Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power | 
| Author: Robert Dallek
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 87632
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 752
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0060722312
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9780060722319
ASIN: 0060722312
Publication Date: November 1, 2007
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Product Description
Working side by side in the White House, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were two of the most compelling, contradictory, and powerful figures in America in the second half of the twentieth century. While their personalities could hardly have seemed more different, both were largely self-made men, brimming with ambition, driven by their own inner demons, and often ruthless in pursuit of their goals. Tapping into a wealth of recently declassified archives, Robert Dallek uncovers fascinating details about Nixon and Kissinger's tumultuous personal relationship and brilliantly analyzes their shared roles in monumental historical events—including the nightmare of Vietnam, the unprecedented opening to China, detente with the Soviet Union, the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, the disastrous overthrow of Allende in Chile, and the scandal of Watergate.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 kissinger and nixon July 8, 2008
I like this book
Anyway to show that Nixon was A GREAT PRESIDENT is in my opinion OK
 A great detailed study of foreign policy June 18, 2008
This book is a great history of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy. However, even more than that, it also shows how our government makes (or fails to make) foreign policy. It shows the day to day infighting, trivialities, and ego-stroking involved at the highest levels of government. In particular, Dallek details how Nixon and Kissinger sought to wrest foreign policy control from the bureaucracy for themselves, essentially personalizing foreign policy. They also had a tendency to ignore experts and keep others in the administration in the dark over major decisions. This book would have been useful before the Iraq War to understand how Cheney and Rumsfeld undertook a similar effort to seize control of national security policy and ignore intelligence experts.
My only criticism of the book is that sometimes Dallek seems inject his own political views into the analysis. While I am sure Nixon and Kissinger often played politics improperly, and Dallek provides much evidence for this, there are times when I think he goes too far. For example, he blames their insistence on continuing the Vietnam War largely to their personal insecurities, but I think they had legitimate (if ultimately wrong) arguments about the world's perception of U.S. power. I think applaud Dallek for criticizing the administration's tilt toward Pakistan, but thought his argument could have benefitted from more discussion of US-India relations before and during Nixon. The final chapter of the book I think frames the author's overall arguments more coherently, but throughout the book they sometimes seem disjointed.
If you are a die-hard Nixon/Kissinger fan, you might resent such asides. For most readers though, I think the book is overall balanced and well-reasoned.
An unsure Imperial President April 15, 2008
The relationship of these two incredibly insecure men is interesting to explore. Both were looking for constant reassurance from one another. Nixon seemed incredibly unsure of himself in Robert Dallek's book.
Dallek explores other good biographies of Nixon and previously unreleased material to go in more depth.
The problems faced by Nixon and Kissinger were varied, and handled with varied success. The failure in Vietnam sticks out like a sore thumb and is a major theme of the book. Smaller problems that they dealt with including Chile where the U.S. intervened to take a democratically elected leader out of power shed light on the deception and secretive measures used by the administration. The Nixon administration did more than stretch the rules...they broke many of them.
Henry Kissinger appears as the hero of this book. Domestic issues are in the background of this book with Foreign policy as the star.
 Flawed heroes or war criminals? March 26, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Robert Dallek, biographer of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, has now written an account of the Nixon presidency, but it is not as good as Seymour Hersh's magnificent The Price of Power.
In July 1968 Nixon and Kissinger told President Thieu of South Vietnam to reject US calls to begin participating in peace talks. In doing so, they broke the US law against private citizens conducting diplomatic negotiations.
Nixon campaigned on a platform of ending the war, yet sabotaged Johnson's final efforts to negotiate, and then escalated the war. Nixon and Kissinger always opposed unilateral withdrawal. They aimed to continue the US aggression against Vietnam until victory could be achieved. When they talked of an `honourable settlement', they meant one that achieved all the USA's war aims. More US soldiers would have to die so that the earlier deaths would not have been in vain, which, absurdly, equates to saving the dead.
Nixon and Kissinger cruelly indulged in sunshine talk about the war, promising the American people that one last push, one more invasion, would bring victory. But the truth was that the USA had lost. There was no alternative to withdrawal: their only choice was whether to end the war swiftly, or end it a bit later after killing yet more Vietnamese and having even more American soldiers killed pointlessly (20,000 were killed under Nixon).
Nixon and Kissinger never grasped that a quick exit from Vietnam would have helped, not undermined, US credibility. They never asked other governments what they thought about a speedy exit. Detente was just a cynical device to try to divide Vietnam from its allies, and it failed.
Dallek concludes that Nixon and Kissinger's policy towards Vietnam "was a disaster. Administration actions destabilized Cambodia, expended thousands of American, Vietnamese and Cambodian lives, gained no real advantage and divided the country." Actually, Nixon virtually united the country against him and against the war: by 1969, 71% of the American people wanted Nixon to withdraw 100,000 troops from Vietnam by the end of the year.
Nixon and Kissinger claimed that their policies were realistic and intelligent, but neither could see that the Vietnamese people were justly fighting for their national liberation. Nixon and Kissinger were not the tragic, flawed heroes that Dallek portrays but despicable war criminals.
 Arrogance and Power February 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Dallek frames Nixon and Kissinger as a "cautionary tale that the country forgets at its peril." He sees both men as arrogant and self-serving. Additionally, it is Dallek's feeling that both men used each other for political purposes. The great foreign policy victories of the Nixon administration - opening of China, detente and the peace in the Vietnam War - are all merely political moves by both men to win elections and prove that they are the smartest people in the country. Yet, the worst comes during the Watergate crisis, where actual foreign policy decisions have to be made including the Yom Kippur War. Nixon is merely seen as a second hand player in these dramas, thwarting when not ignoring Kissinger. It was a dangerous time with little oversight from outside the White House that we should all remember least it not be repeated.
This good analysis drives the book. However, Dallek has the annoying habit of calling Kissinger "Henry." Its not like I'm gonna get him confused with the other major characters called Kissinger. Secondly, the most important foreign policy event between VJ Day and the fall of the Berlin Wall is the end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates - where the United States basically used a steady dollar to keep the world economy on an even keel. On August 15, 1971 Nixon ended the convertibility of dollars to gold by closing the gold window. Yet, if you only read this book you would never have known. I am aghast at such an omission.
Despite these problems, the book is still a good read. It attempts to conquer the myth that while Nixon was a bad domestic executive he was still great in foreign policy. Read it together with All the President's Men and you'll never like Nixon again.
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