President Nixon Editorial Essay

Submitted By whitn3yhyde
Words: 349
Pages: 2

President Nixon’s Foreign Affairs
To many who had watched Richard M. Nixon build his political career as a Communist fighter, it must have seemed like complete irony. On July 15, 1971, Nixon announced on national television that he would become the first president ever to visit the People's Republic of China, a nation which had remained isolated from the West since the Communist revolution in 1949.
For Nixon, however, his upcoming visit represented the ultimate diplomatic triumph. Although he had publicly condemned the Chinese Communists, he had proposed a more relaxed attitude toward the People's Republic as early as 1954. In 1967, as a presidential candidate, he had written in the magazine Foreign Affairs, "We simply cannot afford to leave China outside the family of nations."
Nixon wanted to create a future in which more friendly relations among the major world powers would allow for ventures profitable to all. Through international cooperation, these nations might reduce revenue-draining defense expenditures and prevent the occurrence of costly Third World conflicts such as the Vietnam War.
Perhaps because engagement with the Communist wasp different from past U.S. policy, but also because he distrusted the diplomatic bureaucracy, Nixon tightly controlled his foreign policy. His main objective was National Security Council director Henry Kissinger. Frequently, the two men acted without the permission or the knowledge of the State Department.
Nixon began to interact