a President during times of austerity is capable of significant achievements, but Nixon’s time in office also highlighted potential pitfalls other Presidents may face. The lessons that can be gleaned from his-tory may not produce directly transferable solutions
to present day policy dilemmas, but they can serve to inform the decisionmaking process around those di-lemmas. For instance, the shift in goals of a war from one presidency to another may be littered with the same problems as the shift in Vietnam from Johnson to Nixon. Barack Obama’s second term will see a com-parable decision to be made in regards to the increas-ingly unpopular Afghanistan war. With the 2014 exit date for NATO combat troops, any change in the exit plan should come from clearly established goals and defined benchmarks, not a simple assessment that the
“mission” is or is not accomplished.100 Otherwise, al-though Obama will accomplish the U.S. exit from Af-ghanistan, he will have to accept the consequences of leaving a troubled state.
When Nixon brought the troops home from Viet-nam while the civil war raged, the South VietViet-namese questioned the loyalty of a U.S. partnership. The Unit-ed States may face similar criticism when it leaves Af-ghanistan in 2014, depending on the political scenario and amount of conflict when it departs. American credibility with unstable allies may come into ques-tion. However, the United States must not overesti-mate the importance of American credibility. Nixon chose to stay in the Vietnam War, to continue putting American lives in danger through a deadly war, and to prop up the South Vietnamese government in or-der to salvage American credibility. As Schell puts it, Nixon wanted to “establish in the minds of peoples and their leaders throughout the world an image of the United States as a nation that possessed great power and had the will and determination to use it in foreign affairs.”101 Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all chose to make “Vietnam a ‘test case’ of American re-solve” without considering that the Vietnam War was
determined in large part not because of the strength of the communist movement emanating from the USSR, but because of the on-the-ground circumstanc-es of Vietnam.102 The United States chose to overem-phasize the importance of Vietnam, and though the Nixon Doctrine specifically highlighted the necessity to avoid involvement in conflicts which weren’t of strategic importance, Nixon fell into the peril of the sunk cost problem and prolonged the war to maintain the supposed credibility of American commitments instead of exiting sooner.
American leaders feared that if they lacked cred-ibility, their allies may lose faith in American loyal-ty and abililoyal-ty to act and would fall to communism.
Although Laos and Cambodia fell to the communist movement, there was not a general ricochet of falling dominoes, and America’s strongest, mutually benefi-cial alliances with European countries did not suffer from the withdrawal.103 Taking a lesson from Vietnam, although the United States should be concerned about maintaining perceptions of credibility to fulfill com-mitments, maintaining credibility should not come at the expense of real American interests. The United States should strive to leave Afghanistan in as good of shape as possible, but not choose to stay longer than necessary because of credibility calculations.
The United States is predicting massive military difficulties in Afghanistan after the U.S. exit. However, the exit from Vietnam leads one to anticipate another looming problem. As noted previously, when Ameri-can troops left, they took with them a huge source of revenue for the Vietnamese government, leading to a Vietnamese recession with their own austerity mea-sures. The United States has been in Afghanistan for more than 10 years now, and its exit will inevitably
lead to a remarkable loss in the Afghani economy. If the United States loses interest in Afghanistan post-departure and chooses to reduce or eliminate aid, it should expect Afghanistan to institute its own aus-terity measures and struggle not just militarily but economically, with decreased functioning of many of the social institutions which were built up over the last decade.104
As the United States continues to support the in-ternationally unpopular Israeli government today, the same problems crop up again and again: The strong, political American Jewish vote remains significant, and some Arab states remain hostile because of Amer-ica’s support for Israel. With the likelihood of Iran completing a nuclear weapon and the chance of an unpopular Israeli strike on Iran during the next presi-dential term, the United States will, implicitly or ex-plicitly, face the calculations for action inherent in the Nixon Doctrine and must answer the question: What significance does Israel and a nuclear Iran hold among the array of American strategic interests?
