Nixon's Secret (54 page)

When Abe Fortas resigned from the court in 1969 the Nixon administration would then endure the embarrassment of nominating first Clement Haynsworth, and then G. Harold Carswell to fill the seat, and having neither confirmed by the Senate. No president since Hoover had endured a single outright defeat on nominations for the court, and Nixon endured two in short order. Haynsworth, then the chief judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, was accused of having issued decisions favoring segregation as well as decisions that brought him financial benefit.
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Ultimately the nomination would be opposed by a coalition including liberal Republicans and Northern democrats; and Haynsworth was defeated by a vote of 55 to 45. Similarly, Carswell was criticized for having an unusually high reversal rate (the rate at which higher courts reversed his decisions) and made an enemy of civil rights activists for his vocal support of white supremacy while running for office in Georgia.
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Carswell particularly was an abject failure by members of the Nixon staff (specifically, John Mitchell) to adequately vet potential nominees. The defeats of Haynsworth and Carswell were attributed to the poor political judgment of Attorney General John Mitchell and provide early evidence that Mitchell, who would ultimately lose his balance in Watergate was beginning to teeter.

After the series of setbacks the administration went for a home run nomination in Minnesotan Harry Blackmun, who passed the Senate by a vote of 94-0 (with the six absent senators having expressed their support for Blackmun’s nomination). Blackmun was a lifelong Republican and had been recommended to Nixon by Chief Justice Burger, who had served as Blackmun’s best man, and as such Blackmun was expected to join a conservative resurgence on the court. For those expecting such, however, Blackmun would ultimately prove a disappointment, as he would become gradually more liberal at the same time as the court itself moved to the right. Blackmun would author the
Roe vs. Wade
decision establishing a constitutionally protected right for a woman to have an abortion, and in one of his last acts on the bench famously concluded that he no longer believed capital punishment to be constitutionally permissible.
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Following the Blackmun nomination, Justice Hugo Black retired from the court in September 1971 along with Justice Harlan, both for reasons relating to ill health. Nixon announced his intention to nominate Arkansas attorney Hershel Friday and California appeals court judge Mildred Lillie—Lillie would have been the first woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
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However, shortly after the announcement the American Bar Association rated both nominees unqualified. This has been viewed by many as a convenient excuse allowing the ABA to obscure their own discomfort with the idea of a woman on the court—again we see Nixon ahead of his time on women’s rights.
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Following this latest setback with judicial nominations, Nixon would proceed to nominate Lewis F. Powell, who had turned down the nomination to succeed Abe Fortas, and William Rehnquist to the court. Powell was confirmed relatively easily, by a vote of 89-1, however the Rehnquist nomination was more contentious. Rehnquist’s nomination was opposed by the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, and the NAACP, however, Rehnquist too was eventually confirmed by a voted of 68-26, with all but three liberal Republicans voting in support of the nomination.
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* * *

In addition to his substantial achievements in domestic policy, it is President Nixon’s foreign policy achievements that are the aspects of his presidency most often lauded across the political spectrum. From ending the war in Vietnam, to opening up China and signing the first arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, Nixon proved one of the most successful foreign policy presidents of the twentieth century. There seem to have been two primary driving forces behind the administration’s foreign policy, these motivations fall under the general headings of the so-called “Nixon Doctrine” and détente with the Soviet Union.

Like his predecessor LBJ, Nixon would be bedeviled by the Vietnam War. Johnson’s detractors in the counterculture would now refocus their ire at “Tricky Dick.” Nixon would drain some of this antagonism by ending the Selective Service System and moving the United States to an all-volunteer army. It is important, however, to note that Nixon
reversed
the policies of the Johnson administration, which had been relentless in its escalation of the war. Richard Nixon would begin withdrawing American troops originally committed to Vietnam from JFK and then greatly increased by LBJ. Resisting the impulse to “cut and run,” Nixon would direct Defense Secretary Melvin Laird to conduct orderly troop withdrawals from Vietnam, at the same time stepping up aerial bombardment of the North Vietnamese in a bid to both cover the American withdrawals and to drive the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table.

President Nixon announced what has come to be known as the Nixon Doctrine in a press conference in Guam on July 25, 1969. Nixon further outlined three principles that would drive American foreign policy in an address to the American people on the Vietnam War from November 3, 1969. These were:

1.   The United States will keep all of its treaty commitments.

2.   [The United States] shall provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation allied with us or of a nation whose survival we consider vital to our security.

3.   In cases involving other types of aggression, we shall furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defense.
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The purpose of this speech is multifaceted. Domestically, it served as a commitment from President Nixon to the American people that he remained committed to bringing the war to a successful conclusion. Internationally, it served to make clear to US allies that we would not abandon them in an hour of need, but that going forward the initial responsibility for their defense must lay with their own military forces—this speech presaged the process of “Vietnamization” in which South Vietnamese forces assumed ever greater proportions of the fighting.
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In the years following his election, the Nixon administration sought to bring the North Vietnamese back to the table, without much success. The North Vietnamese had little incentive to negotiate in good faith, as they held out for a better hand on the backs of military successes, the ongoing drawdown of American troops, and continuing domestic opposition to the war in the United States. However, following the mining of Haiphong Harbor, North Vietnamese forces were halted, and Nixon resumed the large-scale bombing of North Vietnamese targets north of the Demilitarized Zone. Coupled with the suspension of military aid to North Vietnam by the Soviet Union and China was enough to bring the Vietnamese to the table in advance of Nixon’s reelection in 1972.
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On January 9, 1973, following Nixon’s decision to subject North Vietnam to twelve days of bombardment by American aircraft, the Vietnamese returned to the negotiating table and reached a settlement with the president based on terms Nixon had proposed in November. On January 21, Nixon secured the acquiescence of South Vietnamese President Thieu, and on January 27 the peace treaty was signed in Paris.
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After Nixon’s fall, the US Congress would refuse Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford’s request for continued military aid to South Vietnam, and the country would ultimately fall to the North.

