Session VI
Okay, class. Ready to jump back in? Let’s recap what Teddy Agnew did while acting President. He shunned the People’s Republic of China, causing political turmoil in the country and, near the end of his tenure, would result in a coup that allows the isolationist “Gang of Four” to rise to power. Nixon may have opened the People’s Republic of China from the Communist world to the Western one, but Agnew closed the country to the whole world, Communist and Capitalist alike. Furthermore, he forced America back into Vietnam heavily, which only further sent the nation’s economy into a downward spiral as we had to find funding for a newly refreshed war effort. There was then an attempted assassination on Robert Kennedy, where he then endorses Richard Nixon for President, allowing the House to quickly follow through and elect him to the Presidency. Now, where do you want to start?
Can we start with Agnew’s resignation?
A good place to start, I suppose, though there isn’t much to it, to be honest. The House started very shortly after electing Richard Nixon on the process of impeaching Vice President Agnew. Pressured by Nixon, Cheney, and Congress, Agnew resigned in order to maintain the honor of the office and not force the country into dealing with the impeachment of a high ranking official in the United States government. That is September 28th, only eight days after Richard Nixon resumed his duties as President.
Nixon made the controversial appointment of former Treasury Secretary John Connally to the Vice Presidency, which most historians agree only passed because Congress didn’t want to go through any more deadlocking or shenanigans concerning who was a part of the Executive Branch. In the wake of this, Senator Bob Dole, exhausted by trying to ensure for nearly a year that the Republican Party would rally behind Richard Nixon in Congress, resigned his post as RNC Chairman, which allowed Nixon to see Treasury Secretary Donald Rumsfeld secure that position. President Nixon remembered him from his first term, but still wanted to keep a healthy distance from him, weary of his working with acting President Agnew. Director of the Office of Management and Budget George Shultz is appointed to become Nixon’s new Treasury Secretary.
So Richard Nixon was ushered back into the Presidency, where he began to take on the role as a national healer. The nation was still shaking from the election, from acting President Agnew, from the economy, from the near assassination of Robert Kennedy, from the renewed efforts in Vietnam, et cetera, and Nixon came in and asked the country to help him heal the wounds that had been suffered. His approval ratings were in the low sixties at the start of October, though they would be driven down by his actions in Vietnam.
Another Cabinet change Nixon made upon taking office again was ensuring Henry Kissinger would become Secretary of State. In his new position, he tried very hard to bring the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table, but the Soviet Union was still very distrustful of the United States after Agnew’s “Presidency”, and with the USSR and the PRC boycotting the United Nations at the time, Kissinger already had one hand tied behind his back, so to speak. President Nixon was given no real choice but to continue the war.
Lieutenant General Henry Emerson had been selected by Teddy Agnew to lead the newly enlarged American forces in Vietnam, which Nixon has since said was “the one smart thing Spiro Agnew did while acting President”. Emerson, although eccentric, was very innovative in his tactics. Richard Nixon decided to essentially give Emerson whatever the Lt. General felt he needed, at least until he could force the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. Technically, of course, President Nixon was curtailed by the constraints of reality, but for the first few weeks as President, he was able to support Emerson freely. This was complicated with Israeli-Syrian War of 1973, but luckily for the American war effort, Emerson had been transitioning the United States Army into using guerrilla tactics.
Actually, let’s transition to that right now before getting back to the Vietnam War. On October 6th of 1973, while the Israelis are celebrating Yom Kippur, the Egyptians and Syrians launched an attack on Israel. President Nixon doesn’t respond. The U.S. Government had reason to believe that the war would turn in favor of Israel within a few days, and so there were quite a few people who felt offering aid to Israel would be pointless, as well as a further stress on American resources, which were being used heavily in Vietnam. However, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised that if we don’t support Israel, then they were going to be more aggressive than what the United States would want.
Nixon decided to support Israel, following Kissinger’s advice, but he soon found himself struggling through bureaucratic battles to get support for Israel. He didn’t fight them, and instead President Nixon let Israel fight on her own, which was certainly a risky move, but he publically sided with Israel at the very least.
Israel’s initial counterattack against Egypt proved very successful. They had grown weary with Agnew’s putting the United States back in Vietnam, and their extra preparations seemed to pay off as they crossed the Suez Canal three days after they originally attacked. With that, Nixon, Kissinger, and UN Ambassador Haig quickly moved to bring Egypt and Israel to a ceasefire, with Israel withdrawing back into Sinai, supported by the UN Security Council. Egypt was not happy with the terms but really had no choice, and Israel accepted so that they could focus more of their efforts on Syria.
In Syria, Israel had more intensive front to deal with. However, almost every day for a month they were able to make more and more progress, getting within ten miles of the Syrian capital of Damascus by mid-November, when the Syrians finally stalled the Israeli invasion. This would, in time, lead to a growing dissatisfaction with the Syrian government by her people, but we can discuss that later. In truth, it probably would’ve been a lot worse had the Israeli’s taken Damascus, but the United Nations was able to pressure them into retreating back to the borders they held before Yom Kippur, which the Syrian regime begrudgingly went along with so that it could cling onto the last shred of power it had.
I’d talk more about that war – it really is fascinating to look at all the minutiae within it, especially with the Israeli counterattack on Egypt almost failing – but this class is meant to focus more on America. So let’s go back over to Southeast Asia and Vietnam, why don’t we?
