
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That mastery mattered much in 1972, the election year. Those who complained about what he had done in South Asia or Chile, who denounced him for his secretive and duplicitous ways of operating, and who exposed his exaggerated claims could scarcely be heard over the applause that followed his trips in early 1972 to Peking and Moscow. At last, it seemed, the United States had a man of experience and vision in the Oval Office. Nothing did more to advance Nixon's political prospects at that time than the reputation that he had managed to cultivate as an advocate of détente.

T
HE MOST IMPORTANT TEST
of Nixon's foreign policies, however, involved Vietnam. In dealing with this divisive conflict, the President and Kissinger juggled two not always compatible goals: de-escalation of American troop commitments and escalation of military support for the South Vietnamese. His efforts prolonged the war and failed to save South Vietnam. They also provoked greatly increasing domestic opposition—which he and his aides tried to stifle in whatever ways they could. Indeed, Nixon's sensitivity to domestic dissent about the war—a sensitivity that bordered on paranoia—led him to whip up popular backlash against "unpatriotic" advocates of American withdrawal. It poisoned his administration and led to many of the excesses that ultimately destroyed his presidency. Like many of his policies, however, his course of action regarding Vietnam was conducted with clever political timing, so that the end of war seemed imminent in the last few weeks of the 1972 election. No policy of his presidency better exhibited Nixon's political skills, at least in the short run.
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