National security advisers Henry Kissinger. In some ways, nixon is one of the most brilliant people to occupy the white house. He had incredible political gifts. But on the other hand hes one of the worst people to occupy the white house because he had a broad streak of para nnoia and course in the end ruined himself by bringing about his his own catastrophic downfall in the watergate scandal of 1972 to 1974. Were going to look at the good and bad side of the nixon presidency with National Security adviser kissinger. Im going to share the screen so we can look at powerpoint pictures as we go through the sequence. First of all, here is president nixon himself. He had been born back in 1913 in california and grew up in a lower middle class family. Went to the local college there with the college. He graduated and went to Duke University law school and this is in the worst years of great depression. The mid1930s. During the second world war, he joined the u. S. Navy. You can see the photo of nixon as a young navy officer. He served in the pacific as a logistics expert, getting the right equipment to the right place at the right time and was given a series of commendations. He had a great ability to bluff when playing poker and thats a valuable quality in someone who was undertaking Foreign Policy at a high level. In 1946 after he had been demobilized from the navy, nixon ran for congress. You can see his a poster from his first election campaign. In 1946, a lot of world war ii veterans were elected into congress and into the senate. One of them was nixon himself who won. John f. Kennedy, another was joe mccarthy who was going to give his name to the era of mccarthyism. And nixon rose very rapidly through the ranks. He was an anticommunist. He worked hard to understand communism and understand why briefly during the depression Many Americans had been attracted to communism. And he understood that it was a good weapon to use against the democrats, a characteristic of republican rhetoric in the late 40s was the assertion that in the state department and other parts of the government, communists were at work and truman knew that and had done nothing to get rid of them. In 1952, he had only been in politics for six years, he was chosen by eisenhower to be his running mate. Between 46 to 52, he goes to a freshman congressman to being Vice President ial candidate. Because he won the election of 52, he was inaugurated in 53. In 1960, he was the republican candidate in the election against john f. Kennedy. Here are the two candidates together. This was an election which he lost narrowly. One of the closest elections of the 20th century. And to make matters worse, he lost again in 1962. So in 1962 when he was in his late 40s, it seemed as though his political career had now come to an end and he could sink back into the relative obscurity of the life of a new york lawyer. But the disastrous failure of Barry Goldwater in the campaign of 1964 in which gold water was the Unsuccessful Republican running against Lyndon Johnson gave nixon the opportunity to revive his political career. In 1968 he was back again, won the republican nomination and won the election that fall against the democratic candidate hubert humphrey. By then, of course, the vietnam war was in full swing. This was the election in which johnson, although he had been entitled to run, had withdrawn from the race after the offensive and after he had been challenged by Jean Mccarthy and robert kennedy. Nixon comes into the white house inaugurated in 1969. Now, Henry Kissinger was the man he chose to be his National Security adviser. Kissinger had been born ten years later than nixon. He was born in 1923. And he was born and raised in germany. Loved playing soccer as a kid. Very, very good in school. But he was jewish. As the nazi persecution escalated in the 1930s, the family 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. And because he was perfectly fluent in german, he was a valuable person for the american armys fighting in europe. He was involved in the battle of the bulge, the german counterattack against the americans in the winter of 1944 to 1945. He had the job of organizing a newly liberated town in germany from the nazis and his organizational abilities made his superiors look favorably upon him. When the war had finished, kissinger went to College First at harvard and then at the Harvard Graduate School where he wrote his dissertation on clemons mattenic. He contributed to the pacify indication of europe at the end of the knnepolatinic wars. He understood the balance of power and importance of using hard political realities. Kissinger was a great believer in balance of power politics. It isnt that theres no moral components to political life. Its just that it has to be subordinated to current political realities. In the late 1950s, kissinger who by this time got a faculty appointment at harvard and soon got tenure published a book called Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. He was interested in the same kind of questions as paul nitz. The question of what to do when you had Nuclear Weapons. They thought it was possible to fight a limited nuclear war. And in its small way, this became a best seller and contributed to kissingers name being spread across people in washington who were looking for up and coming Foreign Policy advisers. During the early 1960s, he was an adviser to Nelson Rockefeller belonging to the opposite wing of the party from Barry Goldwater. After nixons victory when nixon approached him with the probability