Emory university provided this video. Prof. Allitt todays class is about president Richard Nixon and his National Security advisor, Henry Kissinger. In some ways, nixon is one of the most brilliant people ever to occupy the white house and had incredible political gifts. And on the other hand, hes one of the worst people to ever occupy the white house because he had a broad streak of paranoia. He was mistrustful, sometimes against the instruments of government like the state department. In the end, ruined himself by bringing about his own catastrophic downfall in the watergate scandal of 19721974. We are going to look at the good and the bad side of the nixon presidency and nixons partnership with National Security advisor kissinger. Im going to share the screen so we could look at powerpoint pictures as we go through the sequence. First of all, here is president nixon himself. He had been born in 1913. In whittier, california. He grew up in a lower middleclass family in california. He went to the local college there, whittier college. He graduated and went to Duke University law school. This was in the worst years of the great depression. The mid1930s. During the Second World War he joined the u. S. Navy. On the left you could see a photo of nixon as a young maybe officer. He served with distinction in the pacific. Not as a combat sailor but as a logistics expert. Getting the right equipment to the right place at the right time. He was given a series of commendation from his commanders. He was also a very talented poker player during his off he hours. Had a great ability to bluff. That is a valuable quality in someone who is undertaking Foreign Policy at a highlevel. In 1946 after he had been demobilized from the navy, he ran for congress. On the right, you could see a poster from his first election campaign. In 1946, a lot of world war ii veterans were elected into congress and senate, one of them was nixon himself. The other was john f. Kennedy. Another is joe mccarthy. Who is going to give his name to the era of mccarthyism. In his early political career, nixon rose very rapidly through the ranks. He was an ardent anticommunist. He worked hard to understand communism and why briefly during the depression Many Americans had been attracted to communism. He was dedicated to rooting out communists in high places. He understood it was a good weapon to use against the democrats. A characteristic of republican rhetoric in the late 1940s was the insertion that in the state department and in other prominent parts of the government, communists were at work and truman knew they were at work. They had done nothing to get rid of them. He ran successfully for a seat in the senate in 1950. Red baiting his opponent. In 1952, when he only had been in politics for six years, he was chosen by eisenhower to be his running mate. A meteoric rise between 1946 and 1952. He goes from a freshman congressman to Vice President ial candidate. Because nixon won the the election of 1952, he was inaugurated as Vice President. That is the job he held throughout the eisenhower administration. In 1960 he was the republican candidate in the election against john f. Kennedy. Here are the two candidates together. This was an election that he lost very narrowly. One of the closest elections of the 20th century. To make matters worse, he lost again in 1962 when he ran unsuccessfully for the governorship of california. In 1962, when he was in his late 40s it seemed as though is his political career had now come to an end. If you think back into the death he wentrity back into relative obscurity of the life of a new york lawyer. The disastrous failure of Barry Goldwater in the president ial campaign of 1964, he was Unsuccessful Republican running against lyndon johnson. It gave nixon the opportunity to revive his political career. In 1968 he was back again, won the republican nomination and won the election against hubert humphrey. By then, the vietnam war was in full swing. This was the election in which johnson, although he had been entitled to run, had withdrew from the race after he had been challenged inside the democratic primaries by Jean Mccarthy and robert kennedy. Nixon comes into the white house, inaugurated in 1969. Henry kissinger was the man he chose to be his National Security advisor. Kissinger had been born 10 years later than nixon. He was born in 1923 and he was born and raised in germany. He loved playing soccer as a kid. Very good in school. He was jewish. His family was jewish. As the nazi persecution of the germanjewish community escalated in the 1930s, the family eventually took the decision to emigrate. By doing so they almost certainly saved their lives. He was 15 when he came to the United States for the first time. He became a citizen during world war ii. He joined the army. Because he was perfectly fluent in german, he was a valuable person for the american armies fighting in europe. He was involved in the battle of the bulge, the german counterattack against the americans in the winter of 19441945. Briefly as a private soldier he had the job of organizing a newly liberated town in germany from the nazis. His organizational abilities made his superiors look favorably upon him. When the war finished kissinger went to college, first at harvard and then in the Harvard Graduate School where he wrote his doctoral ssent doctoral distant tatian. His doctoral citation. He was a senior politician at the austrohungarian empire. He contributed to the pacification of europe at the end of the napoleonic wars of 1815. The congress of vienna. Kissinger wrote admiringly. He was somebody who perfectly understood the concept and the balance of power and the importance of using hard political realities. The kinds we read about in the influential article. Kissinger was a great believer in balance of power in politics. It