Richard Nixon Second Word War Speech Analysis

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The second word war was a turning point in the history of the world, especially for the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Allied against a common threat during the war, the two countries subsequently became enemies in the long-lasting Cold War. The two countries were not alone in their feud and pulled most of the world behind them for over 40 years of conflict. Richard Nixon refers to this in the very first line of his speech, as if he considered it the most important challenge of his presidency. As a person aspiring to become the leader of one of the two blocks in the world, Nixon recognizes the importance of his country’s choices towards restoring “peace and freedom in the world”. His predecessors also had to deal with tough …show more content…

This situation was actually a conflict between the US and the Soviet Union where the former had deployed missile launchers in Italy and in Turkey and the latter in Cuba. After several days of tense negotiations, the two belligerents reached an agreement to dismantle their missile facilities. The Cold War was also fought as a race to space, with the Soviet Sputnik 1 being the first satellite to orbit earth in 1957; Yuri Gagarin being the first human in space in 1961; and culminating with the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing under the presidency of Richard Nixon. As nuclear war represented a threat to the entirety of the world according to the mutually assured destruction doctrine, Nixon was a firm defender of the easing of tensions with the U.S.S.R. Richard Nixon, as a president, considered foreign affairs to be far more interesting than domestic affairs. From roughly 1969 to 1979, a period known as the détente, initiated by Nixon’s election, was materialized by the several summits held between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during that

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