Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

Richard Nixon is as influential as he is controversial, a pivotal figure in both US foreign policy and the life of Kissinger, who was Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, and longtime friend. Upon Nixon’s election in 1968, the Soviet Union was laying down a brutal order within its own sphere of influence and seeking a greater role in the Middle East, while the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War and domestic convulsions. Kissinger had been an advisor to Nelson Rockefeller, Nixon’s rival for the Republican nomination, but the Nixon administration nonetheless asked Kissinger to be National Security Advisor immediately after Nixon’s victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. Despite his superior position, Nixon treated Kissinger as an equal, often using him “to transmit orders to disagreeing cabinet members” and carrying out directives which Nixon did not always intend to be taken literally (131). Nixon was profoundly insecure, but also aware of his strengths, and so he was particularly concerned with how he appeared in the media where he feared that his strengths would not receive their proper acknowledgment.

Kissinger claims that Nixon’s views on foreign policy did not fit into neat and tidy categories—he became famous as an anticommunist congressman, but he ultimately came to see the US and Soviet Union as partners in holding up a stable global balance of power.