RICHARD NIXON & HENRY KISSINGER.   Term Paper ID:21424 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines nature & relationship between President & Secretary of State, personalities, major issues & resulting policies & impact on U.S. foreign policy.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines nature & relationship between President & Secretary of State, personalities, major issues & resulting policies & impact on U.S. foreign policy. Paper Introduction: At least in modern times, no President and Secretary of State are more closely linked than Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Technically, Kissinger was Secretary of State only during the latter part of Nixon's time in office, but William P. Rogers, who held the office in Nixon's earlier years, when Kissinger was National Security Advisor, made little impact at the time and is largely forgotten now. Indeed, though it has been nearly two decades since Kissinger had any public position, he remains by far the bestknown of recent American secretaries of state. Likewise, Nixon stands out, after two decades, as for good or ill the most "important" of recent American presidents. He had a greater and more enduring impact on America and the world than any of his successors, or indeed, any of his predecessors since Harry S Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Even as individual personalities and public figures, Nixon andKissinger made a striking contrast: Their personalities are different, and both men are undoubtedly relieved that this is so widely recognized. He lost toKennedy in the 196 presidential election, and after another defeat for theCalifornia governorship in 1962, his public career appeared over. The Nixon presidency: Power andpolitics in turbulent times. At home, the dominantfact of his presidency was the manner in which he left it. 7).Remarkably enough for this subtlest of diplomats, Kissinger succeeded inbecoming a popular figure even on the Washington party circuit, where hewas seen with a succession of attractive women. Likewise, Nixon stands out, after two decades, asfor good or ill the most "important" of recent American presidents. 75). In the end, however, Kissinger's Vietnam policy was overtaken byevents set in train by the character of Nixon, his political style, and hisdomestic advisors. Kissinger. Nixon was loosely affiliated with the JoeMcCarthy wing of the Republican party, and among other things wasassociated with the "who lost China" charges of the late 194 s and early195 s, which did much to create the very deep-freeze in Sino-Americanrelations that Nixon and Kissinger would later act to reverse. It isKissinger's greatest triumph that, in foreign affairs, he caused Nixon todisplay the former rather than the latter. New York: Harper and Row. He was admired rather than loved by his supporters,but he was passionately hated by his opponents. Yet even in theface of this final debacle, Kissinger was able to achieve a broad range offoreign policy successes, ranging from the continued development ofrelations with China to "shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East, a diplomacythat would begin the gradual move toward Arab-Israeli peace after ageneration of repeated war. Remarkably for a successful politician, Richard Nixon was neverpersonally popular. In modern times,those presidents strongly interested in foreign affairs have tended tooperate as their own secretaries of state, with the holder of that positionreduced to managerial functions. L. Had Nixon's leading foreign policy advisor shared thetraits of his chief domestic advisors, his foreign record might have beenas disastrous as his domestic record--and, perhaps, immeasurably more so. Kissinger's greatest achievement in China policy, however, wasperhaps in opening Nixon to the idea. 7). New York:Prentice Hall. The deepatmosphere of suspicion in American public life did not begin withWatergate. His time, as he put it, hadcome" (Wills, 197 , p. Sulzberger, C. In addition to creating new possibilities, however, both Nixon andKissinger first had to deal with a disaster, American involvement inVietnam. Nixon hadan extraordinary understanding of how to push political "buttons." In 1952,threatened with dismissal from the Republican ticket for acceptingquestionable gifts, he made a speech that referred to one gift he hadreceived, a dog named Checkers. Throughout their joint career, their personal ties remained somewhatguarded. Perhaps Kissinger's greatest achievement, however, was not hisspecific successes, but his influence upon Richard Nixon, who in the endwas the one who held the reins of power during their joint period of globalinfluence. Wills, Garry. Kennedy looms large in legend, he does soprecisely as legend, rather than for the actual events of his abbreviatedtime in office. He succeeded in casting himself as anordinary American, and millions of ordinary Americans responded. Nixon was by nature a hawk, and his core political constituencywas also hawkish (Genovese, 199 , pp. (1974). But perhaps, we may suggest,these social skills were integral to Kissinger's success. Henry Kissinger's greatest achievement was the opening of relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Nixon Agonistes: The crisis of the self-mademan. At least in modern times, no President and Secretary of State aremore closely linked than Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. . (Thus, a flap over the White House travel office in Clinton'sfirst year was sometimes called "travelgate.") Nor does Watergate somehowstand apart from the rest of Nixon's domestic performance; indeed, as weshall see, it was in a sense the culmination of his entire domesticpolitical career. Kissinger, by nature diplomatic, never fully accustomed himself tothe slashing Nixonian style. 