The United States has not changed course since Nixon’s time in assessing China as extremely impor-tant to American strategic interests. China’s enormous economic gains, especially in the last 2 decades, were possible because of the normalized relations between the United States and China, emphasizing the poten-tial gains of creating ties with an otherwise closed country. The United States is unlikely to have a re-peat of Nixon’s China moment, at least not one that could begin to match the economic gains brought on by reopening the Chinese markets. However, certain lessons can be garnered for the next presidential term based on the circumstances of the diplomatic process.
First, Nixon’s political capital as an anti-communist
allowed him to establish ties with a Communist na-tion. Assuming the political capital of a President decreases with decisions made, the decision options available for the next term of the President will vary greatly based on the reputation, past performance, and political party of the President. A political area where the importance of political capital may become increasingly important in the next presidential term is related to the use of drones. The use of drones to target militants is a practice that theoretically fits with the hawkish character of the Republican Party, but as a Democrat, a lawyer, and a critic of the Iraq war, President Obama’s political capital allowed him to greatly increase the use of drones across borders to target terrorists, despite the tenuous position of drones in international law. After the targeted killing of an American citizen, Obama’s political capital di-minished, and he now faces criticism for the lack of due process in targeting Americans and the secretive nature of the program.105 These calculations of politi-cal capital will necessarily factor into the politipoliti-cal de-cisions in the next presidency. Second, the opening of China points to the importance of negotiating with the Chinese from the point of equality. Nixon recognized that the Chinese needed respect in order to move for-ward, so when the United States enters negotiations with China in the future, it would be wise to follow the principles of treating the Chinese as equals and negotiating from a position of power, while develop-ing a clear understanddevelop-ing of Chinese goals.
The United States could also learn from the link-age between offensive and defensive weapons of the SALT I negotiations. First, the United States must work toward gaining a clear understanding of the threats and needs of any country with which it
en-ters into negotiations. Additionally, the United States could link one problem to another (like offensive and defensive weapons, or even two unrelated related subjects) and come to agreement on one subject with a temporary agreement with assured future negotia-tions on another subject. By using the first subject as
“bait,” the United States may eventually be more like-ly to achieve gains on the more controversial issue by coming to treaty-based temporary agreements with treaty-based assurances to future negotiations.
Kissinger’s teachings on multipolarity are as rel-evant now as in the past: While America will maintain
“overwhelming military strength” in the coming de-cades, the United States will have to to use creativ-ity in dealing with the “pluralistic world” and avoid imposing American programs on developing states.
Though the security of America in its great power sta-tus is not in question, questions today are repeatedly being asked about the potential influence of a rising China for creating a bipolar environment, or even the rise of lesser powers in creating a multipolar envi-ronment. However, while the insecurity of America in remaining the sole superpower repeatedly crops up during conversations about America’s future, it is worth remembering that Kissinger’s predictions about the world returning to multipolarity when bi-polarity ended were wrong, and predictions made today should not be taken as an inevitability. For in-stance, while some authors predict bipolarity, others predict that the rise of nationalism or globalism will corrode the power of the state to the extent that great power status will not hold the same relevance in fu-ture years as it does today. While any of these predic-tions could come true, these types of predicpredic-tions were made repeatedly over the last 40 or more years and
have failed to produce the predicted results. There-fore, the United States should not assume bipolarity or multipolarity will reemerge, but it can, nonetheless, support nonradical cultural and political diversity in emerging domestic institutions of developing states and in international institutions.
Finally, the complicated ending of the Nixon presi-dency serves as a warning to all future Presidents. The embarrassment and failure of Nixon resulting from his concentration of executive power has not lead to an overwhelming timidity in concentrating power today.
The emphasis on executive privilege related to rendi-tion in the George Bush administrarendi-tion and the drone strikes under the Obama administration indicate that the United States can expect a continued wrangling for power between the executive, legislative, and ju-diciary branches. Presidents should assume, however, that whenever they take power which is not tradition-ally part of the executive, they will someday need to justify their decision.