Nixon Administration Research Articles

The Origins of a Fiscal Outlier: The Abandonment of a Federal VAT in the Nixon Presidency

Abstract Richard Nixon was the first president who examined the possibility of introducing a value-added tax (VAT) at the federal level in the late twentieth century. By 1970, his administration had considered recommending it alongside other domestic programs to overcome the criticism against the VAT’s regressivity, potential conflict in the federal–state tax authority, and the fragmented decision-making authority between the executive and legislative branches of the government. However, in 1971, the Nixon administration shifted their policy priority toward gaining the middle-class political support by linking local property tax relief to a federal VAT. Although they combined the two measures with a rebate to obtain consent to and confidence in them from the “opponents” among the “internalists” of policymaking and societal actors, their attempt failed to accomplish it. As a result, Nixon abandoned the federal VAT. This abandonment was a missed opportunity to introduce a federal VAT, leading the United States to become a fiscal outlier among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries: it has not yet implemented a national/federal VAT. Furthermore, this outcome marked the origin of certain historical characteristics of the American fiscal state: the use of tax expenditures, “fend-for-yourself federalism,” weak extractive capacity, and fiscal inflexibility.

When conspiracy theorists win

ABSTRACT ‘Generalists’ hold that conspiracy theories, as a class, have epistemic defects. Well confirmed theories that invoke conspiracies, such as the theory that the Nixon administration conspired to orchestrate the break in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, on 17 June 1972, – the ‘Watergate theory’ – raise a problem for generalists as it’s hard to understand how such theories can have epistemic defects. The Watergate theory is often not considered a mere conspiracy theory, because it enjoys ‘official theory’ status and in folk usage that means it is not a conspiracy theory. However, most people concede that the Watergate theory was a conspiracy theory before obtaining official status. So, appealing to folk usage does not make the problem go away. Recently however, several generalist scholars including, Cassam, Mandik, Thalman and Butter, have argued that theories invoking conspiracies that enjoy official status were never conspiracy theories. I’ll consider their reasoning and show where they go wrong. I’ll work with the examples of the Watergate theory and the ‘false flag’ theory of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, which has it that this massacre of over 100 people was led by white Utahn Mormons disguised as Native Americans.

Unraveling the Tet Offensive: Impact on American Journalism, Politics, and Nixon's Era

This essay delves into the Tet Offensive's far-reaching impact on American journalism, political landscapes during the Vietnam War, and its implications for subsequent eras, primarily examining its direct influence on Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency and Nixons era. Through a comprehensive analysis, this study scrutinizes how the Tet Offensive reshaped journalistic methodologies, altered public perception of distant conflicts, and indirectly influenced political dynamics during the Nixon era. Revealing the Tet Offensive's role in reshaping journalistic practices and blurring realities through selective media portrayal, the analysis underscores its significant contribution to political shifts in the Vietnam War era. While its direct impact on the Nixon era was limited, the aftermath resonated, highlighting enduring media influence on societal narratives. Ultimately, this exploration emphasizes the Tet Offensive's enduring legacy despite its indirect influence on subsequent political epochs, highlighting the sustained power of media in shaping historical narratives.

Controle democrático e segurança Nacional Serviços de inteligência nos Estados Unidos (1972-1980)

Abstract This article delves into the vicissitudes of democratic control of government intelligence activities in the United States between 1972 and 1980. The previous phase of the Cold War (1947-1971), characterized by the intense systemic polarization between the United States and the Soviet Union, coupled with the expansion of state capacity and internal social conflicts within the US, contributed to the establishment of complex national systems of intelligence organizations and activities in both countries. In the 1970s, the strategic stabilization of US-USSR relations (détente) depended, in part, on the technological advancements in intelligence gathering from communications, signals, and imagery via satellites. Police and military surveillance of internal dissidents and the growing political crisis towards the end of the Nixon administration created the conditions for an unprecedented and consistent attempt to exert democratic external control over intelligence operations by the Legislative and Judiciary branches. The resurgence of the Cold War from 1980 onwards and the election of Reagan marked the beginning of a partial reversal of the controls. In less than a decade, a highly institutionalized democracy such as the US made great efforts and experienced difficulties regulating and controlling intelligence activities.

