Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power

The relationship of these two incredibly insecure men is interesting to explore. Both were looking for constant reassurance from one another. Nixon seemed incredibly unsure of himself in Robert Dallek's book. Dallek explores other good biographies of Nixon and previously unreleased material to go in more depth. The problems faced by Nixon and Kissinger were varied, and handled with varied success. The failure in Vietnam sticks out like a sore thumb and is a major theme of the book. Smaller problems that they dealt with including Chile where the U.S. intervened to take a democratically elected leader out of power shed light on the deception and secretive measures used by the administration. The Nixon administration did more than stretch the rules...they broke many of them. Henry Kissinger appears as the hero of this book. Domestic issues are in the background of this book with Foreign policy as the star.

Any overview of the Nixon-Kissinger collaboration is necessarily going to be at least partially derivative and while Dallek leans on William Bundy's Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency and to a lesser extent Walter Isaacson's Kissinger: A Biography, he also did his own exhaustive research, including access to much new material from Kissinger's archives. The resulting synthesis is an excellent one-volume overview. Presidential historian Dallek presents here the full tale of the Nixon-Kissinger era for scholar and general reader alike. Dallek mostly allows the story to tell itself and is even-handed when he does insert his own views. Of course, even-handed means a largely negative evaluation. While Dallek rightly praises Nixon for the China opening and to some extent for detente with the Soviet Union, he also covers the criminal overthrew of Chile's elected Socialist leader Allende and their nearly catastrophic tilt toward Pakistan in its conflict with India - and of course, Vietnam. As Dallek once again establishes, Nixon and Kissinger deliberately extended the Vietnam War to aid Nixon's 1972 re-election. They distinctly did not want the war to end too early and risk the premature collapse of the South Vietnamese house of cards in advance of the election. The exit of US ground forces was cynically calibrated to be just completed by the fall of 1972. And as Dallek relates they expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos with disastrous results for those peoples. The story of the Nixon era ultimately becomes the story of Watergate. At bottom Watergate was about the tapes. After the discovery of their existence, Nixon's resistance to releasing them led to charges of cover-up, and their ultimate release confirmed his criminality. Dallek does necessarily delve a bit into the details of Watergate, but the best source for that story remains Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon by Stanley Kutler. When the taping system was first installed, Haldeman asked whether Nixon wanted transcripts prepared. Nixon declaimed, "Absolutely not. No one is ever going to hear those tapes but you and me." The delicious unintended irony of this answer is irresistible, but also revealing. Nixon seems to have had the self-awareness to know in advance that his tapes were not going to be pretty. Indeed, one of the strengths of Dallek's book is the extent to which the mostly repellent personalities of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger are on display: paranoid, ruthless, secretive, conspiratorial, and deceptive. Kissinger at least possessed a charm that Nixon completely lacked. Nixon did not like people much and people reciprocated. While Dallek does not add any big new important pieces to our knowledge, his exhaustive research does add authoritativeness to what we thought we already knew. Dallek does highlight the shocking extent of Nixon's drinking - he was often drunk and asleep or out of control, in particular during the 1973 Ara

Mr. Dallek has written biographies of JFK (2003), LBJ (1991, 1998) and overviews of FDR (1994) and Ronald Reagan (1998). Now he has written of the relationship between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and their foreign policy successes and failures. Neither man trusted the other (or anyone else) and used the other to fulfill their goals. Being amoral pragmatists helped in charting a new direction (as in Russia and China) but was a disaster in other circumstances (see Chile and Vietnam). The author has edited into the narrative thousands of pages of new material into a coherent story of nightmare proportions. It is a great read.

