Richard Nixon is often regarded as one of the most corrupt presidents in US history due to his questionable decisions, and he is primarily remembered for the Watergate scandal where he tried to cover up his participation in the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Watergate. Nixon’s choices were always intended for a better future, but often the results ended badly. Despite this, it’s important to look beyond Nixon’s Watergate Scandal and observe his attempts to resolve past failures and create a better future.
During the era of containment, it’s heavily debated whether Nixon was involved in the instalment of Pinochet’s regime. The U.S.’s involvement in Chile during this time was covert, but if Nixon was indeed involved, his intervention was a complete failure because Pinochet oppressed all leftists, socialists, and political critics, resulting in the execution of 1,200 – 3,200 people, the internment of 80,000 people, and torture of tens of thousands. While Nixon might not have anticipated Pinochet to be a cruel dictator, his eagerness to control the spread of communism caused him to misjudge the situation and become negligent about the human rights abuses under Pinochet. Nixon’s choices were counterintuitive, since US containment aimed to prevent cruelty and abuse of power under communism, but all they did was replace it with a dictatorship that was equally as brutal.
Perhaps Nixon’s intention was to prevent the “domino effect” from occurring, as the US had just failed to prevent Cuba from falling into Communism and he didn’t want Chile to go down the same path. While Nixon’s intentions were good, since he wanted to remove Allende, his intervention resulted in the implementation of another dictator. In hindsight, Nixon’s mistake is more obvious, but if he knew that installing Pinochet would result in a cruel dictatorship, he likely wouldn’t have intervened.
Nixon also played a role to ease tensions between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union. In 1972, Nixon became the first person to visit mainland China which ended 25 years of no communication or diplomatic ties between the two countries and was an important moment that normalized relations between the US and PRC. Nixon also clearly had good intentions when he wanted to create a diplomatic coexistence with China and move away from the U.S. policy of containment. Nixon’s diplomatic approach continued to take effect as in 1978, both the United States and People’s Republic of China (PRC) agreed to recognize each other and establish a more positive relationship. This policy removed China as a threat against the US in the Cold War and mutually benefited both sides by cooling tensions, providing new economic opportunities, and shifting the existing balance of power in the Cold War. While today, both the US and China have shifted away from friendly relations, Nixon’s visit ensured peaceful coexistence at the time.
Nixon’s approach to international relations is unusual because we see him take aggressive interventionist action in Chile but try to create a peaceful relationship in China. Nixon possibly thought that if he were to get involved in China’s affairs, there would be more of a hostile relationship, while in Chile, he thought he would have more influence. This defies containment because on one hand he’s preventing the spread of communist beliefs but on the other he is trying to create peaceful coexistence with another communist country.
Another major region we can see Nixon’s approach to diplomatic relations is in Southeast Asia. Prior to Nixon’s presidency, the American people were doubtful of the validity of their involvement in the Vietnam War. Nixon decided to pull out troops from Vietnam in 1973 ending US involvement which resulted in the war officially ending in 1975. However, this was also controversial because many people felt America needed to finish the war that they started or felt that they should not have been involved in the first place. The pressure of public opinion was too great, which made it inevitable for Nixon to withdraw, now the only question was how to effectively do so. Richard Nixon did plan to ensure South Vietnam could survive on its own by “expand[ing], equip[ing], and train[ing] Vietnamese forces(…) at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops.” However, North Vietnam had become too strong for them to handle which resulted in the fall of Saigon. Nixon wanted to make sure that withdrawal from South Vietnam would still allow them to operate on their own. Even if Nixon chose to prevent the fall of South Vietnam, public opinion still would have been against him.
Despite the fact that Nixon made a number of very poor decisions, especially the unexpected Watergate Scandal, he also made a lot of progress in environmental, social, and foreign issues. He helped the environment in many different ways such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which ensured time and resources required to counteract further environmental damage that came from the previous era, and the Clean Air Act which encouraged growth for a strong American economy and industry in order to improve problems relating to clean air and water.
Nixon also resolved a number of social issues taking place in America such as signing the Title IX act which prevented discrimination based on sex for “any program or activelety receiving federal financial assistance” and ensured that desegregation would peacefully occur in schools.
During Nixon’s years in office, a mild inflation was rising due to the Vietnam War, Post-WWII economic boom, and the decline of manufacturing jobs. Nixon’s response was to devalue the dollar and establish wage and price freezes which resulted in growing unemployment rates, price increase, and wage stagnation—all leading to stagflation. The Nixon Shock initially seemed to be a success but ultimately led to the instability of the US dollar. The resulting stagflation lasted in the US for the rest of the 1970s, and people who look back on it believe it was a failure that told future leaders “what not to do.” Richard Nixon clearly made a number of mistakes throughout his presidency. No fact some of his mistakes crossed the threshold of illegal activity. Having said that, it can be argued that there have been numerous presidents who have crossed into illegal activity, but haven’t been caught. In addition it’s important to recognize Nixon’s number of accomplishments too. Perhaps Nixon’s time in office is too recent, and it may take more time to develop a proper perspective on where his legacy will sit in history.