1 5-1 6). The World and Richard Nixon. before the war, and Kissinger ended the war as anAmerican soldier. He did not see combat, but was assigned from the first to quasi-political and quasi-diplomatic duties. His success was all the sweeter because it was unexpected. 299). "The ARVN [South Vietnamese army] had not become the sort of army thatcould win, and few American officials believed it ever would reach thatstate (p. . 7). At that time, Kissinger was a universityprofessor, highly-regarded among international-policy theorists, butlargely unknown to the public. 296-98). (1989). 67). Nixon's foreign policy was, on the whole a glowing success with important long-term results (Sulzberger, 1987, p. Kissinger's academic background was in European power politics, andhe had a European orientation. "If a politics of resentment was taking shape in 1968,no one knew that fact better than the man who would, at each stage of theyear, prove himself master of the situation. References Genovese, Michael A. It is the argument of this discussion that the choice of HenryKissinger as Nixon's chief foreign-policy advisor was uniquely sound onefrom a man who frequently showed poor judgment in his choice of the men heplaced around him, and that it was Kissinger's own perspective andabilities that accounted in large measure for the generally successfulperformance of the Nixon administration in foreign affairs. 26). (1977). Kissingerrealized, however, that Nixon was fundamentally an opportunist, not azealot, and urged upon Nixon the advantages of widening the fissure betweenthe two great Communist powers, China and the USSR. He makes astriking contrast to Nixon's other most influential appointments. We must attribute much of that success to Kissinger. His political posture, however, hardly gavepromise of a broad world-view. 75-76). No recent president was moreinternationally oriented than Nixon, yet though he limited his firstSecretary of State, Rogers, to a functionary role, he presently placedKissinger in that office, with a nearly viceregal sweep of responsibility.Moreover, Kissinger was not a latecomer to the Nixon Administration; fromthe beginning, as National Security Advisor, he exercised great influenceon American foreign policy. His family escaped fromGermany to the U.S. 31). South Vietnam simply could not stand on its own feet. Kissinger, however, realized that diplomacy does not takeplace in an abstract world, isolated from politics. He appealed to arootless and uneasy people. Uncertain greatness: Henry Kissinger andAmerican foreign policy. 1 3). He was associated with Nelson Rockefeller,the very embodiment of the Eastern Establishment Republicans who had alwaysviewed Nixon with a mixture of suspicion and contempt. As noted earlier, Nixon had beenassociated with a wing of the Republican party that had long beenparticularly rigid toward China (Schulzinger, 1989, pp. Butit was greatly exacerbated under Nixon; it is not for nothing that "-gate"has become a conventional suffix for public scandals or even minorimbroglios. He accomplished this by a simple butsubtle measure: he ran an employment ad in a German newspaper seeking menwith police experience. He thus favored abombing policy, on the grounds that 1) it did not commit America further onthe ground, 2) it might work, and 3) if it failed, at least Nixon'spolitical base (and perhaps Nixon himself) would feel he had done hisutmost (Genovese, 199 , pp. "From Nixon's earlycampaigns, he developed the reputation as a hard-hitting, slashingcampaigner. But it was already becomingclear when Nixon was elected, and was clearer by 197 , that prospects ofvictory were slight. Kissinger can be a connoisseur of nuance, with a talent for subtle explanations, and, when necessary, for elegant doubletalk; Nixon specializes in the hard hyperbole, the sentence painted in black and white (Kalb and Kalb, 1974, p. These emotions go back tohis earliest political campaigns, after World War Two, when Nixon was apioneering figure in the modern Republican Right. Boston: Little,Brown. Occupationforces in Germany after the war, he showed his skills when assigned toidentify former Gestapo members. At times, however, he used fear of Nixon as apolitical tool, playing a form of "good cop, bad cop" with foreignofficials by hinting that if they did not negotiate with him, they mighthave to deal with his boss. (1987). What if Nixon's ear on global affairs had been given not toKissinger, but to a foreign-policy counterpart of John Mitchell? Boston: Houghton Mifflin.