Cautious or Fearless: A Comparative Analysis of the Policies of the Nixon and Trump Administrations Regarding the Inclusion of the South China Sea Region in the Scope of the Mutual Defense Treaty Between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of America

Since the Philippines began to have disputes regarding the South China Seas territorial sovereignty with China in the end of 1960s, it has engaged in a long-term game with its greater ally of whether the Mutual Defense Treaty between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of America applies to the region. The Nixon administration was regarded as the basic positioning period of the US policy on the US-Philippines alliance during the Cold War, holding a vague attitude. However, during the Trump era, Washington clearly offered the Philippines security guarantees for this region, indicating a significant policy-making shift. This article selects the Nixon and Trump administrations as cases, utilizing the theoretical framework of the entrapment dilemma in alliance management theory which aims to investigate into the reasons why the two administrations held extremely different attitudes towards whether to include the South China Sea region in the scope of the MDT and analyze the cost-benefit considerations of Washington in managing the Asia-Pacific military alliance. The conclusion is that in the Nixon era, the US tended to avoid being entrapped because it was not worth the deterioration in relations with China and other informal allied countries only to maintain its alliance with the Philippines. However, during the Trump administration, to enhance its military presence in this region, maintain and strengthen a series of Asia-pacific military alliances, the US is willing to bear the risk of entrapment.

Policy Escalation: Richard Nixon, Welfare Reform, and the Development of a Comprehensive Approach to Health Insurance

AbstractI argue that health insurance emerged as an important aspect of Nixon’s domestic policy agenda as a result of “policy escalation.” By policy escalation, I mean a cascading line of reasoning that causes policy makers focused on one apparently discrete issue to formulate approaches for dealing with other interconnecting policy areas. Policy escalation serves as an internal agenda-setting mechanism: as policy makers contemplate policy changes, they may attempt to imagine the ways in which change will affect the rationale, fiscal position, and execution of programs in other policy areas. In the case of health insurance, the Nixon administration’s proposal for replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a guaranteed minimum income forced policy makers to consider how the new program would interact with the existing Medicaid program. Consideration of this question ultimately led them to formulate an approach to overhauling the nation’s entire health insurance system.

Averting Doomsday: Arms Control During the Nixon Presidency by Patrick J. Garrity and Erin R. Mahan