isnt that there is no moral components to political life, it is just it has to be subordinated to current political realities. In the late 1950s, kissinger had by this time got a faculty appointment at harvard and soon got tenure. He published a book called Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. There was a question of whether its possible that once you got Nuclear Weapons could you use them in a way that prevents an earth destroying apocalypse. He was cautiously optimistic. It was possible to fight a limited nuclear war. In its relatively small way, this became a bestseller among the policy elite, and contributed to kissingers name being spread around washington about upandcoming Foreign Policy advisers. During the early 1960s, he was an advisor to nelson rockefeller. Who was a moderate republican. Belonging to the opposite wing of the party from Barry Goldwater. Victory,after nixons when nixon approached him with the possibility you might become National Security advisor, he was perfectly well to jump over to nixons camp and sees this seize this marvelous opportunity to become a senior policymaker inside the new nixon white house. Although eisenhower had been president in the 1950s, eisenhower was really a very bipartisan politician. I mention earlier the democrats also asked him to be their candidate. So in a way, this is the first time the republicans had been in the presidency since Herbert Hoover left the office in 1932. There wasnt a big pool of experienced republican officeholders as there were democrats. Because the democrats had dominated the recent generations. One of the things nixon and kissinger did together was to revolutionize americas diplomatic posture with respect to two of the other great powers in the world. One was the soviet union. The other was china. The Nuclear Weapons race had been going on ever since the end of world war ii. In 1949 the russians tested their Nuclear Weapons for the first time. By 1969, the low population states of the great plains and the Mountain West were honeycombed with missile silos. So were the great plains of siberia. With each side ready to find Nuclear Weapons against the other. Both sides gradually realized they had a common motive in trying to reduce the danger of an accidental exchange of weapons. In fact, they had a common interest in preventing nuclear war from ever taking place. Because its destructiveness was so complete. They reached a condition of mutually assured destruction. The lovely acronym is m. A. D. They even reach the point of overkill. They could kill each others populations many times over. It was time to start rethinking how to understand the arms race. Whether it made any kind of sense. Both sides had already appreciated when they signed the treaty in 1963 that they had a common interest in not testing these weapons in the atmosphere. By 1969 they also recognized a common interest in trying to deescalate back from the brink of an accidental war. The photograph on the right shows Neil Armstrong walking on the surface of the moon. This took place in the first year of the Nixon Administration. The summer of 1969. An incredible achievement. People are interested in the world of weapons and military hardware understood perfectly any rocket that could take man to the moon could be packed with Nuclear Warheads and used against the other side. Like the characteristics of icbms, intercontinental ballistic missiles, is that they are fired into space and come down at a supersonic speed out of space orbit to attack their targets on the ground. A new wrinkle in the weapons by 1968 was what was called the mirv. The multiple independently targeted reentering vehicle. Instead of having one warhead, there would be nine or 10 packed into the rocket. They would be fired together, but then they would disperse into space. Each would have a different target. Muchde interception that more difficult, adding a new level of danger. These are the conditions under which nixon decided to approach the soviet union in a new way. Here is a cartoon from the time. This shows the paradoxes of Nuclear Weapons. Two armies facing each other. Both loaded with these powerful bombs. You can see the sign on one side says, of no account to be used, because the enemy might retaliate. On nothe other side, account to be used, because the enemy might retaliate. There they are firing archaic weapons because they cant use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. Characteristics of the nixonkissinger style of diplomacy was not to use the regular channels. Not go through the state department and use the professional foreignpolicy staff who were trained to do exactly this kind of work. Instead they opened that channels with the soviet ambassador in d. C. Incidentally, he was a fascinating person. He first became soviet ambassador in 1962 when kennedy was president. He remained in that job right through until 1986. He worked with president kennedy, johnson, nixon, ford, carter, and reagan. A long continuity of office overseeing the soviet union inside the usa. Everyone agreed he was charming and cultivated and incredibly knowledgeable about Foreign Policy affairs. Through him, rather than through the state department, nixon and kissinger began talking about the principle of detente with the soviet premier. He is shown there on the left. Here is nixon talking with him, leaning in to make sure he gets the nuances of the translation right. Nixon was able to persuade him with the rightness of reducing their nuclear arsenals. In other words, each side was spending far too much money on nuclear arsenals. It was increasing the danger of an accidental war. They have a mutual interest in deescalating. Negotiations began. The strategic arms litigation. L. T. Acronym is s. A period. Onyms of that in 1972 it leads to the signing of the salt agreement. One