Nixon’s farsighted acceptance of a distant but emergent multipolarity created a triangulation with an expansionist USSR that created “room” for other centers of power to grow alongside the United States but in opposition to Soviet hegemony. The longitudinal ” correlation of forces“, to use Communist parlance of the time, that had favored the Soviets for a quarter century, had been at a stroke, reversed.
Richard Nixon was never much of an economist, it was a subject off of his radar screen and he leaned heavily on George Schultz, John Connally and others, but it was Nixon who helped set the geopolitical table for globalization to happen sooner rather than later.
Next, Part IV – Watergate and the Legacy of Richard Nixon
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Lexington Green:
September 7th, 2006 at 1:20 am
Anyone can look good if he has the luck to draw great cards. Nixon’s achievement has to be assessed in light of the piss-poor hand he was holding as he took over the presidency in the Winter of 1969.
We were headed for a humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The Cold War alliance in Europe was looking a lot weaker, with Ostpolitik and appeasement gaining in popularity. The Soviet Union was not yet the decrepit rust heap it became, but a formidable foe on the march, the apparent global leader of the third world armies of national liberation. The correlation of forces seemed to favor the communists and their allies. The US economy was shaky and clearly headed for trouble. American society, due to Vietnam, the draft, race rioting, skyrocketing crime, and all the crap we think of as “the 60s”, was in a state of near civil war.
Nixon, to his eternal credit, not only wanted to be President, for some reason, under these rotten conditions, but had the vision to navigate America through this terrible period.
The only two presidents who came to power with the country in worse shape were FDR in 1932 and Lincoln in 1861.
mark:
September 7th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
Hi Lex,
You’re correct. Nixon played with an incredibly poor hand -both domestic and foreign. (As it happens, Nixon was also a good poker player)
The culture of Congressional Republicans then was one of “go-along, get-along” timidity vis-a-vis the Democratic majority and brainpower was not in any more evidence than political nerve.
They were scared to death of criticism from the NYT, if they supported the administration’s positions so they often staked out their own insteadf.Nixon regarded his own Party officials as an unreliable support and not without good reason.
Nixon’s problem was that he didn’t see the shifting of the domestic political ground as clearly as he did the international conditions. He underestimated the extent to which the unwritten ” old rules” presidents had operated under were changing to his disadvantage. A JFK would not have faced impeachment for Watergate but he would not have skated by scott-free as he did a decade earlier either.
Eddie:
December 30th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Fascinating post Mark. I’m going to the library today to pick up “Beyond Peace”, “Seize The Moment” & “In The Arena”. The notion of a president who is deeply knowledgeable and perceptive of the world BEFORE he comes to office is profoundly attractive nowadays…