Nixon and the Second Ba’thist Regime: January 1969–July 1972

Abstract

When Richard M. Nixon came to office in January 1969, he vowed to radically transform the way the United States conducted its foreign relations. To achieve this, Nixon found an intellectual soul mate in Henry Kissinger, a Harvard-educated professor of history and international relations, whom he named as his national security adviser. While Nixon and Kissinger had very different personalities, they shared the same basic assumptions about the conduction of foreign policy. A ruthless and cunning career politician, Nixon had always been willing to use any means available to achieve his objectives, characteristics that would eventually lead to his own demise. Nixon was a reclusive i ntel le c t , who d id not l i ke people, a nd w a s suspic iou s of a l l t hose w ho s u r rou nded him. However, despite his personal shortcomings, Nixon had a highly sophisticated understanding of international affairs. He considered himself a realist and made decisions on the basis of a cold calculation of how to maximize America’s national interests, even if this was at the expense of friends or allies. Kissinger, on the other hand, could not have been more different. Born in Germany to a Jewish family in 1923, Kissinger was a highly intellectual, gregarious socialite, who basked in the public limelight. However, he was also a staunch realist, who approached the foreign policy in a brutal, Machiavellian way, whereby practical and material considerations always trumped ideological notions, morals, or ethical premises.1 Privately, these two disliked each other. Nixon once commented, “I don’t trust Henry [Kissinger], but I can use him.” Likewise, Kissinger called Nixon an “egomaniac” who was “obsessed [with] the fear that he was not receiving adequate credit” for foreign policy decisions.2 These differences, however, did not prevent them from developing a successful working relationship, which helped guide the United States to a series of major foreign policy triumphs. This was because neither Nixon nor Kissinger would allow anything to stand in their way in achieving their objectives.