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Richard Nixon: Philosophy Nixon was as qualified to be a great foreign policy president as any other chief executive of the twentieth century except for Theodore Roosevelt. His early years in the House of Representatives saw him play a key role in the enactment of the Marshall Plan for Europe, and while Vice President, Nixon visited dozens of foreign nations, becoming the most-traveled elected official in the nation's history. Eisenhower also allowed Nixon to be a full part of National Security Council meetings, and the young politician thus became the first Vice President to play an active role in policymaking. In 1960, Nixon ran a close race against John F. Kennedy, losing by a margin of fewer than a hundred thousand votes. Determined to remain a player in national politics, he ran against Pat Brown for the California's governor's mansion, but his defeat there caused Nixon to angrily tell a press conference the night of the election that "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." Nixon left California for New York to become a highly-paid corporate lawyer. During his "wilderness period," after he lost the California gubernatorial race and before his triumphant comeback to clinch the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, Nixon cemented his background as a foreign policy expert, traveling abroad and reading extensively. He signaled his evolution on foreign policy thinking in a 1967 article in the journal Foreign Affairs in which he recommended that China be brought back into the community of nations. This was a radical step for Nixon because his entire political career had been built on anti-Communist feelings. Although less harsh than Senator Joe McCarthy, Nixon had still alienated many liberals by calling respected officials like Secretary of State Dean Acheson soft on Communism and for his prosecution of Soviet spy Alger Hiss for treason. Yet Nixon advocated a step in his article that even President Johnson would not consider. Clearly, as Theodore H. White wrote in The Making of the President 1968, this was a new Nixon. How new, not even White guessed. Once in office with a slim plurality over Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Nixon instituted a foreign policy closer to that of Theodore Roosevelt's than Wilson's. Instead of depicting the Soviet Union and China as an evil Communist conspiracy bent on world domination (as Congressman, Senator and Vice President Nixon would have done), Nixon instead attempted to relax tensions between the United States and USSR while simultaneously exploiting a split in the Sino-Soviet alliance. Nixon thought that he could build a "lasting structure of peace" if he negotiated with other countries based upon mutual interests, not American idealism or moral strictures. But during his first term, Nixon's grand designs were overshadowed by the Vietnam War. More precisely, until he found a way to end the war and bring the troops home, there would be no domestic consensus to allow the president to negotiate confidently abroad. Refusing calls from the far left for unilateral withdrawal and from the far right for an intense escalation, Nixon gradually drew down forces in Indochina while stepping up bombing raids and carrying on a process of secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese to allow a "peace with honor." By January 1973, just as the Watergate scandal began to gather steam, Nixon had achieved his goal, and the last American troops were withdrawn. After this point, Nixon spent much of his time responding to and fighting with independent counsels and Congressional committees, and his chief adviser, Henry Kissinger, conducted foreign policy on a virtually autonomous basis. |
Philosophy
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