Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

Richard Nixon is as influential as he is controversial, a pivotal figure in both US foreign policy and the life of Kissinger, who was Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, and longtime friend. Upon Nixon’s election in 1968, the Soviet Union was laying down a brutal order within its own sphere of influence and seeking a greater role in the Middle East, while the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War and domestic convulsions. Kissinger had been an advisor to Nelson Rockefeller, Nixon’s rival for the Republican nomination, but the Nixon administration nonetheless asked Kissinger to be National Security Advisor immediately after Nixon’s victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. Despite his superior position, Nixon treated Kissinger as an equal, often using him “to transmit orders to disagreeing cabinet members” and carrying out directives which Nixon did not always intend to be taken literally (131). Nixon was profoundly insecure, but also aware of his strengths, and so he was particularly concerned with how he appeared in the media where he feared that his strengths would not receive their proper acknowledgment.

Kissinger claims that Nixon’s views on foreign policy did not fit into neat and tidy categories—he became famous as an anticommunist congressman, but he ultimately came to see the US and Soviet Union as partners in holding up a stable global balance of power. Centering his focus on the pursuit of national interest and the idea that different countries’ interests were not always reconcilable, Nixon “saw the statesman’s task as identifying and managing those differences; this could be accomplished either by mitigating them or, when necessary and as a last resort, by overcoming them with force” (140). Kissinger states that Nixon broke from an American tradition of self-righteousness and overemphasis on ideological difference, which had lumped together China and the Soviet Union as communist foes instead treating them as distinct actors with their own strategic interests, interests that the US could use to turn them against each other. In doing so, Kissinger argues, Nixon helped inaugurate a period of détente, a relaxing of tensions between the US and the communist powers that helped them cooperate in areas of mutual interest, such as limiting the production of nuclear weapons and limiting the effects of Mideast conflict.

No topic was more bedeviling to Nixon than the Vietnam War, Kissinger claims, a war that Nixon had inherited from his predecessors and had vowed to end, but on an honorable basis. Communist North Vietnam was bent on overthrowing the US-backed government in the South and had established supply lines and sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. The war meanwhile became a source of agonizing disagreement at home. While resisting calls to withdraw unilaterally and immediately, Nixon believed that governments like South Vietnam had become overly dependent on the US, and Nixon also sought to reduce Moscow’s support for its ally in North Vietnam. Kissinger states that, when the North’s negotiators insisted on an immediate withdrawal, Nixon decided to escalate the war as a way of conveying “strategic credibility” to Moscow and Beijing (157), launching an expansive bombing campaign across North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, even as the number of US troops in Vietnam steadily declined. Shortly after winning a decisive reelection in November 1972, Nixon concluded the Paris Peace Accords, although the ensuing Watergate scandal prevented the administration from enforcing its terms in order to keep the South Vietnamese government alive for long (it would collapse in 1975).

Even as the Vietnam saga was unfolding, Kissinger argues that Nixon managed to pursue a delicate and multifaceted diplomacy with the Soviet Union, ratifying treaties to cap the production of nuclear weapons and strictly limit missile defense systems, while also tacitly championing the rights of Soviet Jews to emigrate. One of his great accomplishments was the so-called “opening to China” (170), a thawing of diplomatic relations after decades of hostility. Kissinger made the first move with a secret visit in 1971, and while there were many disagreements, particularly on the question of Taiwan (which the mainland claims as its own, even though Taiwan governs itself, with US support), the Nixon administration insisted that the issue of Taiwan would have to be resolved peacefully. By the end of the decade, the two states resumed full diplomatic relations.

Kissinger adds that Nixon also faced a major test in the Middle East, where the 1967 Six-Day War left Israel in total control over historic Palestine and dominant over its Arab neighbors, who then looked to the Soviet Union for help. Assurances of US determination to resist Soviet encroachments helped dissuade Israel from taking overly provocative moves, and when Egypt and Syria launched a sudden attack in October 1973 (falling on the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur), Nixon provided enough military support to Israel to “redress the balance of forces first on the battlefield and then as a prelude to diplomacy” (185), working furiously with Moscow to help implement a ceasefire and then using the ceasefire as an impetus to start a broader peace process. They established a framework that would ultimately encourage Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace with Egypt and a guarantee of free access to the Suez Canal.

Kissinger states that Nixon also became involved in a gruesome effort by Pakistan to suppress the independence campaign of its eastern half—now the country of Bangladesh. India, with Soviet support, pushed for Bengali independence, which Nixon feared would weaken Pakistan to the detriment of regional equilibrium. Nixon deployed an aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal, which Kissinger describes as “a demonstrated willingness to use American power with resolve for geopolitical purposes” (199). Nixon thereby defused the crisis while keeping open channels with Moscow and Beijing. As skilled as Nixon proved in the conduct of foreign affairs, however, domestic policy proved his undoing, Kissinger says. Despite his tarnished reputation as a result of the Watergate scandal, however, Kissinger claims that Nixon left a profound legacy by helping reshape the Cold War order into a more globalized, multipolar system, with countries like China and India playing a greater role. Kissinger adds that, Nixon’s ability to prioritize key national interests over marginal ones and work with adversaries while displaying resolve would furthermore provide a worthy template for any current president to emulate.