The year of the unsettled giant was 1968; American domestic and international policies were in turmoil.
Starting in 1965, public opinion polls started show-ing a disturbshow-ing trend: Americans were losshow-ing faith in their government, their military, and their politi-cal leaders.1 The American public was so shocked by the abilities of the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive that support for the Vietnam War, and the President, waned. President Lyndon Johnson chose not to run for reelection. Race riots in 130 cities followed the as-sassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.2 Inflation rose 4 percent from the previous year (and 12 percent since 1964).3 Johnson and the Union of Soviet Socialist Re-publics (USSR) agreed to begin talks on limitations of ballistic missile defense and nuclear weapons delivery systems, but the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslo-vakia halted the plans for negotiations. Nixon won the majority of the popular vote for President by only a little over 500,000 votes.4 With this slim margin of political support, Nixon took office with a country di-vided not only by political party, but by economics, race, and war.
Nixon famously created a partnership with Henry Kissinger, first as the National Security Advisor and later as the Secretary of State, and together Nixon and Kissinger devised a series of strategies to bring the country out of its ongoing turmoil. Kissinger’s goals in shaping strategic policy were premised on the view that in the previous administrations, “the debate has concentrated on our commitments and not our inter-ests. It is really our interests that should get us involved, not our commitments.”5 The principle strategy of the
Nixon administration thus became the preservation of the balance of power and order, while taking actions which align with America’s strategic interests and rec-ognizing the Soviets as the primary threat to America.6 Nixon and Kissinger actively worked to concentrate power in the executive branch so as to best deal with the turmoil, consistently returning to the strategy of balancing while pursuing American interests as they saw fit. While the difficult times provided for differ-ent methods and options than a prosperity presiddiffer-ent, Nixon used his time as President to work toward the ultimate goal of successfully containing the Soviet Union through the methods he saw fit. Nixon had the choice: must the United States retrench, or could it fight austerity? Ultimately, although Nixon’s obses-sion with power and credibility weakened his ability to accomplish goals, the Nixon presidency faced the times of austerity as an opportunity to focus goals and steer the course of American history.
Defining the Terms.
Nixon entered his presidency with the assumption that before a President formats the details of a strat-egy, he needs first to assess the goals of the strategy.
This observation is not as obvious as one may posit;
notably, during the Johnson and John Kennedy ad-ministrations, the purpose of policy was sometimes not the end goal but the policy process. In the policy process, strategy becomes:
the calculated relationship of ends and means . . . where calculations become more important than re-lationships being calculated, where means attract greater attentions than ends-then what one has is not so much bad strategy as no strategy at all.7
Nixon wished to turn that trend back to a focused cal-culation of end goals, because by creating goals and assessing and reassessing the reasons for actions, the United States would avoid wasting its resources in ar-eas where it did not intend to get involved.
Nixon’s goal assessments began with the premise that the military strategy for Vietnam did not align with Johnson’s goal of “unconditional negotiations.”
In effect, the military acted as a bureaucratic entity which enacted a plan without incorporating clear goals or significant readjustments as needed, lead-ing Kisslead-inger to observe that “strategy divorced from foreign policy proved sterile.”8 The reality of conflict did not reflect the assertion of benchmarks for nego-tiations. The Nixon administration instead worked to create operational meanings for goals like superiority and stability.
Even with the purported necessity to define terms for strategy making, Kissinger is criticized by authors for setting out lofty goals without giving clear guid-ance on how to reach them.9 The Vietnam conflict high-lights the difficulty in shifting goals and actions from a previous administration. Nixon and Kissinger cam-paigned for the United States to leave Vietnam with dignity, while maintaining U.S. credibility abroad.
In a worst-case scenario, loss of American credibil-ity could lead to “global totalitarianism” and would equate to giving the Soviet leaders a “blank check”
for expansionism. In fact, during this period, there was resurgence in Soviet thought to be in the Krem-lin for increased Soviet activity abroad, countering the domestic retrenchment that took place beginning in 1965.10 However, much of the fear of losing cred-ibility was rooted in psychological, not real, threats.
What is more, perceptions of leaving with dignity was also rooted in domestic perceptions. “Dignity” could only be achieved through an agreement that would allow them to “save face” so that the American mili-tary deaths would not be in vain. The goal for exit-ing Vietnam was not to exit due to goal attainment of on-the-ground circumstances, but to exit when public perceptions aligned so the United States could mize its perceived power and so Nixon could maxi-mize his perceived power. The psychological aspect of understanding threats in this Cold War era made goal definition difficult during the Nixon era.
