Richard Nixon
The Soviet Union was America's great adversary in this era, but since 1960 the USSR had not had good relations with China. Nixon thought that improved Sino-American ties would undermine the Soviets. He also hoped that China would pressure the North Vietnamese to end the war. A year before his election Nixon had written of the Chinese, "There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation." As president, Nixon began with small steps. First he exchanged sports teams: China sent over its world champion table tennis team, and "ping pong" diplomacy began. Then Kissinger in 1971 was sent on a secret mission to Beijing to prepare for a summit between U.S. and Chinese leaders. Thereafter Kissinger met more than twenty times with Chinese leaders to discuss world issues. Acting on behalf of Nixon, Kissinger and Chinese Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai made a deal: the U.S. would withdraw all its troops from Taiwan, end its opposition to seating China at the United Nations (which meant expelling Taiwan from the seat); and Nixon would be received in China for a summit. In October China was seated in the UN without American opposition. In February 1972 Nixon traveled to Beijing,
But there were still major problems in the relationship with the Soviets. For one thing, Soviet Foreign Secretary Andrei Gromyko warned Kissinger that "any military agreement between China and the United States would lead to war." For another, the Russians and Americans were still backing different sides in the Middle East. When Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel in October 1973, the U.S. resupplied the Israelis, who soon surrounded the Egyptian Third Army. The Soviets threatened to send paratroopers to aid the Egyptians, and the U.S. responded with a major nuclear alert. The two superpowers soon reached an agreement to end the Israeli encirclement of the Egyptians and disengage their proxies, but it was a sobering reminder that for all the talk of detente, nuclear crises could still occur. In the summer of 1974, just before Watergate would force Nixon's resignation, he and Kissinger took a final trip to the Soviet Union. Several new agreements between the two powers were signed in a final spurt of Nixon's grand design. The thaw with China and the Soviet Union did little to help matters in Vietnam. True to his campaign pledge, Nixon began to withdraw troops in his first term, and he announced the "Nixon Doctrine": Asians would have to defend themselves in the future without U.S. forces. This was called "Vietnamization" and to make it work, Nixon felt he had to escalate the war. He spread the war even further-bombin
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Approximate Word count = 973
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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