A review of  Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969 - 1977  by Fredrik Logevall & Andrew Preston

Irwin, Ryan

English

University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY): Scholars Archive

University at Albany, State University of New YorkScholars ArchiveHistory Faculty Scholarship History11-2010Nixon’s 1970sRyan IrwinUniversity at Albany, State University of New York, rirwin@albany.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/history_fac_scholarPart of the History CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the History at Scholars Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in History FacultyScholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholars Archive. For more information, please contact scholarsarchive@albany.edu.Recommended CitationIrwin, Ryan, "Nixon’s 1970s" (2010). History Faculty Scholarship. 1.http://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/history_fac_scholar/1Fredrik Logevall, Andrew Preston, eds. Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969-1977. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xv + 348 pp. $99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-531535-6; $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-19-531536-3.Reviewed by Ryan M. Irwin (Yale University)Published on H-1960s (November, 2010)Commissioned by Ian Rocksborough-SmithNixon’s 1970sFor much of the first two decades after World WarII, the Cold War shaped the contours of world affairs.American consumerism merged with Keynesian plan-ning in the West, powering a durable yet militarized eco-nomic recovery that linked North America with Europeand Japan, while the Soviet Union–locked in an awkwarddiplomatic marriage to communist China–gravitated to-ward a sturdy homeostasis based on domestic austerity,defense spending, and geopolitical opportunism. The re-sulting arrangement was a portrait of paradox. Cast asideological antipodes on the world stage, Washingtonand Moscow stumbled into an expensive arms race anda vicious set of proxy conflicts, even as they reinforcedcomparable norms about geopolitical bipolarity, state-ledeconomic development, and cultural homogeneity.As readers of H-1960s know well, this status quoended during the 1960s. Precipitated by decolonizationabroad and demographic change at home–to say noth-ing of the rights revolution and America’s controversialwar in Vietnam–activists, academics, and politicians ev-erywhere began removing the “lens” of the early ColdWar. By the end of the decade, political, social, and cul-tural assumptions once cast in static, universal terms hadgivenway to novel arguments about dependency, racism,and imperialism. “Like balls of yarn, stable lines of post-war geopolitics came undone as people pulled at themfrom multiple directions,” historian Jeremi Suri explains(p. 67). The resulting upheavals not only reset the trajec-tory of world politics, but also established an infinitelymore complex global system based on geopolitical plu-rality, economic decentralization, and cultural contesta-tion.Nixon in the World provides a series of snapshots ofthe post-1960s world. The book is a study of high diplo-macy and grand strategy, framed by a simple question:how did the U.S. government respond to the challengesof this uncertain era? With a combination of hard-nosedrealpolitik and strident amorality, editors Fredrick Lo-gevall and Andrew Preston argue. “Rather than unre-alistically demonizing its adversaries,” the United Statesembraced the notion “that in an increasingly globalizedworld it could no longer seal off its rivals” (p. 8). Commu-nist countries, like the Soviet Union and China, dismissedonce as existential threats to the United States, reemergedas viable political partners, while Germany, France, andJapan–integral parts of Washington’s postwar allianceduring the first two decades of the Cold War–foundthemselves recast as mere pawns on the chessboard ofglobal affairs. “Conservative in its aims” yet “revolution-ary in its methods,” the resulting approach transformedthe rules of foreign affairs, revitalizing America’s strat-egy of containment while softening the logic and impli-cations of the superpower contest (p. 7). The goal, inshort, was to refresh U.S. power in an age of relative de-cline.Nixon in the World’s individual chapters cataloguethe administration’s successes and failures in implement-1H-Net Reviewsing this “grand design.” In an attempt to explicate Presi-dent Richard Nixon’s worldview, as well as his relation-ship with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, theopening section looks equally at events in the domesticand international arenas. Jussi Hanhimäki provides anespecially insightful essay about the Nixon Doctrine anddétente, connecting the administration’s elusive globalplan to the war in Vietnam, while David Greenberg, Do-minic Sandbrook, and Suri advance diverging (and oc-casionally overlapping) interpretations of the Nixon ad-ministration’s goals and shortcomings. Parts 2 and 3turn attention to U.S. relations in East Asia and WestEurope, tackling