Kissinger, despite the image as a visionary, did not imagine a world beyond the Soviet-U.S. competition.
However, despite failures in establishing goals with operational meanings or seeing beyond the status quo competition as it existed, the Nixon-Kissinger partner-ship did successfully achieve strategic foreign policy objectives by defining their objectives for détente, and those successes were rooted in a definition of goals.
Nixon and Détente.
Nixon and Kissinger’s strategy for containing the USSR moved from the principle of “flexible response”
(tactical flexibility, especially with regards to nuclear weapons) as described under the Kennedy and John-son administrations to the principle of détente. Détente (as understood by the administration) was a strategy of containing the Soviets through the variety of tools at the president’s disposal with the goal of convinc-ing “Kremlin leaders that it was in their country’s best interest to be ‘contained’.”11
John Lewis Gaddis describes the implementation of détente as a four-pronged approached: First, the
United States would engage the USSR in negotiations, and in the process, discard the outdated notions that the United States should wait until it regained the relative strength it had in comparison to the Soviets in the 1950s. The decision to negotiate could not and would not be seen as a weakness.12
The second aspect of détente was to shape Soviet behavior through the concept “linkage,” allowing the administration to “link” negotiations in one area, such as economics, to an unrelated area.13 This strategy was based on Nixon’s assumption that “since U.S.-Soviet interests as the world’s two competing nuclear super-powers were so widespread and overlapping, it was unrealistic to separate or compartmentalize areas of concern.”14 Kissinger argued that allowing the Soviets to get what they want in one arena should depend on the “good behavior” that they follow in another. In Nixon’s first press conference about Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), he envisioned “strategic arms talks in a way and at a time that will promote, if possible, progress on outstanding political prob-lems at the same time.”15 Through this process, weap-ons systems negotiatiweap-ons could be linked to settling the Berlin problem. Linkage, effectively, “enlarged the scope” of elements which could be “traded in an international bargain.”16
The third aspect of détente was to open ties with China in order to further pressure the USSR.17 Nixon’s decisionmaking regarding China aligned with Kiss-inger’s philosophy that, in the triangular diplomacy between the Americans, the Soviets, and the Chinese, the United States should align with the weakest entity and prevent the USSR and China from forming an al-liance that would alter the global balance of power.18 Additionally, by recognizing China, the United States
could conserve the diplomatic resources being spent on pressuring other countries from giving recognition to China.19
The final part of Nixon’s strategy became known as the Nixon Doctrine: The United States would phase out of commitments in the world which did not align with U.S. strategic interests.20 This doctrine was con-troversial for allies because there was, and remained, an expectation by American allies, especially Amer-ica’s European allies, that the United States would serve as a protector. America found itself in a position of being the protector for half the world’s nations, and those states wanted and needed American security guarantees. Nixon and Kissinger recognized the rea-son for U.S. involvement in places such as Vietnam, with Kissinger stating that:
conflicts among states merge with division within nations; the dividing line between domestic and for-eign policy begins to disappear . . . [so that] states feel threatened not only by the foreign policy of other countries but also . . . by domestic transformations.21
However, they recognized that strategic calcula-tions, not overblown threats, must steer U.S. policy.
The Nixon Doctrine became a template for under-standing how to balance obligations to half the world with pursuing interests of prime importance to Amer-ica. The United States vowed to “keep all its treaty commitments” and “provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation allied with us or a nation whose survival we consider vital to our security.”22 However, if an ally was threatened or attacked with conventional forces, the United States would react with economic and military assistance but require the ally to take the majority of the
respon-sibility in providing soldiers to protect the threatened or attacked nation. Nixon thus attempted to reassure allies that the United States would continue to honor its commitments and protect nervous European allies, especially through its military and nuclear weapons.
However, Nixon publicly required American allies to take on part of the burden of their own defense.
