The Foreign Policy of Nixon and Kissinger: Legacy and Lessons for Today
American foreign policy is very much a part of the struggle for power at home. Henry Kissinger, and the foreign policy of realism or realpolitik should be understood less in terms of its international dimensions, and more as a response to public opinion and an effort to influence American domestic partisan politics. Richard Nixon sought to create a “New Majority,” and Kissinger played a key role in that effort. The electoral landslide of 1972 was a result of these efforts, which also led to Kissinger’s increasing prominence as the first diplomatic celebrity and superstar. Nixon did not fully grasp the consequences of his elevation of Kissinger, and after the Watergate scandal erupted, Kissinger became, essentially, the President of the United States for foreign policy. He continued to exercise this extraordinary influence with Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, a role that may have damaged Ford politically and cost him the 1976 election.
Overview
American foreign policy is very much a part of the struggle for power at home. Henry Kissinger, and the foreign policy of realism or realpolitik should be understood less in terms of its international dimensions, and more as a response to public opinion and an effort to influence American domestic partisan politics. Richard Nixon sought to create a “New Majority,” and Kissinger played a key role in that effort. The electoral landslide of 1972 was a result of these efforts, which also led to Kissinger’s increasing prominence as the first diplomatic celebrity and superstar. Nixon did not fully grasp the consequences of his elevation of Kissinger, and after the Watergate scandal erupted, Kissinger became, essentially, the President of the United States for foreign policy. He continued to exercise this extraordinary influence with Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, a role that may have damaged Ford politically and cost him the 1976 election.
Thomas Alan Schwartz is Professor of History at Vanderbilt University with a focus on the foreign relations of the United States and related interests in Modern European history and the history of international relations. He is the author of America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Harvard, 1991), winner of the Stuart Bernath Book Prize of the Society of American Foreign Relations, and the Harry S. Truman Book Award, given by the Truman Presidential Library. Schwartz is also the author ofLyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Harvard, 2003), and was co-editor with Matthias Schulz of The Strained Alliance: U.S.-European Relations from Nixon to Carter (Cambridge University Press, 2009). He is currently working on two books: a biography of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, tentatively entitled, Henry Kissinger and the Dilemmas of American Power, and The Long Twilight Struggle: A Concise History of the Cold War.
Co-sponsored by The Center for Military and Diplomatic History.
Speaker
Thomas Schwartz
Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Political Science and European Studies, Vanderbilt University
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Cold War International History Project
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History and Public Policy Program
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