interesting aspect of it , which is depicted in the foot of graph on the right, the photo on the right shows an antiballistic missile. Thoughts the defense planners had had was this, if the enemy fires its Nuclear Weapons against us, we will surround our cities with defensive missile bases. If our radar shows enemy missiles are coming towards us, we will fire antiballistic missiles which will intercept them and prevent our cities from being destroyed. At first glance that seems like a very good idea. Because it makes the city safer. As you know, one of the characteristics of war planning and wargaming during the cold war was to think very carefully about the way in which the enemy would interpret your actions. It isnt enough just to have an intention, youve got to make sure your intention is understood by the adversary. The american war planners, especially the negotiators from the salt one treaty said this, if we build antiballistic Missile System and surround our cities, what the enemy might think is this. That is a sign the americans are planning the first strike against us. They will fire their missiles because then when we retaliate, they will be able to shoot down our counterstrike. In the words, the fact they are building abm systems is an ominous sign that they are planning to strike us first. That is dangerous because it escalates the mutual perception of threat so that the question becomes how do we reduce the danger that this is what they will think . The answer they came up with, it was embodied in the salt treaty, was this, we are not going to build the systems. We will leave ourselves defenseless. Because by leaving ourselves defenseless, we are making it less likely that our intentions will be misunderstood. Because then the adversary will understand that. We know that if they launch against us, we will be utterly destroyed. But they wont do so because they know we can launch against them before our missiles hit us. In other words, each side ascends to the principle of making itself defenseless as a way of reducing the danger of nuclear war. It is a complicated way of thinking but it does have internal logic that proved largely persuasive to policymakers on all sides. It was at a summit meeting in 1972 that the soviet and american leaders signed the treaty. Which went into effect from that time on. The u. S. Senate also endorsed it. There were people in america who were horrified by this. Oldstyle anticommunists, the toughest of the anticommunists , people like perry goldwater thought this was dismayed. Goldwaters view was they wont ascend to it unless they believe it helps them. If it helps them it cant possibly help us as well. There were people who still said whenever one side gains, the other side must lose. This is a condition in which both sides could gain because both could be reassured of the reduction of danger. Danger of nuclear war. Another thing that made it particularly painful was the year before nixon came into office, 1968, the checks in 1968, just like the hungarians back in 1956, had attempted to establish a little distance between themselves and soviet control. And even though the new czechoslovakian government was in no way hostile to the soviet sufficientlynot servient. Once the russians responded by sending tanks, this was one of the many traumatic events of 1968. Anticommunist throughout america, it was one more sign the soviet union is utterly untrustworthy. It was only because nixon had got such a strong anticommunist credentials from his earlier career that he could get away with doing this in the first place. If a democratic president had tried it, it almost certainly wouldve won the united the republicans, and never would have come about. Nixon understood he was in a position where his democratic rivals probably could not have managed. Another development of the first Nixon Administration was the diplomatic opening to china. I mentioned earlier in the course that mao zedong successfully completed the Chinese Revolution in 1949. We encountered the chinese the use of chinese troops in the early days of the korean war when attacks against the chinanorth korea border were moving north in north korea. Between 1949 and the early 1970s, the United States didnt have diplomatic relations with communist china, the peoples republic of china at all. United states continued to recognize taiwan. That is the offshore island in the pacific to which they had led the defeated and retreated nationalist chinese at the end of the Chinese Revolution in 1949. On the few occasions when an american diplomat needed to talk to a chinese diplomat, they are having formal talks. By 1970 and 1971 nixon is thinking extremely odd about the situation. Nixon wrote an article in the journal of Foreign Affairs which was published in 1967 in which he said this. Taking the long view, we cannot afford to leave china forever outside the family of nations. There to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. By 1969, 1970 it was becoming clear that communism was not monolithic. There were differences between russian communists and chinese communist. The difference is again between them and vietnamese communists. It was possible to see the difference between the various brands of national communism. One of the central principles of idea, thelicy is the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As border incidents began to take place between china and the soviet union, on the very long land in asia, nixon and kissinger understood if we could be friends with china or achieve diplomatic normalization, that will add pressure on the soviet union. Although we want to coexist with the soviet union, we dont want to give them an easy target. Continuing to hope as george said way back in 1946, that eventually the soviet system is going to fold up because of its own imperfections. T