Dallek - Nixon and Kissinger

T his book is about the exercise of power by two of the most important practitioners of the art in the twentieth century: President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, whose unprecedented influence as a national security adviser and secretary of state made him a kind of co-president, especially during the administrations turmoil over Watergate.

We know almost all of what they did during their five and a half years in the White House; their major initiatives were and remain landmarks in the history of American foreign policy. Why and how they acted, however, is incomplete and imperfectly understoodpartly hidden behind the facade the two men consciously and unconsciously erected to disguise their intentions.

The Nixon and Kissinger personae do not lend themselves to easy understanding. But neither man is less understandable than Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, other political leaders I have studied. This is not to suggest that all these men are alike or lack distinctive traits. Each one had his unique qualities that made him a challenge to explain. And while practice in political biography never makes perfect, it has encouraged me to believe that none of these men are so complicated that we cannot describe the private men behind the public images. I hope my recounting of the Nixon and Kissinger life stories will cast fresh light on who they were and why and how they collaborated in their use and abuse of power.

A vast array of previously untapped records has served my reconstruction of their histories. The recent opening of the bulk of these materialsmillions of pages of national security files, 2,800 hours out of 3,700 hours of Nixon tapes, and 20,000 pages of Kissinger telephone transcripts that were made by aides listening in on the conversationsmakes another reexamination of the men and their leadership particularly timely and instructive.

The Nixon-Kissinger partnership presents the historical biographer with a striking irony. The two men presided over a government that was unequaled in its secrecy. But the availability of the richest presidential records in history makes their White House more transparent than any before or since. The materials provide an unprecedented opportunity to probe Nixons and Kissingers policymaking. Specifically, mining administration records has allowed me to reconstruct the interactions between Nixon and Kissinger and others in the governmentthe collaborations and rivalries, the backstabbing, intrigues, and foul language, or expletive deleted in contemporary White House transcriptsto an unparalleled extent.

The great events of Nixons presidencyending the Vietnam War, opening a new era in Sino-American relations, building dtente with the Soviet Union, managing daunting Middle East problems, favoring Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistan War, seeking the overthrow of Salvadore Allende Gossens government in Chile, using foreign affairs to counter growing cries for impeachment of the president over Watergate, and hiding Nixons erratic behavior in response to the crisiscan also be more fully re-created than ever before. It gives us a chance to see what Bismarck famously advised against, viewing the making of sausages and lawsin this case the development and implementation of foreign policy.

The archival riches provide the most authoritative answers to a number of enduring questions. Foremost, the four additional years of fighting in Vietnam cry out for explanation. Could the war have been ended sooner? And could the Saigon regime have been saved from itself and a Communist takeover by Hanoi? In light of the end results in Vietnam, Kissingers selection for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 is another point of controversy.

The opening to China is a largely celebrated event, usually cited as the most important achievement of Nixons and Kissingers foreign policy. But how it occurred and which man deserves the principal credit for realizing it still provokes debate. Questions about its usefulness in balancing the Communist superpower in Peking against the one in Moscow also remain.

Arguments about the wisdom and value of dtente with the Soviet Union continue to be worthy of consideration as well. Were the SALT and trade agreements as essential to international stability and peace as Nixon and Kissinger believed? Neoconservative critics of dtente complain that the rapprochement was nothing more than a Soviet ploy in the Cold War and did more to undermine than benefit U.S. national security. The available records and the passage of time allow for more rounded judgments on this controversy.

Meanwhile arguments about the Middle East today are especially pressing. Was the administration too slow to deal with the regions problems? Could we have averted the Yom Kippur War? The decision to increase Americas defense condition (Defcon) in response to a Soviet threat to send paratroops into the Sinai to prevent the demise of Egypts surrounded Third Army is a troubling fact, especially in light of what new records show about how it was done. And the postwar peacemaking against the backdrop of recent strife between Israel and its Arab neighbors is a subject with a seemingly timeless quality.

As for the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and the administrations famous tilt toward Pakistan, revelations from Nixon-Kissinger conversations make clear how truly controversial their decisions were in response to that crisis. Was the war a realistic extension of great power politics, as Nixon and Kissinger believed? Was world peace as much in jeopardy as they thought?

Administration efforts first to block Allendes accession to power and then to bring him down are now well known. Additional details about the extent of that concern and the Nixon-Kissinger response to it are part of this books new history. More important is the need to revisit assertions about Allendes threat to U.S. national security in the hemisphere. Inevitably, questions arise about the Nixon administrations part, if any, in the deaths of Chilean Chief of Staff Rene Schneider in 1970 and Allende in 1973. And what role, if any, did we play in the Pinochet coup and his subsequent hold on power?

Nixons use of foreign affairs to overcome impeachment threats in 19731974 are a disturbing part of the administrations history. Its impact on foreign policy deserves particular consideration, as does the more extensive use of international relations to serve domestic political goals throughout Nixons presidency. Nixons competence to lead the country during his impeachment crisis also requires the closest possible scrutiny. It raises the question of whether Kissinger and other cabinet members should have considered invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment to ensure that foreign adversaries did not take advantage of a weakened administration, as Kissinger feared.

At variance with the German philosopher Georg Hegels view that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, I am convinced that the many questions raised in this book have relevance for current national and international problems. Arguments about the wisdom of the war in Iraq and how to end U.S. involvement there, relations with China and Russia, what to do about enduring Mideast tensions between Israelis and Arabs, and the advantages and disadvantages of an imperial presidency can, I believe, be usefully considered in the context of a fresh look at Nixon and Kissinger and the power they wielded for good and ill.