Comment

Stephens: Iraq Is Obama's Mideast Pillar

101
Rexatosis2/03/2009 9:44:40 am PST

Re: #22 Catttt

Nixon should not be lumped in with Carter on foreign policy. Nixon issued in an age of Detente with the Soviet Union converting what had been a tense military face off that nearly brought the world to nuclear armeggedon under Kennedy to primarily an economic confrontation while opening up the Soviet economy to more Western goods which helped weaken the resolve of the Soviet populace to pay the draconian price needed to keep the Soviet military on a par with NATO under Gorbachev. Nixon opened the door to China. Nixon cauterized the festering wound of Vietnam while preserving the security arrangements the United States had through the rest of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore) while limiting the damage created by great power retreat (compare the US exit out of Vietnam and USSR competition with China over that area with the Ottoman retreat from Eastern Central Europe being replaced by Russian v. German hegemony). Nixon ushered in a stable tri-polar (Washington, Moscow, Peking) world system that provided relative peace for over a quarter-century until broken on 9/11 by a non-state entity. Nixon (and Kissinger’s) foreign policy should rightfully be compared with that of Metternich and Bismarck in its results.