----------------------- 9 137). Technically,Kissinger was Secretary of State only during the latter part of Nixon'stime in office, but William P. He understood,as Nixon perhaps never did, that one cannot succeed in being subtle whenone is viewed as sinister. Indeed, though it has been nearly two decades since Kissinger had anypublic position, he remains by far the bestknown of recent Americansecretaries of state. New York: Columbia University Press. In1974, Nixon was forced to resign from office to avoid near-certainimpeachment and removal, and in 1975, South Vietnam fell. In internal affairs, his record as chief of state was disastrous . Yet he was capable of winning if not love, then support. Not an expert on China himself, he adopted the positions taken by Americans who had studied the problem most carefully (Schulzinger, 1989, p. Kissinger is warm, friendly, sensitive; Nixon's aloofness can never be mistaken. He hada greater and more enduring impact on America and the world than any of hissuccessors, or indeed, any of his predecessors since Harry S Truman twodecades earlier still; if John F. But Kissinger succeeded in bringing himself to Nixon's attention, andNixon--to his credit--recognized Kissinger's abilities, and his own need ofthem. For the Nixon record is remarkably bifurcated. Kissinger's view of the world has been called into question; inparticular, many criticized his balance-of-power orientation, which theyviewed as irrelevant and outdated in an age of global crises of environmentand poverty (Morris, 1977, pp. "There are times when one catches a glimpseof pained self-control as Kissinger listens to a presidential oration"(Kalb and Kalb, 1974, p. Kalb, Marvin and Bernard. 1). Morris, Roger. "After more than five years of constant contact, their personalrelationship remains more correct than close" (Kalb and Kalb, 1974, p. 3). Dozens of ex-Gestapo men duly turned up forinterviews (Kalb and Kalb, 1974, p. Rogers, who held the office in Nixon'searlier years, when Kissinger was National Security Advisor, made littleimpact at the time and is largely forgotten now. His attack style and 'go for the jugular' approach became aNixon trademark (Genovese, 199 , p. Non-European powers were coming to thefore, however, and it was a measure of Kissinger's ability that herecognized his own limited knowledge and experience, and sought out thosewho had more. He had someexperience abroad from as early as 1947, as a freshman Congressman(Sulzberger, 1987, p. Meanwhile, Nixon was beginning his public career. In external affairs, however, Nixon's record shows a remarkable divergence from his behavior in the scandal that will always be associated with his name. (199 ). Kissinger, onthe other hand, not only avoided embroilment in scandal, but morefundamentally served to reinforce Nixon's potential strengths rather thanhis weaknesses. While serving in U.S. More consequentially, hewon the confidence of the press, at a time when it was deeply suspicious ofanything or anyone associated with Nixon. It was already developing during the escalation of the VietnamWar, and in some ways it goes back to the early days of the Cold War. In his view, it waspolitically impossible for Nixon to simply withdraw. Abroad, however, and in spite of inheriting a debacle in Vietnam, theNixon administration's record was one of success, most vividly symbolizedby the opening to China. Both Nixon and Kissinger were intensely frustrated byantiwar sentiment, but Nixon chose to respond to his domestic politicalopponents by illegal means, the "dirty tricks" that would culminate in theWatergate break-in and subsequent cover-up (Genovese, 199 , p. (197 ). He camefrom Whittier, California: not the California of beaches and Hollywood, buta sort of transplanted, and therefore rootless, Midwest. "For allof Henry Kissinger's compromise and expedience, it is frightening to thinkof another man, of any of the establishment figures before or after him,facing Nixon and that government (Morris, 1977, p. Henry Kissinger was not born an American; he was born HeinzKissenger, a Bavarian Jew, and it has been suggested that he began to learnthe nature of global power politics in the hardest of schools, when at ageseven the Nazis took over Germany, and he was subjected to beatings by pro-Nazi gangs of boys (Kalb and Kalb, 1974, p. More generally, and in spite of a growing publicmood of quasi-isolationism, Nixon succeeded in playing a leading andgenerally positive role in the world in a way that no president since himhas equalled.Thus, Richard Nixon proved to be a paradox as president. On thedomestic front, the men who had the greatest influence upon Nixon;Haldeman, Erlichmann, John Mitchell, tended to reinforce his most paranoidtraits, and by and large they ended up as convicted felons. 2). Schulzinger, Robert D. Henry Kissinger: Doctor ofdiplomacy. But the bitter public mood of the late 196 s proved ideal for Nixon'sstyle of politics. New York: Greenwood Press. 41). Yet the post-Cold War era isdeveloping in a way that might be well suited to the type of realismKissinger has embodied. "While critics considered the Checkersspeech 'a crude exploitation of sentiment,' for Nixon it was a phenomenalsuccess" (Genovese, 199 , p. 133-137). It is almost paradoxical that so dominant a president should beintimately linked to so dominant a secretary of state. Richard Nixon wasa man of immense abilities and profound moral shortcomings. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.