The story of arms control's heyday has been told numerous times before. Indeed, there is no shortage of 1960s–70s arms control lore to be found throughout innumerable memoires and journalistic accounts. Its retelling in Averting Doomsday, by Patrick J. Garrity and Erin R. Mahan, takes a unique approach, looking exclusively at the vast array of arms control accomplishments that occurred under Nixon's watch—what Kenneth Waltz might have called a “first image” account, among the three possible images of man, the state, and war. The book also serves as a kind of intellectual history of Nixon and his ideas and beliefs about weapons of mass destruction, evolving those beliefs as he was confronted with political exigencies they presented. In this account, Nixon plays the antihero, tacitly tasked with averting doomsday, fears of which rear their head on his watch during his presidency—this time including biological and chemical weapons, in addition to nuclear. The rub is this: while more arms control agreements were inked during Nixon's presidency than any other U.S. president, the man himself was unequivocally not pro-arms control. The authors look at arms control through the lens of Nixon's presidency, with a focus on his political ambitions. Culling from a wide array of primary sources, including Nixon's White House recordings and recently declassified primary source documents, the authors craft an image of a deeply political being, whose ambitions collided with a bevy of weapons of mass destruction concerns during his presidency. While John Newhouse famously told the tale of SALT I journalistically in his book Cold Dawn, in which he faithfully chronicled the trials and tribulations of the negotiation process in painstaking detail, Garrity and Mahan leave that aside and tell the story of SALT I and its accompanying Antiballistic Missile Treaty through the lens of Nixon's yearning for political success, his political viability, and his electability. Similarly, pertinent personalities like Nixon's national security advisor Henry Kissinger are described as a function of their proximity to and favor with the president. The timing of the publication of Averting Doomsday is fortuitous; it comes at a moment when the world could use a reminder of not only the prolonged and arduous efforts that went into the crafting of multiple arms control treaties but also the value of their complementarity. The chapter in the book that speaks to design and redesign of SALT II is particularly illuminating in this regard. SALT II had multiple functions: it was meant to shore up gaps that remained upon SALT I's inking, and create greater symmetry in limitations for the United States and Soviet Union. In addition, SALT II negotiations also addressed the idea of making SALT I a permanent agreement in order to solidify the progress the United States and Soviet Union had made in creating some semblance of stability and thwarting the nuclear arms race. Today, we tend to consider each agreement in isolation when discussing its merits and deficiencies, but the origins of nuclear arms control were designed and effectuated in a systemic approach. While the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty limited the number of nuclear weapons states, among other aims, the Nuclear Suppliers Group and IAEA Trigger List were then created to close proliferation gaps from nuclear materials, for example, that could contribute to proliferation and nuclear breakout. Similarly, SALT I was meant to be the beginning of a process of restraint. Whether we will ever get to the end goal of stability at low numbers now remains to be seen. Notably, it was as difficult during Nixon's presidency to negotiate away a missile-related arms race as it appears today.

The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate by James H. Barron, and: Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών [A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. by Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς)

Reviewed by: The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate by James H. Barron, and: Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών [A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. by Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς) Konstantina E. Botsiou (bio) James H. Barron, The Greek Connection: The Life of Elias Demetracopoulos and the Untold Story of Watergate. New York: Melville House. 2020. Pp. xiii + 482. 21 illustrations. Hardcover $31.67. Alexis Papahelas (Αλέξης Παπαχελάς), Ένα σκοτεινό δωμάτιο, 1967–1974: Ο Ιωαννίδης και η παγίδα της Κύπρου—Τα πετρέλαια στο Αιγαίο—Ο ρόλος των Αμερικανών[A dark room, 1967–1974: Ioannidis and the Cyprus trap—Aegean oil—The role of the Americans]. Athens: Metechmio, 2021. Pp. 630. Cloth €18.90. Due to a scarcity of archival sources and the aversion of historians, the foreign and defense policies of the seven-year Greek military dictatorship (1967–1974) have not been systematically researched. Although more widely explored than most of the dictatorship’s foreign connections, Greek-American relations during this period are no exception to the rule. Ideologically driven interpretations or “what ifs” hardly substitute for structured analyses of alliances, animosities, and political decisions. As a matter of fact, they strengthen the superficial perception of the junta as a tragic parenthesis in the history of postwar Greece. This tendency is changing, however, and two recent publications are especially noteworthy. James H. Barron and Alexis Papahelas both present detailed accounts of the dictators’ worldviews and actions. They also offer thorough overviews of the Greek political ecosystem in the 1950s and 1960s, where the future dictators thrived. Various continuities and discontinuities with the earlier period place the dictatorship in a historical context driven by anticommunism—and its local version, εθνικοφροσύνη (ethnikofrosyni)—which the colonels took up as their mission when Greek politicians loosened their grip in the era of international détente. Committed to the zeitgeist of bipolarity, the colonels baptized personal competitors as enemies of the state. Barron’s story of Elias Demetracopoulos’s multiple persecutions by Greek and American officials before and during the dictatorship captivates the reader. Demetracopoulos suffered the various types of character assassination that an [End Page 137] assertive journalist posing inconvenient questions would undergo. A prominent example of his research concerned the stationing of nuclear missiles on Greek soil as a result of the “Sputnik effect.” Demetracopoulos maintained many doubts about the Greek government’s denial of any participation in the US program of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which had involved Italy and Turkey before the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. He believed that Greek participation in the ICBM program would be vital for alleviating the West’s feeling of technological inferiority after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, which suggested that the American soil became vulnerable to a potential Soviet attack (105–110). The refusal to accept the Greek government’s denials severely damaged Demetracopoulos’s relations with the Greek premier Konstantinos Karamanlis (1955–1963). Similar difficulties awaited Demetracopoulos in the US. His close ties with top American public figures were frequently undermined by unforgiving cold warriors who saw in Demetracopoulos a threat to the dominant narrative of law and order. These contradictions underscore the difference that personality can make in any given historical situation. Barron paints a comprehensive portrait of Demetracopoulos, a devoted journalist who earned exceptional resistance credentials as a teenager during the Axis occupation. He later spent his adult life in the twilight zone between censure and shelter by Greek and American agencies and individuals who ranged from committed friends and acquaintances to various top politicians such as Konstantinos Karamanlis, George Papandreou, and Ted Kennedy. In the 1950s, Demetracopoulos had built a reputation as a trustworthy liaison between the Greek media and the American community in Greece. Shortly after the establishment of the military dictatorship he sought refuge in the US via Denmark, acting out of a justified fear that assassination attempts would no longer be limited to his character. Barron’s book stresses for American audiences the Greek dimension of the Watergate scandal. Fate reserved for Demetracopoulos a crucial part in the history of both the junta and the Nixon administration, since it was he who came to reveal the Nixon administration’s “Greek connection.” According to his reports at the...

