President Nixons Foreign Policy Successes and Failures essays

President Nixon's Foreign Policy Successes and Failures essays Although President Richard Nixon is known more for the Watergate scandal and as the only US President to have resigned from office, he was responsible for introducing a number of bold and innovative foreign policy When Nixon took over the office of US President in 1969, the Vietnam War was the main issue in the country. During his election campaign, Nixon had promised to bring the American soldiers home. He started to implement a "Vietnamization" policy aimed at a gradual withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam while encouraging greater involvement of South Vietnam in the war. However, Nixon desired that the US should not be perceived as having lost the war and "peace should be achieved with honor." These contradictory aims led to his escalation of the War in April 1970 when the invasion of Cambodia was authorized, supposedly to pursue the North Vietnamese forces. By the time Nixon finally pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, thousands of additional Vietnamese and American soldiers had died. The US was also perceived to have lost the war disastrously and Nixon gained little by delaying the withdrawal. His handling of the Vietnam War can be considered Nixon was more successful in other foreign policy initiatives. By basing the US foreign policy on "realist" rather than "moral" principles, Nixon pursued a policy of dtente and developed more cordial relations with the Soviet Union. This resulted in signing of important anti-ballistic missile (ABM) and SALT treaties between the two super-powers and lowered the Cold War tensions. Nixon's greatest foreign policy success was the development of relations with Communist China. Until his historic visit to Mainland China in 1972, any dealings with the Communist Chinese regime were considered to be taboo in the United States; therefore Nixon's initiative ...