The Nixon Effect. Douglas E. Schoen
guide as to what to do in each and every crisis,” Robert D. Kaplan wrote. “Realism is a way of thinking, not a set of instructions as to what to think. It doesn’t prevent you from making mistakes. This makes realism more an art than a science.”39
Thus, Nixon was predominantly realist in his understanding that we had to extricate ourselves from Vietnam, but not in a way that would undermine our credibility with our allies. He was realist, though daringly so, in his embrace of détente and arms control with the Russians, and in the opening to China, which he used as a buffer to facilitate deals with the Russians. Kissinger explained how the approach—especially the “triangulation” of America’s relationship with the Communist world—represented an elevation of pragmatism over ideology in US foreign policy:
Our objective was to purge our foreign policy of all sentimentality. There was no reason for us to confine our contacts with major Communist countries to the Soviet Union. We moved toward China not to expiate liberal guilt over our China policy of the late 1940s but to shape a global equilibrium. It was not to collude against the Soviet Union but to give us a balancing position to use for constructive ends—to give each Communist power a stake in better relations with us.40
Yet if Nixon’s brand of realism sounds like a steady-as-she-goes approach, that is to misread, again, him as having an allegiance to any one prevailing brand of action. Consider the form his realism took in the fall of 1973, when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights, precipitating the Yom Kippur War. Israeli tanks were outnumbered nearly ten to one by those of Syria, and near the Suez Canal, a few hundred Israeli infantry faced off against an eighty thousand-strong Egyptian army.
The Israelis faced a coalition of enemies: Nine Arab nations backed the Syrian and Egyptian aggression. So did Moscow, the chief arms supplier of the Arab world. Nixon did not react like the caricature of a realist president, unconcerned about anything but some narrow construal of the national interest. He recognized instantly that Israel faced a mortal threat—and, moreover, that if Arab victory was achieved, it would be achieved through Soviet arms. He moved decisively to protect Israel, authorizing a massive airlift of arms and munitions, and he made certain that his staff understood that it was the highest priority.
“You get the stuff to Israel,” he told Kissinger. “Now.”41
The massive American resupply effort, which resembled a World War II operation in scale, slowly turned the tide in Tel Aviv’s favor. As the Arab armies lost momentum and began to fall back, Leonid Brezhnev appealed to Nixon for a ceasefire. Nixon agreed, and a ceasefire was signed on October 24, but then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat urged the Americans and Soviets to enforce the ceasefire with troops from both countries. When Nixon refused, Brezhnev threatened to send Russian troops unilaterally.
Nixon did not flinch. He ordered that the US military be placed on the highest level of nuclear alert, and he redeployed aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean and put Air Force strike units on standby. A regional desert war had now devolved into a situation where the world seemed poised for a confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers.
But Brezhnev backed down, and the crisis passed. Israel prevailed in the Yom Kippur War, thanks to Nixon. And to this day, Nixon, though notorious around the world to many people for his misdeeds during Watergate, remains popular in Israel. Israeli prime minister Golda Meir called him “My President.”42
As Stephen Ambrose summarized:
Those were momentous events in world history. Had Nixon not acted so decisively . . . [t]he Arabs probably would have recovered at least some of the territory they had lost in 1967, perhaps all of it. They might have even destroyed Israel. But whatever the might-have-beens, there is no doubt that Nixon . . . made it possible for Israel to win, at some risk to his own reputation and at great risk to the American economy.43
Indeed, Arab members of OPEC slapped an embargo on the United States in retaliation for its support of Israel, hurting the US economy and making Americans aware of their dangerous dependence on foreign oil for the first time. Yet Nixon stood firm, even as the Watergate crisis was draining his political support at home.
What Nixon’s bold actions on behalf of Israel showed was that he was a statesman who could adapt to different situations. It was not a matter of being a pure Cold Warrior, which he wasn’t, or a dyed-in-the-wool realist, which he wasn’t entirely, either. It was about bringing the entire complex of strategic and political analysis to bear on geopolitical questions, with the American national interest as the guiding principle.
Since Nixon, the United States has had few successful foreign policy presidents, and the country has paid the price for it. Jimmy Carter was run aground by naïveté, George W. Bush by ideology, and Barack Obama, in a sense, by both: the naïveté was his own, and the ideology, in his case, was a determined rejection of American preeminence as a lead actor in world affairs. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton did enjoy some successes in foreign policy; neither possessed Nixon’s overarching strategic vision but both were able to forge successful policies in trouble spots around the world. As for Ronald Reagan, he is the one post-1974 president whose accomplishments bear any comparison with Nixon’s. But, as I noted previously, his achievements should not be divorced from their Nixonian context, nor should it be forgotten that Reagan became a statesman only when he began doing what Nixon had done in 1972—putting ideology aside and reaching out to the enemy, not in a self-destructive way but as a means of determining whether a genuine path toward peace could be found.
And yet, if Nixon often approached foreign policy from a position beyond ideology, he was never unaware of the ideological impact of his policies, especially as they translated to American domestic politics. Having summarized Nixon’s domestic and foreign policy record, I’ll now take an extended look, in the next section of this book, at how Nixon’s domestic and foreign policies reshaped the two major political parties—starting with the Republicans.
Part One: The Southern Strategy and the Silent Majority
Out there the juke boxes don’t play “New World Coming”; they play “Welfare Cadillac.” In the heartland, it’s all Agnew put to music.
—KEVIN PHILLIPS1
It is time for America’s silent majority to stand up for its rights.
—VICE PRESIDENT SPIRO AGNEW2
With one rhetorical stroke, Nixon identified a new populist category that redefined how political groups strive for influence.
—MATTHEW D. LASSITER, “WHO SPEAKS FOR THE SILENT MAJORITY?”3
The Nixon revolution in the Republican Party started out with an insight about weakening Democratic appeal within a key demographic: white men. As he prepared for another presidential run in 1968, Nixon began formulating a strategy that could peel off a large portion of whites—especially working-class whites and Southerners—from the Democrats. Before 1968, the idea that blue-collar workers might come out for the GOP was considered fanciful. But what Nixon and his team would then identify was a fault line, and a strategy to exploit