Opening Up Arms Control Silos

Over the years, countless undergraduate students in survey courses and special subjects have been lectured about U.S. President Richard Nixon’s May 1972 visit to Moscow, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty’s (ABMT) signing, and the agreement that concluded the first round of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). Images of Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev putting pen to paper in the Kremlin’s grand St. Vladimir Hall will be familiar to hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of students who have studied U.S. and Soviet foreign policy, the Cold War, and the arms race. Yet, this outward appearance of amity and compromise between leaders with their metaphorical fingers on the metaphorical buttons of thousands of nuclear weapons belies the lengthy and, at times, vicious bureaucratic infighting that plagued the SALT and ABMT negotiations. It is this very bureaucratic complexity that the late Patrick J. Garrity (who sadly passed away on May 10, 2021) and Erin R. Mahan seek to address in Averting Doomsday: Arms Control During the Nixon Presidency. Not only do they concern themselves with personal and institutional factors that influenced Nixon’s arms control agenda policies, but they also make a welcome effort to encompass the entirety of arms control. This ambitious aim brings together an assessment not just of strategic nuclear issues, but also of nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear testing, chemical weapons control, and biological weapons control. These areas are frequently left in silos—pun apologetically intended—and treated as distinct issues. Garrity and Mahan are therefore to be praised for such a comprehensive approach.

Martin Halliwell. American Health Crisis: One Hundred Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics.

In 1962, historian Charles Rosenberg published his groundbreaking book The Cholera Years, a social history of the disease that plagued New York City throughout the nineteenth century. By examining outbreaks in 1832, 1849, and 1866, Rosenberg exposes a cycle of apathy, fear, and infighting among city officials, businessmen, and physicians. The politics of public health, Rosenberg concludes, often impeded effective responses to the epidemics. In American Health Crisis: 100 Years of Panic, Planning, and Politics, historian Martin Halliwell comes to a similar conclusion about the federal government’s responses to public health crises throughout the twentieth century (and beyond). Using eighteen case studies of natural and human-made disasters in the United States, Halliwell traces a frustratingly familiar pattern of missteps and political inertia. The structure of American Health Crisis is noteworthy. By focusing on six themes—disaster, poverty, pollution, virus, care, and drugs—Halliwell makes visible the scope and consequences of the perennial issues that affect public health efforts during times of crisis. Under the theme of “virus” for example, he tracks federal responses to the 1918 flu, polio, and HIV/AIDS epidemics to show how the lack of early and effective health communication has played a substantial role in exacerbating epidemics in the United States. Similarly, in chapter 6, Halliwell explores three federal anti-drug campaigns—the Nixon administration’s promotion of methadone to combat heroin addiction, Congressional responses to the “valium crisis” of the late 1970s, and the current opioid epidemic—to demonstrate how government responses to addiction often conflate medical treatment with punitive action, blurring the line between patient and criminal.