he might become National Security advisor, he was willing to jump over to the nixon camp and seize this marvelous opportunity to become a policymaker inside the new nixon white house. Izen haur was a bipartisan kind of politician. The democrats had also asked him to be their candidate. In a way this was the first time the republicans had been in the presidency since Herbert Hoover left office. There wasnt a pool of experienced republican officeholders as there were democrats. Because the democrats had dominated the recent generations. Now, one of the things that nixon and kissinger did together was to revolutionize americas diplomatic posture in the with respect to two of the great two of the other great powers in the world. One was the soviet union and the other was china. The Nuclear Weapons race had been going on ever since the end of the of world war ii with growing urgency since 49 when the russians had tested their Nuclear Weapon for the first time. By 1969 the low population states of the great plains and the Mountain West were honey combed with missiles silos and so were the great plains of siberia, with which side willing to fight Nuclear Weapons against the other. They realized they had a common interest in preventing nuclear war from ever taking place because its destruckiveness was so complete. They reached a condition of m. A. D. And they reached the point of overkill. They could kill each others populations many times over. It was a time to start rethinking how to understand the arms race and whether it made any kind of sense. Both signs had appreciated when they signed the treat any in 1963 that they had a common interest in not testing these weapons in the atmosphere. And by 69 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 and this took place in the first year of the Nixon Administration. Summer of 69. An incredible achievement. But people who were interested in weapons understood that any rocket which can take men to the moon can be packed with Nuclear Warheads and be fired against the other side. One of the characteristics of icbms is that theyre fired into space and they come down at supersonic speed to attack their targets on the ground. A new wrinkle in the weapons by 68 was called the mirv, the multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle. Instead of having just one warhead, there will be nine or ten packed into the nose cone of the rocket. They could be fired together and disperse in space and each would head for a different target. It added another layer of danger. These were the conditions under which nixon decided it was time for a new approach to the soviet union. And a policy that went by detente. Here is a cartoon from the time showing that some of the paradoxes of Nuclear Weapons. Two armies facing each other, both loaded with these enormous enormously powerful bombs. And the sign says, on no account to be used, because the enemy might retaliate. On the other side, no account to be used because the enemy might retaliate. Each to stand off, and here they are firing bows and arrows because they cant use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. One of the characteristics of the nixon, kissinger style of diplomacy was not to use the regular channels. Not to go through the state department and not to use the professional Foreign Policy staff who were trained to do exactly this kind of work. They opened back channels with a soviet ambassador in d. C. He first became a soviet ambassador in 1962 when kennedy was president and he remained in that job right through until 1986. He worked with president s kennedy, johnson, nixon, ford, carter and reagan. A long continuity of office overseeing the interests of the soviet union inside the usa. Everyone who met him agreed he was charming, cult vative and knowledge able about Foreign Policy affairs. Nixon and kissinger began talking about the principle of detente with the soviet union premier. Here is nixon talking with him and hes leaning in to make sure he gets the nuances of the translation right between them. And nixon was able to persuade him of the rightness of reducing their nuclear arsenals. Each side was spending far too much money on these nuclear arsenals. Each was increasing the danger of an accidental war, and therefore theyve got a mutual interest in deescalating. So negotiations began, the strategic arms limitation talks, whose acronym is s. A. L. T. , very characteristic of that period. And it led in 1972 to the signing of the s. A. L. T. I agreement. One interesting aspect of it which is depicted ongoing the photograph of the right there, the photo on the right shows an antiballistic missile. One of the thoughts the planners had had was this, if the enemy fires its Nuclear Weapons against us, well surround our cities with defensive missile bases. If our radar shows that missiles are coming towards us, well fire antiballistic missiles which will intercept them. That seems like a very good idea because it makes the city safer. But as you know, one of the characteristics of war planning and war gaming during the cold war was to think very carefully about the way in which the enemy would interpret your actions. You have to make sure that your intention is understood by the adversary. And the american war planners, the negotiators of the s. A. L. T. I treaty said this, if we build an antiballistic Missile System and surround our cities with it, what the enemy might think is this, thats a sign that the americans are planning a first strike against us. Theyll fire air missiles, when we