Presidency 1969-1974


Policies


Once in office, he proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish a strategy of turning over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese. In July 1969 he visited South Vietnam, and met with President Nguyen Van Thieu and with U.S. military commanders. American involvement in the war declined steadily until all American troops were gone in 1973. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, fighting was left to the South Vietnamese army, which was well supplied with modern arms, but whose fighting capability was in question due to inadequate funding, low morale, and corruption. The lack of funding was primarily due to large funding cutbacks by the US Congress.

Nixon ordered secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia in March, 1969 (code-named Menu) to destroy what were believed to be the headquarters and large numbers of soldiers of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam.

In ordering the bombings, Nixon realized he would be extending an unpopular war as well as breaching Cambodia's "official" (but false) neutrality. During deliberations over Nixon's impeachment, his unorthodox use of executive powers over the ordering of these bombings was considered as an article of impeachment, but the charge was dropped as not a violation of Constitutional powers.

On July 20, 1969, Nixon addressed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their historic moonwalk, live via radio. Nixon also made the world's longest distance phone call to Neil Armstrong on the moon. On January 5, 1972, Nixon approved the development of the Space Shuttle program, a decision that profoundly influenced U.S. efforts to explore and develop space for several decades thereafter.
Relations between the Western and Eastern power blocs changed dramatically in the early 70s. In 1960, the People's Republic of China ended the alliance with its biggest ally, the Soviet Union, in the Sino-Soviet Split. As tensions between the two communist nations reached its peak in 1969 and 1970, Nixon decided to use their conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War. In what later would be known as the "China Card", Nixon deliberately improved relations with China in order to blackmail the Soviet Union. In 1971 a move was made to improve relationships when China invited an American table tennis team to China; hence the term "Ping Pong Diplomacy". The US’s response was to support China’s entry into the U.N., something it had always vetoed. In October 1971, China entered the U.N. In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit "Red" China though the USA kept a massive naval fleet off of Taiwan. Fearing the possibility of a Sino-American alliance, the Soviet Union yielded to Nixon immediately. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were finally concluded the same year.

Nixon was also very vocal in supporting General Yahya Khan of Pakistan despite escalating violence in East Pakistan. Subsequently declassified documents reveal the extent of support offered by Nixon to the dictator notwithstanding the widespread human rights violations. [2] He was also vocal in abusing Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi as an "old witch" in private conversations with Henry Kissinger, who is also recorded as making derogatory comments against Indians.

Nixon supported the wave of military "golpes de Estado" in South America. Through Henry Kissinger, he gave at least an implicit help to Augusto Pinochet's coup, in 1973, and then helped set up operation Condor (as evidenced by CIA documents released in 2000, following Pinochet's arrest in 1998). A US-intelligence base in Panama Canal coordinated the acts of the various Latino secret services (DINA, DISIP, etc.)

He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 2, 1970.

In 1972 Nixon was re-elected in one of the biggest landslide election victories in U.S. political history, defeating George McGovern and garnering over 60% of the popular vote. He carried 49 of the 50 states, losing only in Massachusetts.

On January 2, 1974, Nixon signed a bill that lowered the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH (90 km/h) in order to conserve gasoline during the 1973 energy crisis. This law remained in effect until 1995.

On April 3, 1974, Nixon announced he would pay $432,787.13 in back taxes plus interest after a Congressional committee reported that he had inadvertently underpaid his 1969 and 1972 taxes.

In light of the near certainty of both his impeachment (due to the Watergate scandal) by the House of Representatives and his conviction by the Senate, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.

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