stories of triangulation, linkage, andostpolitik head-on, before shifting to the slow-movingtragedy of Vietnam. With chapters from Francis Gavin,Lien-Hang Nguyen, Margaret MacMillan, Michael Mor-gan, Mary Sarotte, and Robert Schulzinger, the sectionsare predictably balanced with especially judicious expla-nations of U.S. nuclear strategy, West German foreignpolicy, and the opening of China. Part 4 surveys crisesthat erupted in the Middle East, South Asia, and LatinAmerica between 1969 and 1977, as well as the adminis-tration’s peacetime relationships with Japan and Canada.Angola’s civil war and OPEC’s oil embargoes are mostlyoverlooked, but this section too is strong, with provoca-tive contributions fromRobert Bothwell, Mark Lawrence,Robert McMahon, Salim Yaqub, and Thomas Zeiler.The authors and editors hedge their bets in advanc-ing a final verdict about Nixon’s tenure in the WhiteHouse. The president’s team earns generally high marksfor the Soviet and Chinese summits of 1972, as wellas the Paris Peace Accord that ended the Vietnam Warin 1973, and most contributors accept triangular diplo-macy as an innovative way to extend Washington’s in-fluence in uncertain times. However, they scoff collec-tively at détente, which not only “failed” to end the ColdWar but also lagged behind comparable efforts in WestEurope (p. 13). The president’s approach in the thirdworld is likewise lambasted, with most authors in agree-ment that U.S.-funded authoritarians perpetuated cyclesof conflict, instability, and brinksmanship throughout theglobal South. Moreover, Nixon’s cynical nature–as prob-lematic abroad as it was at home–sowed the seeds of aninevitable decline, fueling an intense backlash among ac-tivists on both ends of the political spectrum who wereconvinced (for very different reasons) that realpolitikwas eroding America’s moral standing in the world. TheNixon who emerges from this contested milieu is neithera tragic nor an evil character–merely an ambitious politi-cian, equal parts prudent, foolish, and arrogant.Nixon in the World casts aside many of the polemicsthat attached themselves to the thirty-seventh presidentduring the 1970s, and advances in their place a confi-dent yet nuanced story about détente. On one level, thevolume is a masterful illustration of diplomatic historyas a craft. However, the volume leaves an important–arguably the most important–question curiously under-examined: what exactly changed during the 1970s? IfLogevall and Preston’s book has a flaw, it is its reliance onthe perspective of American policy makers. While expli-cated with élan, the grand strategy of the Nixon adminis-tration seems detached at times from the complexities itconfronted, and the president’s “conservative” yet “rev-olutionary” foreign policy, chronicled in rich detail, oc-casionally feels aloof from the structural transformationsthat actually marked the 1970s. As most historians agree,the White House’s reconceptualization of containmenthappened in an arena where assumptions about globalorder–codified at New Hampshire’s Bretton Woods re-sort in July 1944–were giving way to new types of cross-national economic exchange, financial innovation, andnongovernmental activism. Did détente drive or followthese processes? Determining an answer requires jump-ing headlong into the contorted history of globalization–a plunge not made byNixon in theWorld. Working firmlywithin the confines of political history, the book leavesothers to determine how Washington’s initiatives inter-sected with such structural transformations as China’sembrace of market capitalism, OPEC’s rejection of theWest, and Africa’s descent into economic catastrophe.None of which is to question directly the impor-tance of Nixon in the World. The book deserves to beread widely. A historical consensus is emerging aboutthe 1970s. Dismissed once as an anomaly in the twen-tieth century, the tumultuous decade is reemerging asone of the seminal pivot-points of the modern era–equalin importance only to the 1890s and 1930s.[1] Nixon inthe World tells a story of U.S. foreign policy during thisage of upheaval, and it does so with analytical precisionand interpretive balance. To future volumes will fall thedaunting task of uncovering new questions, and recast-ing America’s story in an international framework.Note[1]. For an important recent international historyof the 1970s, see Niall Ferguson, Charles Maier, ErezManela, and Daniel Sargent, eds.,The Shock of the Global:The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 2009).2H-Net ReviewsIf there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at:https://networks.h-net.org/h-1960sCitation: Ryan M. Irwin. Review of Logevall, Fredrik; Preston, Andrew, eds., Nixon in the World: American ForeignRelations, 1969-1977. H-1960s, H-Net Reviews. November, 2010.URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30637This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.3

Nixon’s 1970s

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Nixon’s 1970s

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