On CNN Christmas Day, Fareed Zakaria interview Henry Kissinger about the events leading to the visit of Richard Nixon to China in 1972.
According to Kissinger, Nixon felt there was no way that the largest country in the world could be ignored and that the schism opening between China and the Soviet Union should be probed and conceivably exploited.
Kissinger says that during early explorations they had no idea with whom they were communicating.
Nixon took incredible political risks should the secret negotiations become public or Kissinger’s earlier trip of exploration or Nixon’s subsequent visit go amiss.
Most think of Richard Nixon as being intensely political and self serving. Yet it is clear from Kissinger’s comments that politics did not intrude on Nixon’s passion for foreign policy and efforts to advance our nation’s security.
Nixon accepted that his overture to China would alienate the right wing of the Republican Party. (By today’s standards, they were “liberals.”)
History offers many ironies. Jack Kennedy is lionized and yet was complicit in and plotted assassinations of heads of state. Linden Johnson secretly taped conversations in the Oval Office. Nixon did some shabby things, in large part due to paranoid inclinations fueled in part by the pressures of the Viet-Nam War.
Some consider Nixon the worst American president. We don’t. Who we think was the worst American president would make another article for which presently we lack the courage.
The program, “Tough Decisions”, will be broadcast again on CNN at 11:00 PM Christmas Day.