The Nixon Doctrine would not just inform the evolving face of the Vietnam War, but extend throughout the president’s foreign policy. In the Middle East the doctrine resulted in a decrease in active US military presence, supplemented by a dramatic increase in the sale of arms to US allies in the region. For example, arms transfers from the United States to the Shah in Iran increased from $103.6 million in 1970 to $552.7 million in 1972; in the case of the Saudis the amount of arms transfers exploded from $15.8 million in 1970 to $312.4 million in 1972.
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* * *

The pinnacles of Nixon’s foreign policy achievement, opening up China and détente (détente is a French term, which literally means “relaxation”) with the Soviet Union, should be seen as twin sides of the same coin. Successful détente with the Soviet Union was dependent on bringing the Soviet leadership to the table. In 1968, with the United States embroiled in the war in Vietnam, there was no obvious rationale for the Soviets to ease pressure on the United States. This was a fact that Nixon recognized, and as such reconciliation with China became the method to exercise pressure on the Soviets and bring Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev to the negotiating table.

The story begins not in Washington, but on the Soviet-Chinese border in 1969. In March 1969, Chinese forces of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA—not to be confused with the group of the same name in the Palestinian Territories) attacked Soviet border guards on Zhenbao Island, instigating a series of clashes between the two sides throughout spring and fall 1969. The significance of these clashes is often understated, if mentioned at all, in the story of rapprochement between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. On December 10, 1969, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger “burst into [the office of President Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman] in a great state of excitement to report that we had just received word that the Chinese in Warsaw had come to our embassy indicating that they wanted to meet with us, and, more significantly, that they wanted to use the
front door
,” Haldeman recorded in a journal he kept at the time (italics from the original text).
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The importance of Chinese willingness to be openly seen in discussions with the United States was a momentous break from prior practice, in which all discussions between the two countries had occurred in secret. According to Haldeman, Kissinger then went on to inform him that in light of the previous border clashes Kissinger felt that the rift between the Soviets and Chinese was “very serious,” and that “[Kissinger] expected that there was a very strong probability that the Russians would attack China by April 15th.”
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Kissinger felt confident in his assertion that a Soviet assault was imminent against the Chinese as a result of US aerial reconnaissance photographs that showed the Soviets had moved “nuclear-armed” divisions within two miles of the Chinese border. Specifically, these photographs showed that hundreds of Soviet nuclear warheads had been stacked in piles, and eighteen thousand tents had been erected by the Soviets “overnight in nine feet of snow.”
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According to Haldeman, over the course of 1969 there had been a series of overtures from the Soviets attempting to orchestrate a “surgical strike” (inasmuch as a strike utilizing nuclear weapons could be called “surgical”) against the PLA’s nuclear capacity. President Nixon, conscious of the extraordinary death toll such a strike would involve, turned the Soviets down. Incredibly, the Soviets were not dissuaded by their rejection by the United States and made it known to President Nixon that the Soviets intended to go it alone.
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While it was not widely known during the campaign, there were clear indications that President Nixon had concluded the time had come to open relations with so-called “Red China.” In a Foreign Affairs article from October 1967 titled, “Asia After Viet Nam,” Nixon wrote, “Any American policy toward Asia must come urgently to grips with the reality of China . . . we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors.”
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The border crisis between the Chinese and Soviets created an opportunity to open the door to cooperation between the United States and China while simultaneously weakening the Soviets enough to help keep them at the table. In this way, the response to the Sino-Soviet crisis of 1969–1970 should be viewed as the beginning of “triangularization.”

After receiving word from the Soviets that they were planning on moving with or without US support, Nixon and Kissinger arrived at the plan that would culminate in the December 10 meeting in which Kissinger informed Haldeman that the Chinese wanted to talk. Kissinger contacted the US ambassador to Poland (earlier secret talks had been held between the two sides in Warsaw), Walter Stoessel, and instructed him to find the highest-ranking Chinese envoy to Poland he could at a social function and inform him that the United States was looking to resume talks.
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The initial approach went farcically, with the Chargè d’Affaires at the Chinese embassy, whom Stoessel attempted to engage in conversation during a reception hosted by the Yugoslav delegation, turning and walking out of the room. Stoessel was forced to run after him to deliver his message—Chinese Premier Chou En-lai would later make light of this in a meeting with Kissinger in China, saying, “If you want our diplomats to have heart attacks, approach them at parties and propose serious talks.”
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The Soviets received the message. Several days after reports of impending talks between the United States and China began to surface in diplomatic and intelligence circles, the Soviets withdrew their nuclear forces from the border with China.
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A global catastrophe had been avoided, and in January 1970 the ambassador met with Chinese representatives in Warsaw.
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During this meeting the US ambassador was instructed to inform the Chinese that President Nixon would be interested in sending a representative to Beijing, or receive one in Washington, for further discussions. This proposal was neither agreed to, nor rejected by the Chinese—in this case, silence was golden.

From the conclusion of that first meeting, events began to unfold quickly. Nixon began deliberately slipping remarks into his discussions with those heads of state, specifically Mr. Charles deGaulle in France, Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania, and Yahya Khan of Pakistan. This was a deliberate strategy, intended to produce a sense that there was “a new attitude in Washington,” a message that would make its way back to Beijing.
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