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children, 1965-1970: Emotional disturbance, race and paths not taken in child psychiatry.

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children (JCMHC) was a sprawling, multidisciplinary project that took shape in the years immediately after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Participants included child psychiatrists, educators, psychologists, social workers, philanthropists and other laypeople and professionals interested in the plight of children. While the original inspiration for the JCMHC was to address the potential for violence from disturbed children and adolescents, its findings and recommendations were an indictment of American society itself in which poor children went hungry, minority children were oppressed and there were not sufficient resources dedicated to the mental health of the nation's population of young people. The task forces and committees of the JCMHC spent significantly more time addressing prevention and mental health rather than mental illness. Two years into the work of the JCMHC, the leadership formed a committee to specifically examine issues related to race. The final report, published in popular book form as Crisis in Child Mental Health, arrived after the unraveling of the liberal consensus that had fueled President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. Most of the proposed solutions for government intervention were ignored by the Nixon administration. The focus on mental health and the willingness to take a critical look at the detrimental effects of racism had represented child psychiatry at that time. In the decades that followed, however, child psychiatrists turned away from issues about prevention, race and environment and instead focused on the problems of mental illness in individual children.

The Greek Military Dictatorship: Revisiting a Troubled Past, 1967–1974 by Othon Anastasakis and Katerina Lagos, eds.

<i>The Greek Military Dictatorship: Revisiting a Troubled Past, 1967–1974</i> by Othon Anastasakis and Katerina Lagos, eds.

U.S. Cold War Policy and the Italian Far-Right: The Nixon Administration, Republican Party Operatives, and the Borghese Coup Plot of 1970

Abstract The Nixon administration's attempt to promote a military coup in Chile after the election of a far-left president in September 1970 is a well-documented example of U.S. officials’ willingness do whatever was needed to curtail Soviet influence in the Third World. Drawing on declassified White House documents and records of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, this article examines the parallel but largely unknown story of U.S. dealings with right-wing extremists in one of the founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Italy, at around that same time. In December 1970, far-right activists in Italy staged an abortive coup that was intended to prevent further gains by Italy's leftist parties. The article draws on new and widely forgotten sources to examine the background and involvement of two private U.S. operatives for the Republican Party who were closely aligned with senior coup plotters in Italy. Their involvement with Italian neo-fascists should raise concerns about the dangers of private meddling in foreign policy and the potential for private actors to create misperceptions about critical U.S. government policies.

Thomas A. Schwartz. Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography.

Ninety-nine years of age and more than forty years into his retirement from government, Henry Kissinger remains one of the most controversial figures in American (and international) society. His jowly face is instantly recognizable, his gravelly voice easily identified, and his name stirs immediate responses of awe or revulsion. Some remember Kissinger as a figure who increased American power and prestige in the world; others condemn him as a defender of war, dictatorship, and violent abuses of human rights, particularly in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and southern Africa. Historians have long debated Kissinger’s record, and the continual release of new materials on his career, including Kissinger’s personal papers, will keep this debate going well into the future. A distinguished diplomatic historian, Thomas Schwartz has devoted many years of study to Kissinger’s career and the larger context around it. His deeply researched book, Henry Kissinger and American Power, is a detailed study of how Kissinger came to dominate American policymaking in the 1970s. A refugee, veteran, academic, and public intellectual before he entered the Nixon White House, Kissinger quickly placed himself at the center of most major US foreign policy decisions, often replacing the president, as Schwartz shows, during the months when Richard Nixon faced the most intensive Watergate investigations. At times Kissinger was the “president for foreign policy,” and Schwartz illustrates that he contemplated taking over the full job, if the constitutional limit on foreign-born citizens could be changed.

