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Summarizing the history of the cold war
The influence the cold war had on foreign policy
Summarizing the history of the cold war
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The 'silent majority' was just a slogan Nixon used to justify his action. Nixon was elected because he promised to end the Vietnam War. In the 1968 campaign he claimed that he knew how to end the war, but he couldn't talk about it in fear of revealing plans to the enemy. It was called 'Nixon's Secret Plan'. He did get elected in the end though, but instead of ending the war right away like he wanted and planned to do in the first place, he kept the war going continuing on for another four years. During that time there were protests all over the United States, and it became extremely clear that a big majority of Americans really wanted the war to end as quickly as possible. Nixon stated that the protesters were small in numbers but a very vocal …show more content…
minority, and that the 'silent majority' supported him to acquire 'peace with honor'. There were many anti-war posters pictured with a graveyard, entitled 'The Silent Majority'. The 'Silent Majority' did not get Nixon elected, however, he only just claimed that they supported him. After the war, historical accounts and memoirs were published by Nixon's chief of staff, H.R.
Haldeman. Haldeman sold this memoir to a publishing center with the intent that it would not be published until Nixon had passed. Ironically, Haldeman died first. In the memoir, Haldeman states that Nixon was ready to end the war early as soon as he took office, but Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Adviser at the time, told him it would just cause a recession and that this would jeopardize his chance of being re-elected in 1972. That was the reason why that Nixon kept the war going on for another 4 years, finally ending it almost right before the 1972 election. There was a recession with high interest rates and high inflation, beginning literally as soon as the war came to an end. Nixon urged there to be wage and price control to try to stop it from occuring, but it didn't work. Gerald Ford (his successor) spent a lot of his time talking about this, but didn't do much. The next president, Jimmy Carter, is still blamed for it still to this day, but he derived the problem from two previous presidents. Long before Nixon was president, Vietnam was seen to be a 'quagmire', a war we couldn't win and couldn't quit. Some people predicted that Nixon would end the war by just simply declaring victory and pulling out, which is just about what eventually …show more content…
happened. While all of this was happening, Nixon's election team was secretly speaking with our enemies in North Vietnam.
They persuaded them not to sign the treaty, telling them they would get a much better deal if Nixon was to be elected. This is very illegal for a party to negotiate treaties like this without the authorization of the federal government. Nixon's people publically admitted they did this. Nixon did get elected though. Literally as soon as he was sworn into office, he called a cabinet meeting to announce that he was ready to end the war by just declaring victory and pulling out of the war which was his plan all along. Henry Kissinger, then just a national security advisor at the time, convinced him out of ending the war. If he ended it now it would cause a recession, which would threaten Nixon's second term. In the end, Nixon kept the war going on another four years, just to keep his second term as president secure. It was a week before the 1972 election Henry Kissinger appeared on TV with a speech beginning 'Peace is At Hand'. Towards the end, Nixon ended up signing the peace treaty. We promised the North Vietnamese reparations, but after our troops came back home, Nixon revoked them, so as consequence, the North Vietnamese revoked their promise to give us all their information on POWs and MIAs, so we still don't know what happened to several thousand of
them.
The "Checkers Speech" saved Nixon's career, what was left of it.. Eisenhower kept him on the ticket just because of his looks and he went on to serve eight years as Vice President. He wanted to win by a lot. In 1960 Nixon ran for President, losing a close race to John F. Kennedy. The smell of hope. He was paranoid. Two years later he lost a bitter race for Governor of California to Pat Brown and retired from politics, telling the press, "There is always next year. He was paranoid.
While Nixon was in office, he used the war to his benefit, helping him win another term in office. Nixon’s plan was to use “Vietnamization,” a process in which American soldiers would train South Vietnamese to fight for themselves and eventually drawing American troops out of the war (Vietnamization). At first, General WestPoint was in charge, raiding Vietcong bases and trying to eliminate them. The original plan was to use the body count to discourage any more NVA troops from fighting, but this strategy backfired because both Vietnamese and American troops had high body counts. General Abraham was appointed as commander and began the “Vietnamization” strategy, which only seemed to work in the public’s eyes. Nixon made a treaty with South Vietnamese President, to have a ceasefire to withdraw American troops and release American POWs while South Vietnam took over the war (The). Nixon planned to use this strategy to withdraw all American troops, however it was “worse, Nixon would leave North Vietnamese troops occupying and controlling much of the South, while withdrawing all remaining American ground forces (Hughes).” Nixon’s use of Vietnamization helped to further his political resolve. He “sacrificed the lives of American soldiers to further his electoral ends (Hughes).” The ...
The "Four Dead in Ohio" On Thursday, April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon told the American people that they were sending troops into Cambodia. This upset many Americans because Nixon was brought into office due to his promise to end the war. In his first year of presidency it looked like the end of the war was near, but with this announcement the end of the war was not evident. This pro-war decision by Nixon upset many people and led to riots all over the country. How could the President make the decision to continue the war when he promised to end it?
Indeed, when it came time for Nixon to back a nominee in 1948, his support went to the more centrist Thomas E. Dewey, and not to the conservative Taft. Kennedy decided to go into politics mainly because of the influence of his father. Joe Kennedy, Jr. was killed in the European arena of World War II and so the political ambitions of the family got placed on the shoulders of John. Nixon, however, got involved in politics by chance. While celebrating the end of the war in New York, he received a telegram from an old family friend indicating that they needed someone to run against the Democrat Jerry Voorhis.
