President Nixon's Foreign Policy

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Recommended: Economic challenges of the 70s

The United States (US) as a hegemonic powerhouse was challenged by the 1970s due to a number of changes occurring all over the world. The Western European market was emerging rapidly and its economic development showed a renewed Europe importing and exporting in greater volume than prior to World War II (WWII). On the military front, the Nixon administration acknowledged that a change in foreign policy was needed. The world had changed from bipolar to multipolar and included not only the US and the Soviet Union as previously, but also China, Western Europe, and Japan as big powers capable of affecting the world.

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger both believed that the US could ensure its national security and promote its interests by establishing stronger diplomatic relations with the big powers and through that control and influence their decision-making. The US wanted to be the center of this multipolar world, but this could only be achieved by downplaying the importance of ideology towards the Soviet Union and to open up towards China, “(…) which the United States had...

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