retaliate, theyll be able to shoot sit down our air strike. Thats dangerous because it escalates the mutual perception of threat so then the question becomes, all right, how do we reduce the danger that thats what theyre going to think . And the answer they came up with, which is embodied in the s. A. L. T. Treaty was this, were not going to build these systems. Were going to leave ourselves defenseless because by leaving ourselves defenseless, were making it less likely that our intentions will be misunderstood because then the adversary will understand that. We know if they launch against us, well be utterly destroyed. But they wont do so. Each side uses that as a way of reducing the danger of nuclear war. Its a complicated way of thinking but it was an internal logic. It was at a summit meeting in 1972 that the soviets and the american leaders signed the treaty which went into effect from that time on. Because the u. S. Senate also endorsed it. Of course there were people in america who were horrified by this. Oldstyle anticommunists, the toughest of the anticommunists, people like Barry Goldwater thought this was dismaying. His view was, the russians wont have assented to it unless they believe it can help them. If it helps them, it cant help us as well. There were people who said, whatever one side gains, the other side must lose. This is a condition in which both sides can gain because most can be reassured of the reduction of the danger of nuclear war. Another thing that made it painful was that only the year before, or the year before nixon came into office, 1968, soviet tanks had rolled into prague. They attempted to establish a little bit of distance between themselves and soviet control. Even the new czech government was in no way hostile to the soviet union, it wasnt subse e subservant. This is one of the many traumatic events of 1968. It was one more sign that the soviet union is utterly untrustworthy. It was only because nixon had got some such strong anticommunist credentials that he could get away with doing this in the first place. If a democratic president had done this, it would have united the opposition of the republicans and never would have come about. Nixon understood he was in a position to do something that his democratic rivals probably could not have managed. The other Great Development of the first Nixon Administration was the diplomatic opening to china. I mentioned that the Chinese Revolution was completed in 1949 and we encountered the chinese the use of chinese troops in the early days of the korean war when they attacked across the china north korean border when the forces were moving north in north korea. The United States didnt have diplomatic relations with communist china, the peoples republic of china, at all. The United States continued to recognize taiwan, the offshore island in the pacific, to which they defeated and retreated the nationalist chinese at the end of the Chinese Revolution in 1949. When on the few occasions when an american diplomat needed to talk to a chinese diplomat, they met in warsaw behind the iron curtain and had normal talks. By 71, nixon was thinking, theres something odd about this situation. In fact, nixon had written an article in the journal of Foreign Affairs which was published in 1967 in which he said this, taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave family 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 communists. Differences, again, between them and vietnamese communists and it was possible to see a little bit of daylight between these various brands of national communism. Of course one of the central principles of Foreign Policy is the idea the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So as border incidents began to take place between china and the soviet union on the long, long land border in asia, nixon and kissinger understood if we can befriend china, or at least achieve diplomatic normalization of relations, thats going to add pressure on the soviet union. Although we want to coexist with the soviet, we dont want to give them an easy time. Were continuing to hope, as George Cannon had said in 46, that eventually the soviet system is going to fold up because of its own imperfections. Heres this is a little badge. This shows you his selfconception. The people in the background from left to right are carl marx, lennon and stalin. He saw himself in this line, the classic lineage of communism as the next of the great leaders. Things inside china had been incredibly turbulant. The great laep forward, perhaps the most catastrophic policy decision ever made, this was an attempt by china to introduce a fiveyear plan to increase Grain Production in the chinese countryside and also go through a crash course of industrialization. What actually happened was, the peasant farms were collectivized and you can see people working on great collective farms. The hope was that the rationalization and efficiency of largescale farms would lead to a sharp increase in Grain Production. What happened is the resentful peasants whose land had been taken away from them, found less incentive to work on the farms than they would have done if they had been working on lands of their own. Productivity went down very sharply. Another aspect of the great laep forward was the decision to have a crash course of industrialization. The system is predicated on an Industrial Society and marx expected that the industrial working class were the revolutionaries. People were encouraged to build blast furnaces and bring all of their metal goods an