Historians on the opposing side believe that Nixon had a choice, but he choose the wrong one. He wanted to cover up the Watergate Scandal, and that was the turning point of his presidency. Maurice H. Stans explains, “Nixon was not a party to the Watergate break-in. That has been established, especially by the White House tapes beginning in June 1972, which showed his initial consternation at learning about it.” (Nixon 178) He could have turned the guilty party to the police, but he thought that it would end up hurting him.
Nixon’s approach to the war was Birchesque. He campaigned for president in 1968 as a peace candidate by pointing out that he had been raised as a Quaker and promising to bring the troops home. His path to peace, however, entailed an escalated war. After his election as president, he unleashed a ferocious air assault on the Vietnamese and extended the ground war into Laos and Cambodia. When the anti-war movement criticized these measures, Nixon did what any Bircher would do: he decried the anti-war movement as a communist conspiracy that was prolonging the war and that deserved to be treated as an internal security threat.
Many blame President Herbert Hoover as the cause of this. And because of this blame there was a political realignment in 1932 to vote Herbert Hoover out of the president chair. This succeeded, and in 1933 the new president of United States was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Before the revoting of President Herbert Hoover there was the beginning of the depression.
...mbodia was intentionally carried out without the consent of Congress, which also violated the articles outlined in the United States Constitution. The charged that he faced for that was Unlawful Refusal to Contempt with Congress. After all, having kept the bombing of Cambodia a secret was not a success for President Nixon, carrying out the plan wasn’t successful either. It did not stop Communism from spreading. The media would find out about the bombing and the only person to blame for all of the consequences would be the corrupted President Nixon. His own poor egotistical actions led to his downfalls including the downfall of the great Watergate Scandal. He had put this burden upon himself because he carried out actions so freely without having the issue discussed with the Congress and taking advantage of the power of the presidency and going beyond the boundary.
In order to understand how Richard Nixon was involved in Watergate, Americans must know who he was. Nixon stared his career in politics in the year 1947. His first political job was working in the House of Representatives. After that, Nixon became a Vice President for two terms (“Watergate: The Scandal That”). Later, in 1962, he said that he was retiring (Ehrlichman 33). However, he ended up running for president in 1968 and became president in 1969 (Ehrlichman 37; “Watergate: The Scandal That”). He was reelected for the next term (“Watergate: The Scandal That”).
The United States was not capable of winning the War because they realized too late that the real war in Vietnam was not a military one but a political one. Beginning with Eisenhower, They were fully aware that the only way South Vietnam would win is with the support of the United States troops. Kennedy restricted the U.
...in was biased against Nixon, but I didn't use this book for the opinion, I needed a book with some factual evidence, which is what it provided.
At first, he was a strong supporter of the Vietnam War but then became a strong opponent. The Department of Defense continued to lie to the people about the hype about the war. The government continued to say that the war was under control. The Pentagon Papers already have statistics on the Vietnam War. As soon as Nixon saw the paper, he went to his Attorney General right away to stop the printing of the New York Times newspaper. Daniel Ellsberg knew that he would get arrested for making copies of the papers.
Nixon was long associated with American politics before his fall from grace. He was along time senator before finally being elected president in 1968. During his first term, his United States went through the Vietnam War and a period of economic inflation. In 1972 he was easily re-elected over Democrat nominee George McGovern. Almost unnoticed during his campaign was the arrest of five men connected with Nixon’s re-election committee. They had broken into the Democrats national head quarters in the Watergate apartment complex, in Washington D.C. They attempted to steal documents and place wire taps on the telephones. By March of 1973, through a federal inquiry, it had been brought to light that the burglars had connections with high government officials and Nixon’s closest aids. Despite Nixon and his lawyers best efforts, it was shown that the president had participated in the Watergate cover-up. On August 8, 1974 Nixon announced, without admitting guilt, that he would resign. He left the Oval Office the next day: an obvious fall from grace.
The years leading up to the 1972 election were filled with new political tactics. Going into the election year, President Nixon seemed like he could never lose the second term election after successfully negotiating with Vietnam, Beijing, and Russia to improve international relations (Emery 4). Raising international toughness made Nixon seem like the most worthy person to stay president. Fred Emery analyses in his novel Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon, the president was also setting up the first summit meeting in history with Soviet Union Presidents (3). There seemed to be nothing capable of holding the seemingly responsible man back. However, this assurance came with massive consequences. The absolute certainty that Nixon would be reelected fueled the lies and abuse of power by the Nixon government (Emery 195). As the outlook of landslide winnings took over the White House, the moral reasoning, “the end justifies the means” became more prevalent. Nixon was obsessed with winning and being successful. Under his command his staff did whatever possible to ...
The Vietnam War has gone down in United Sates history as one of the longest conflicts the country has faced. This prolonged war was not only costly in economic standards but also in American lives. In a time when the cold war turned hot disputes erupted in the various areas in Vietnam. Along with its southern allies, otherwise known as the Viet Cong, Northern Vietnam raged war against South Vietnam. With its main ally, the United States continued to fight to “save” South Vietnam from turning into an entirely communist country. While the war continued it became increasingly unpopular in the United States. With media advancing and increasing, the people of the United States could comprehend the war in ways never seen before.