Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Chile History > Item 96
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Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power
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by Robert Dallek
Sales Rank: 107188
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List Price: $32.50
$21.45
At Amazon
on 8-6-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 752 pages
Published by: HarperCollinsEdition: 1st Edition April 24, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0060722304
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060722302
Book Dimensions:
9 x 6.2 x 2 inches
Weighs: 2.6 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Bestselling author Dallek (An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy) delivers what will quickly become recognized as a classic of modern history: the definitive analysis of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger's complex, often troubled partnership in running American foreign policy from January 1969 through August 1974. Dallek has had unprecedented access to major new resources, including transcriptions (20,000 pages) of Kissinger's telephone conversations as secretary of state, unreleased audio files of key Nixon telephone conversations and Oval Office discussions, and previously unexamined documents from the archives of Nixon, Kissinger (who served first as national security adviser, then as secretary of state) and White House hands Alexander Haig and H.R. Haldeman. Dallek's eloquent portrait of power depicts two men who were remarkably alike in important ways. Both harbored ravenous personal ambitions. Both suffered from (and operated out of) profound insecurities and low self-esteem. Both were deeply resentful (to the point of paranoia) of criticisms and challenges. Digging deep into the various archives, Dallek artfully fills in the back stories behind such debacles as the pair's policies in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Middle East, as well as such triumphs as the opening to China. In what many will consider the book's darkest moment, Dallek reveals for the first time the discussions and strategic thinking that led to the U.S.-orchestrated coup d'état against Chile's democratically elected president Salvador Allende in September of 1973. As he did with his Kennedy biography, Dallek finds important new material that will revise our thinking about a president and the man the author terms "a kind of co-president." 16 pages of black and white photos. (May 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Margaret MacMillan
Historian Robert Dallek has made his reputation with biographies of American presidents, Kennedy and Johnson among them. In this massive new book, he focuses on a relationship between one of the most controversial recent American presidents and his most influential foreign policy collaborator. So close was the partnership between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger that one historian has talked of a "Nixinger" foreign policy. In the first 100 days of his presidency, Nixon met with Kissinger, then his national security adviser, 198 times; by contrast, William Rogers, the secretary of State, met with the president only thirty times.
Nixon and Kissinger shared a similar view of the world -- that nations should act to promote their own interests and to encourage international stability. Both worried about what Vietnam had done and was continuing to do to the United States; both wanted to mend relations with their allies, particularly in Europe; and both wanted a better understanding, including arms control agreements, with the Soviet bloc. Yet they were never friends, and both tried to take credit for the administration's foreign policy successes.
Dallek paints a vivid portrait of two clever, insecure men, each wanting a place in history. Although at the start of their relationship, in 1969, Kissinger was a relative unknown and Nixon his powerful patron, by 1974 it was Kissinger, then secretary of state, who remained popular with the American public as a reviled Nixon left the White House. In later years, they rarely saw each other.
One of the great challenges in writing a history of the Nixon administration is the extraordinary wealth of material, most of it now released. Rogers rightly warned Nixon and Kissinger that they would regret taping everything, but both men were eager to ensure their place in history. Dallek has trolled through thousands of pages of transcripts from the Nixon and Kissinger tapes and caught them at their best and their worst, vindictive, funny, statesmanlike, petty, wise and absurd. A word of warning, though: Their lengthy conversations ought not always be taken at face value. Nixon worked his ideas out that way; Kissinger tended to flatter and agree with his president and even joked about it.
The tapes show the two men egging each other on to savage their enemies. The Democratic senators who are talking of impeaching Nixon during Watergate are, says Kissinger, "bastard traitors." The two men gloat that the 1971 war between India and Pakistan will cause American liberals "untold anguish" because their beloved India was so clearly the aggressor. They celebrate when Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrows Salvador Allende's government in Chile, reassuring each other that, in Kissinger's words, "we didn't do it," although in the next breath he admits, "I mean we helped them."
Dallek recognizes the real successes of the Nixon administration -- China, the end of the Vietnam War and détente with the Soviet Union -- and its failures, such as the coup in Chile. He also reminds us of how dangerously distracted Nixon became as a result of Watergate. Sen. Barry Goldwater came away deeply worried after a bizarre dinner in 1973 at which Nixon "jabbered incessantly, often incoherently, to the end." Increasingly, it was left to Kissinger, the administration's "one figure of stature remaining," as Time put it, to manage American foreign relations and cope with crises such as the October War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. For all the fascinating detail, the big picture remains elusive. Curiously for a book about one of the key relationships in American foreign policy, there is little extended analysis of what the two men thought about the world and the role of the United States. Nixon, Dallek tells us, wanted to advance world peace. So do beauty pageant contestants. Nixon is "an idealist" and "a defender of national traditions," and Kissinger is America's "chief practitioner of realpolitik." We need more explanation. The two men "had a hidden agenda that they themselves did not fully glimpse." Well, neither do we.
This also is very much a history of the period as seen from inside the Beltway. Other countries and their leaders serve as background and obliging extras. In 1969, Nixon tells Charles de Gaulle that he is "somewhat pessimistic on the Middle East." It would be nice to know why. We get very little sense of what it is the Soviets or the Chinese, or indeed any other peoples, actually want.
Dallek also commits odd omissions. There is almost nothing on the tensions within the Western Alliance, for example, which we know were a major concern for both Nixon and Kissinger. We also know that they had serious reservations about West Germany's "ostpolitik," or rapprochement with its Communist neighbors (which involved much more than "détente with the Communists"), but these barely get a mention. There is no discussion of how Nixon shocked his allies in 1971, when the United States effectively abandoned its support for the dollar and imposed wage and price controls; and there are no references to the impact of the new American relationship with China on allies such as Japan and Taiwan.
Early on, Dallek promises the story of a collaboration "that tells us as much about the opportunities and limits of national and international conditions as about the men themselves." For all his industry, he does not seem to have shaken himself free of his material to deliver on that promise. They can be dangerous things, those tapes.
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Reader Reviews
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.
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