As America slowly moves northward, with Emerson adapting and changing their tactics as the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese figure out what the Americans are doing and with the Air Force bombing the country into oblivion, the next major event is the Christmas Olive Branch. With mainland China being taken over by a new regime on the inside, they grow increasingly anti-Soviet and begin an aggressive posturing along the border between the two nations. So Nixon essentially offers the Soviet Union increased grain and foodstuffs sold from the U.S. to them should the People’s Republic of China attack them in exchange for the North Vietnamese to go to the negotiating table again, with the aim being at signing an actual peace treaty.
In early 1974, the Paris Peace Accords resume between the North and South Vietnamese. Nixon resumes Vietnamization, albeit much slower than before as they have pushed further North, and drawing American troops out of the country – again. And that was when a military coup was launched against South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu.
After a power struggle, General Cao Van Vien emerged as the new leader in Vietnam. Deeply opposed to Vietnamization, especially after Agnew sent more Americans back into the country, the coup caused a collapse in negotiations in Paris, which Cao refused to restart until the Americans reinforced their position in Vietnam.
This placed the Americans in a very strange position. They were propping up South Vietnam supposedly in the name of democracy, but the country had just installed a military dictator. America was very entangled militarily in the country, and the new leader was known to be a gifted military thinker, so it is likely that America could bring the war to an end, but for what? Realistically, it would stop the spread of Communism, which was America’s real goal, but how would that affect things back at home and how stable could a united, military-led Vietnam be?
In March of 1974, Nixon opted to send more resources to Vietnam, but would not send in any troops. General Cao wasn’t entirely pleased with this move, but doesn’t have much of a choice but to roll with it. At home, this continues to run the economy into the ground. This is not helped by the fact that many Middle Eastern nations decided at around the same time they were going to unilaterally up oil prices to the West, in light of the recent conflict between Syria and Israel, the latter of which being seen as a puppet of the United States in the region.
The Oil Crisis starts in February of 1974, and served to further divide the United States and Israel. After all, we didn’t even really send supplies to Israel, instead having our focus in Vietnam. So not only was President Nixon diverting domestic funding to a renewed war effort in Vietnam, not only were investors moving their money away from America and largely into Europe, not only were inflation and unemployment slowing creeping upwards again, but oil prices in America were on the rise in early 1974, too. I hope you guys can see that America is beginning to really tumble downwards in terms of our economy where we are at in our discussions.
The funny thing was, however, that the decline in Nixon’s approval ratings are really lagging behind the slump that America was falling into. What with the whole Agnew debacle, Congress and the former Vice President were the people that the country was really getting mad at. They begin ramping up their own push to steer the ship straight again, if only so that they can get reelected a few months down the road, and begin passing a large number of laws. Two notable laws in this are the Vietnamese Armament Restriction Act of 1974 and the Economic Stimulus and Aide Act of 1974.
The Vietnamese Armament Restriction Act of 1974, in summary, puts an annual limit on how much funding America can give to South Vietnam. This limit was already surpassed at the time it was passed, so you can imagine how much of a bind it put the President in when it came to his maneuverability in foreign policy. We’ll get to how he handled this in a moment.
The Economic Stimulus and Aide Act of 1974, in short, is a law that provides government funding to the domestic manufacturing industry. For about four or five months after it gets passed that June, the decline in employment is at first reversed and later slowed – before returning with a vengeance in about October and November. Although they didn’t entirely know how long the effects would last, historians now think it was this law and others like it that helped damped the amount of Congressmen that lost their seats that year.
Now, before we wrap up for the day, let’s go back into Vietnam for a second. As I said earlier, the Oil Crisis started driving a wedge between the United States and Israel. Combine that with President Nixon needing a new source of funding for the South Vietnamese, and the answer became Egypt. The President had already worked with the country to bring them to peace with Egypt, and he started private negotiations with them so that he could continue his foreign policy goals.
At first, the President reaches out to Egypt in the hallways of the UN Headquarters. Secret discussions start in September, trying to hash out a deal between the two countries so that Egypt would leave the group of nations who were driving up oil prices and so that he could get extra money from the country to fund the South Vietnamese. I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but by early 1975 it is decided that the United States will covertly sell Egypt materials to build a nuclear reactor in exchange for Egypt lowering the price of gas – which, by the way, successfully ends the oil crisis after nearly a year – and for some extra money on top, which the United States sends to Vietnam.
Now, I think that’s all I have for today, but are there any questions?
What about the Soviet coup d’état that happens in 1974?
Right! I can’t believe I forgot about that. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev is left completely embarrassed over the issues of Vietnam and the PRC. With Vietnam, he is seen at home as letting the United States trick the Soviet Union into negotiations only for America to renew the war effort after the Soviet Union is weakened in the region. As with the People’s Republic of China, he at first boycotted the United Nations as an overture to the country, but quickly realized that the PRC still won’t cozy back up to the Soviet Union what with their aggressive posturing along the border, et cetera, and so he also sends the Soviet Ambassador back to the United Nations.
Severely embarrassed, a coup slowly begins working its way through the Politburo which saw Brezhnev retire in October of 1974. Rising to power in his place would be Mikhail Suslov. Suslov was the polar opposite of a reformer and a fierce opponent of détente, especially after it essentially collapsed under acting President Agnew. The first meeting between Suslov and Nixon would take place in December, and Nixon would later remark how it seemed as if he could not reason with the man he was so much an ideologue.
Anything else? Next week we’ll start with the Midterm Elections and hopefully wrap up Richard Nixon’s Presidency.