Playing Politics with Natural Disaster: Hurricane Agnes, the 1972 Election, and the Origins of FEMA

Playing Politics with Natural Disaster: Hurricane Agnes, the 1972 Election, and the Origins of FEMA

“Negotiations with the USSR May Acquire a Broader Scope than We Can Foresee at Present”. Inclusion of Scientific and Technological Cooperation in the Agenda of the American-Soviet Detente, 1968—1972

The interaction of the USA and the USSR in the field of scientific research and technological exchanges was an important meaningful aspect in the history of their relations in the 1970s. The article discusses the main milestones of the superpowers’ rapprochement at the stage of forming the agenda of the American-Soviet detente. Based on the study of American and Russian documents, including the funds of the Russian State Archive of Modern History and the Russian State Archive of Economics, the goals and motives of the Nixon administration in the process of constructing the American-Soviet dialogue and the place of scientific and technological issues in this process are clarified. The differences in the approaches of Washington and Moscow to establishing a constructive dialogue are studied. There are presented materials indicating the expansion of contacts between representatives of American big business involved in the fields of high-tech and innovative production with the State Committee for Science and Technology under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, interested ministries, institutes of the Academy of Sciences, individual scientific laboratories and enterprises. Notice is given to the role of the national academies of sciences in bringing bilateral relations to a normal track. The Moscow Summit of 1972 is regarded as one of the most important events of the American-Soviet detente, which created a real basis for the formation of long-term intellectual and infrastructural ties in the world entering the era of globalization. It is concluded that in the course of negotiations American diplomacy failed to implement its plan to reach bilateral agreements based on the use of “linking” tactics, which assumed that the extension of the most-favored-nation regime in trade and access to high technologies to the USSR were conditioned by political concessions. It is noted that at all stages of the negotiations Moscow consistently defended its technological sovereignty guided by the principles of equality and equal benefits. The data of American analytical services are presented indicating the high concern of US scientists in developing cooperation with representatives of Soviet science.

Scars of War: The Politics of Paternity and Responsibility for the Amerasians of Vietnam by Sabrina Thomas

<i>Scars of War: The Politics of Paternity and Responsibility for the Amerasians of Vietnam</i> by Sabrina Thomas

The Ends of Modernization: Nicaragua and the United States in the Cold War Era by David Johnson Lee

<i>The Ends of Modernization: Nicaragua and the United States in the Cold War Era</i> by David Johnson Lee

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

A Moment in the History of Realpolitik Diplomacy in the Light of the 1972 Shanghai Communique

2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China and the signing of the Shanghai Communiqué, in which China and the US were able to initiate diplomacy and consequently soften the precarious global relationship at the time, known as the "Sino-US rapprochement" in history. Recently, we have all witnessed the intensity a Taiwan visit by the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could bring. Thus, it's essential to reflect on history for modern politics. Many people, even historians, scarcely know much about the Shanghai Communiqué or disregard its significance The fact that the Shanghai Communiqué exists as literal evidence of the Sino-US rapprochement discloses the realism of the senior leadership from both countries behind the façade of ideology. This paper will examine whether the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972 was a moment of realpolitik diplomacy in history or not. Looking at the history of the Cold War period from a long-term perspective, this paper claims that China has taken on long-term underlying realpolitik standpoints on various issues long before the culmination of this moment. This paper has comprehensively analyzed the domestic and international problems impacting Mao's and Nixon's administrations and the shifting geopolitical relations that altered China and the US's diplomacy in a similar direction to elucidate this matter further. At the same time, this paper also provides historical reflections on the current Sino-American relations and power transfer process.