Nixon Realism

1. What were the main features of Nixon's policy of "realism" in dealing with China and the Soviet Union? While he was a fierce anticommunist, President Nixon possessed a very “realist” mindset when it came to foreign relations during his presidency. Unlike his predecessors, Nixon was interested more “…in power than ideology” (Foner 1015), implying that he acknowledged the benefits of having a good relationship with powerful nations despite differences in ideology. He also “…preferred international stability to relentless conflict” (Foner 1015), showing that despite being an anticommunist, he would rather end tensions than keep headache known as the Cold War. This proved especially relevant seeing as how the Vietnam War was in full swing

those who spoke out against him. Because of this, it is unsurprising that the events of the Watergate scandal were directly linked to President Nixon. In June of 1972, “…five former employees of Nixon’s reelection committee took part in a break-in at a Democratic Party headquarters” (Foner 1018), which was located in an apartment complex known as the Watergate. The break-in resulted in no robbery, however, for the perpetrators were arrested at the scene, and their motives and goals remain unknown. At the time, no one connected the attempted robbery to President Nixon, but in 1973 the judge who tried the intruders, Judge John J. Sirica, set out to discover who was behind the crime. Stories began to appear in the Washington Post, “…that made it clear that persons close to the president had ordered the burglary” (Foner 1018) and subsequently attempted to sever any connections to the President and the White House. Upon investigation conducted by Congress, it was discovered that “…a wider pattern of wiretapping, break-ins, and attempts to sabotage political opposition” (Foner 1018) were occurring as well. After refusing to release secret recordings of conversations held in his office, the Supreme Court ordered President Nixon to release them, stating that “…the president is not above the law” (Foner 1019), and the Watergate scandal

However, this decline was not unwarranted, since there were multiple factors building up to bring an end to the United States’ “golden era”. First of all, Cold War policies resulted in economic downfalls for the country’s economy, since “…the United States promoted the industrial reconstruction of Japan and Germany and the emergence of new centers of manufacturing in places like South Korea and Taiwan” (Foner 1020). In order to strengthen their allies in the fight against communism, the United States ignored its own industrial industry, specifically by encouraging American companies to invest in foreign ones. In 1971, “…the United States experienced a merchandise trade deficit—that is, it imported more goods than it exported” (Foner 1020) for the first time in the twentieth century. With this sudden increase of overseas importation and declining profits, American corporations moved “…toward eliminating well-paid manufacturing jobs through automation and shifting production to low-wage areas of the United States and overseas” (Foner 1022). This shift of employment devastated once-booming industrial cities such as Detroit and Chicago, and the cities “…had lost more than half of the manufacturing jobs that had existed three decades earlier” (Foner 1022). In addition to this,