The execution of these four points of Nixon’s dé-tente strategy shows certain flaws. For instance, the Nixon Doctrine plus years of a badly mangled war led to the January 1973 Paris Peace Accords agreement to let the U.S. exit from Vietnam. The signing resulted in the fulfillment of the Nixon Doctrine’s goal of reign-ing in an overextended United States, but it left the international community unsure of the strength of an American alliance. Additionally, the Nixon Doctrine was sometimes viewed as an excuse to follow the most politically palatable course of action by exiting Vietnam without bringing peace.23 The Nobel Prize awarded jointly to Kissinger and his North Vietnam-ese counterpart, Le Duc Tho, was rejected by Le Duc Tho because he insisted that there was no peace yet.
When the United States exited, it left in its wake a South Vietnam plunged into recession with the lost revenue from the American military. With American aid cut off by Congress in 1975, the South Vietnamese were left still fighting a war with the North Vietnam-ese until they were overrun by the North.24 In prac-tice, Congress followed the Nixon Doctrine, so that by 1975 “Congress simply did not believe the future of Vietnam was very important to the United States.”25 Though the war ended with a general fulfillment of the Nixon Doctrine, an unsavory message can be gleaned from the end of the war: When a region is no longer vital, the United States may simply discard an ally and remove aid.26
The Nixon Doctrine, simple to describe, did not always lead to obvious conclusions about deciding America’s strategic interests now and especially in the future. Domestic politics and personal political goals tended to interfere with pure strategic foreign policy goals. For instance, in 1970, due to emerging politi-cal circumstances at home and abroad such as “crime, busing, international terrorism, and mistreatment of Soviet Jews,” the traditional Democratic allegiance of the Jewish population was cracking.27 Nixon started to see support of Israel as a potentially important part of getting him reelected in 1972. When the Arab-Israeli War broke out in 1973, Kissinger wanted to keep Israel from returning territory gained in the 1967 conflict in order to prevent Soviet allies from gaining rewards from the war, and worked toward that end. He also worked to prevent strains on the American-Israeli re-lationship.28 Nixon and Kissinger failed to see the fu-ture consequences of angering the Arab populations.
A combination of political calculations for his reelec-tion and calculareelec-tions about preventing Soviet gains led to an Israel policy which strengthened the U.S.
commitment to Israel rather than producing a more flexible strategy for the future.
Finally, the complexity of foreign affairs did not always permit a clear application of Nixon and Kiss-inger’s détente strategies, leading to the failures and over-assumption of threats that repeatedly plagued Cold War Presidents. For instance, although he was neutral publicly, Nixon sent arms to Pakistan in 1971 to help the Pakistani army suppress the secessionist movement of East Pakistan (Bangladesh).29 The actions of the Pakistani army caused a massive refugee flow into India and horrible human rights violations. The Bangladeshis were supported by Indians, and the
In-dians had an Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation from August 1971.30 The action was thus viewed through an anti-Soviet expansion lens, despite the weakness of the Indian-Soviet partner-ship.31 The United States did calculate that, because of the China-Pakistan alliance, supporting the Pakistanis would help with opening China. However, the sup-port also created a further tilt away from the Indians, which effectively helped widen a rift with India, while forging ties with China.32
With the massive human rights violations and public disapproval stemming from a publicity blitz originating with the likes of U.S. Senator Ted Kenne-dy and the Beatle’s George Harrison, the U.S. support of Pakistan became an embarrassment to the United States.33 In private, while Nixon disapproved of Paki-stani leader Yahya Khan, he expressed anger with the Indians for the conflict, saying “The Indians put on this sanctimonious, peace, Gandhi-like, Christ-like at-titude (like) they’re the greatest, the world’s biggest democracy and Pakistan is one of the most horrible dictatorships” and that “India’s hands are not clean.
They’re caught in a bloody bit of aggression.”34 Yet, Nixon could not regain public support for his Paki-stan policy, and Congress passed a bill to ban the sale of arms to the Pakistani army. Eventually, the Paki-stanis were defeated.35 The United States went on to recognize the state of Bangladesh on April 4, 1972.36 The Bangladesh conflict highlights the potential dis-crepancies of détente strategy since one element could conflict with another, and the only basis of hierarchy rests in the recognition that any actions must work to contain the supreme threat of the Soviets. In the con-flict, the United States focused on containing the Sovi-ets and siding with the Chinese. However, the United
States overestimated the impact it could have in the conflict and did not adhere to the Nixon Doctrine, eventually coming out on the wrong side of history by siding with Pakistan and its human rights violations.
NIXON AND THE DECLINE OF