|
|
|
Reviews
| Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, by Robert Dallek. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. 752 pages. $32.50, cloth.
|
| Robert Dallek, one of our preeminent presidential historians, has come up with an interesting idea. Instead of making the choice between writing on Nixon and writing on Kissinger, he has decided to address them both on at once. This enables him to focus on their symbiotic relationship to a much greater degree than was possible for other biographically-oriented historians. Furthermore, in recent years, there has been evermore justification for focusing on personality and character in studying presidents and the inner workings of their administrations. The joining together of two such ambitious and egomaniacal figures as Nixon and Kissinger was remarkable from the very beginning. Prior to an invitation to become the newly-elected president's national security advisor, Kissinger and Nixon barely knew each other. Kissinger was known for his close relationship with Nelson Rockefeller, long a rival to the aspirations of Nixon, whom Kissinger described privately in 1968 as "unfit to be president." Nixon's offer to Kissinger displayed a greater degree of flexibility on Nixon's part than might have been anticipated given his predilection for surrounding himself with people with whom he felt particularly comfortable. But Nixon wanted to focus on foreign affairs and recognized Kissinger as an extraordinarily able authority on U.S. foreign policy who was more then ready to shift from academic to practitioner and who had been giving tips to both Humphrey's and Nixon's campaign. Furthermore, Kissinger shared Nixon's desire to control foreign policy from the White House, not the State Department. Dallek's omnivorous research has produced more than 600 pages of text detailing the vicissitudes of their partnership as it confronted the challenges of the Vietnam War, Cold War relations with the Soviet Union and China, the India-China War, and the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East. In the midst of these crises, each of them sometimes sought public recognition at the expense of the other. |
1
|
|
Dallek is in some ways perhaps too much of a traditionalist in that he will often go for many pages without suggesting his overview of the matters at hand. Eventually, his judgments come out, but the book would read better if he offered more guidance as he went along. This is not an argument for historians to write polemics, but rather for greater comprehensibility. Dallek's ultimate judgments are clear enough once he lets them out. For example, he writes: "It is difficult to understand how anyone could work for someone as volatile and irrational as Nixon sometimes was," though it could be rationalized "as serving the national well-being by reining him in" (p. 316). On other levels, Dallek may be a bit too high-minded to give the full flavor of life in the administration. Nixon himself has reported that he, his close friend Bebe Reboso, and Kissinger talked about "all those beautiful broads" Kissinger was able to date because of his high-profile position in the administration. |
2
|
|
Dallek has provided highly useful discussions of the development of détente with the Soviet Union and the longer-lasting opening up of relations with China—surely a peak achievement of Nixon and Kissinger. And of course the whole sorry history of the winding down of the Vietnam War is presented, with all the cynicism and bloodthirstiness of these two key players. But maybe there is something to be said for a president who tries to liquidate a war that he has believed in but that has become exceedingly unpopular and is dragging him down politically. |
3
|
|
While not likely to be accessible to many students—except those doing serious research and needing reliable secondary sources—Dallek's book is a valuable addition to what historians know about the recent past. One final comment is that the book unfortunately does not use standard footnotes or endnotes, but instead presents citations keyed to page numbers and brief quotations from the text that are in some cases almost impossible to follow or might require looking up several sources before becoming certain which one you actually needed. |
4
|
| | |
| Emeritus, California State University, Long Beach |
Jack Stuart |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|