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Nixon and Henry Kissinger

At least in modern times, no President and Secretary of State are more closely linked than Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Technically, Kissinger was Secretary of State only during the latter part of Nixon's time in office, but William P. Rogers, who held the office in Nixon's earlier years, when Kissinger was National Security Advisor, made little impact at the time and is largely forgotten now.

Indeed, though it has been nearly two decades since Kissinger had any public position, he remains by far the bestknown of recent American secretaries of state. Likewise, Nixon stands out, after two decades, as for good or ill the most "important" of recent American presidents. He had a greater and more enduring impact on America and the world than any of his successors, or indeed, any of his predecessors since Harry S Truman two decades earlier still; if John F. Kennedy looms large in legend, he does so precisely as legend, rather than for the actual events of his abbreviated time in office.

It is almost paradoxical that so dominant a president should be intimately linked to so dominant a secretary of state. In modern times, those presidents strongly interested in foreign affairs have tended to operate as their own secretaries of state, with the holder of that position reduced to managerial functions. No recent president was more internationally oriented than Nixon, yet though he limited his first Secretary of State, Rogers, to a functionary role, he presently placed Kissinger in that office, with a nearly viceregal sweep of responsibility. Moreover, Kissinger was not a latecomer to the Nixon Administration; from the beginning, as National Security Advisor, he exercised great influence on American foreign policy.

It is the argument of this discussion that the choice of Henry Kissinger as Nixon's chief foreign-policy advisor was uniquely sound one from a man who frequently showed poor judgment in his choice of the men he ...

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Nixon and Henry Kissinger. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:20, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1689976.html