There are several excellent books already in print by or about Richard M. Nixon and/or Henry A. Kissinger, notably Memoirs of Richard Nixon and Richard Reeves' President Nixon: Alone in the White House as well as Walter Isaacson's biography of Kissinger and The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top-Secret Talks With Beijing and Moscow. However, with access to a wealth of sources previously unavailable, Robert Dallek has written what will probably remain for quite some time the definitive study of one of U.S. history's most fascinating political partnerships. I defer to other reviewers to suggest parallels between the wars in Viet Nam and Iraq, especially when citing this passage in Dallek's Preface: "Arguments about the wisdom of the war in Iraq and how to end the U.S. involvement there, relations with China and Russia, what to do about enduring Mideast trensions between Israelis and Arabs, and the advantages and disadvantages of an imperial presidency can, I believe, be usefully considered in the context of a fresh look ast Nixon and Kissinger and the power they wielded for good and ill." Until reading Dallek's book, I was unaware of the nature and extent of what Nixon and Kissinger shared in common. Of greatest interest to me was the almost total absence of trust in others (including each other) as, separately and together, they sought to increase their power, influence, and especially, their prestige. In countless ways, they were especially petty men and, when perceiving a threat, could be vindictive. They seemed to bring out the worst qualities in each other, as during their self-serving collaboration on policies "good and ill" in relationships with other countries such as China, Russia, Viet Nam, Pakistan, and Chile. Neither seemed to have must interest in domestic affairs (except for perceived threats to their respective careers) and Nixon once characterized them as "building outhouses in Peoria." According to Dallek, "Nixon's use of foreign affairs to overcome impeachment threats in 1973-1974 are a distubring part of the administration's history. Its impact on policy deserves particular consideration, as does the more extensive use of international relations to serve domestic political goals throughout Nixon's presidency. Nixon's competence to lead the country during his impeachment cruisis also requires the closest possible scrutiny." Most experts on this troubled period agree that the ceasefire agreement with North Viet Nam in 1973 was essentially the same as one that could have been concluded years before. However, both Nixon and Kissinger waited until after Nixon's re-election in1972 before ending a war that (by1966) Kissinger had characterized as "unwinnable." According to Dallek, with access to 2,800 hours of Nixon tapes and 20,000 pages of Kissinger telephone transcripts, Kissinger would "say almost anything privately to Nixon in the service of his ambition." Nixon referred to opponents of the war as "communists." As the Watergate

Robert Dallek is a presidential biographer withour peer. He has written about LBJ, JFK, and Ronald Reagan. This could be his best yet. Dallek examines the partnership of two men who had much in common as well as incredible differences. Both Nixon and Kissinger had difficult childhoods. Nixon grew up poor in California. Kissinger fled the Nazis. Both men dreamed of better days. Each man possessed an outsized ego. Dallek was able to obtain some incredible new insights into their relationship. Transcripts of phone conversations that Kissinger had had with thousands of people have recently become available to scholars. They shed light on what he really was thinking during those moments in history. Kissinger tried to suppress the release of these records until after his death. Like the Nixon tapes, these transcripts have come back to haunt Kissinger. Dallek interviewed Kissinger but he didn't get much out of it. Kissinger obviously wants to suppress knowledge of his role in the Nixon fiasco. The Viet Nam War, diplomacy with China and the USSR, Watergate; it's all here. Neither man comes out looking too good. Dallek makes the case that Kissinger knew Nixon was incapacitated so badly as the Watergate scandal unfolded that Kissinger should have considered having Nixon removed from power under the aegis of the 25th Amendment. Kissinger failed to inform Congress that Nixon was incapable of running the country at that point. Kissinger had selfish reasons. If Nixon lost power then so did Kissinger. Power was the most important thing to both men. The imperial presidency of Richard Nixon has eerie parallels to our current administration. Today we also have an unpopular war, surveillance of those who oppose it, deep secrecy and paranoia. Nixon comes across as a paranoid, flawed man, who did some good and lots of not so good things. This book makes it clear that Nixon and Kissinger manipulated the peace talks to end the Viet Nam War to suit their own political purposes, like winning the 1972 election. When Watergate was sinking Nixon he made a desperate attempt to involve LBJ, hoping that the former president would admit his own indiscretions to soften the scandal for Nixon. LBJ refused. He pointed out that in 1968 Nixon had tampered with the South Viet Namese to help him defeat Hubert Humphrey in that election. Kissinger seems clearly implicated in one scandal after another, from the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile to illegal wiretapping and the Watergate coverup. It's fascinating stuff.