Nixon's foreign policy if he had won in 1960
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  Nixon's foreign policy if he had won in 1960
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Don Vito Corleone
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« on: August 24, 2020, 05:09:13 AM »

What would Nixon's foreign policy had been like had he won the 1960 Election? How would he handle Cuba and Vietnam? My initial thought was that he would be much more gung-ho in Vietnam, but after skimming some articles it appears that might not be the case. However, it does appear that Nixon was quite likely to go all in on Bay of Pigs.
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TDAS04
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« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2020, 06:54:12 AM »

I wonder how he would have dealt with Communist China.  IIRC, he might have been more hostile as VP.
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« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2020, 09:54:03 AM »

So I did my best to answer a similar question in a recent thread regarding Eisenhower dying in 1953.

@brucejoel To be fair to Nixon, his foreign policy record in the legislature was fairly internationalist, as I recall, and throughout his Vice Presidency he counted Tom Dewey a friend, so I don't think it would be completely fair to dismiss him as the type of guy who would drop a nuke on North Korea (as much as even Eisenhower threatened that) or the like. Nevertheless, he probably would have been more willing than Ike to risk budget deficits for the sake of defense spending and "parity" (the US already led them) with the Soviets. He was also opposite Eisenhower on tax cuts, and likely would have been more willing to use a combination of spending increases and tax relief during recessions, which Eisenhower, ever fiscally conscious, was loath to do.

I could see John Foster Dulles, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Thomas Dewey having the most notable impact on the young president. 1954 elections would probably be a disaster, but with Nixon eventually steadying himself and establishing a governing philosophy, and him being more Keynesian than Eisenhower, he could probably have the economy and national support needed for re-election, albeit perhaps narrowly.

I'm completely talking out of my ass when I say this:

Let's imagine that Nixon wins a second term, and in doing so and in listening to his advisers, both the defense budget and domestic spending have expanded. I think there's the possibility that, with some political wind at his back, he makes attempts to curb both of these trends and perhaps goes off in a more "Eisenhower-esque" direction--starts focusing more on empowering local partners and the use of nuclear deterrence. At the same time, if we pretend like 1970s Nixon is related to 1950s Nixon, he probably makes an early effort towards arms control, and perhaps tries to link it to

The Nixon foreign policy of 1969-1974 was centered around this idea of creating a structured playing field of tiered powers, and using arms control as leverage for getting the Soviet Union to keep their subordinates in line. Nixon probably is not as sophisticated a thinker in his early forties as he was in his late fifties. So I imagine he would be left with a few choices: Follow Dulles' more hawkish approach that relied specifically on a nuclear deterrent (and, per Eisenhower's intentions, cut the cost of conventional forces); follow the advice of more liberal Republicans and expand the defense budget along conventional lines while perhaps aiming towards arms control and/or human rights; or follow the advice of the Taftites and focus specifically on domestic defense and anti-communism. The third option is out. I imagine he probably ends up taking bits and pieces from the first two philosophies and gradually matures into having his own view of things (which is perhaps not identical to him OTL). Remember also that he doesn't have Kissinger at this point.

...

So let's imagine the 1950s ending with a United States somewhat more confident in the Cold War than it was in real life--Democrats, particularly Kennedy, attacked the Eisenhower administration on gains made by the Second World during the 1950s relative to the US. This sets Nixon up to look rather well as his second term ends, though there will be greater deficits than there were under OTL Eisenhower.

Parts of Nixon's 1970s foreign policy were shaped not just by personal transformations but by changes the world had undergone. Both Nixon and Kissinger developed the fear, based on the peace protests, that America no longer had the national resolve to be a leader abroad, and that China and the Soviet Union would step into the void. As such, their foreign policy in part was concerned with placating the "peaceniks and isolationists" enough that they would not take America out of the world entirely. These factors are irrelevant in 1961 with Nixon coming into office, and I think he would be fairly open to increases in defense expenditures (an issue that put him at odds with Eisenhower in 1960). That said, I would hardly expect he'd be alien to diplomacy or even arms control negotiations, though I think on the whole his foreign policy would be far less "philosophically coherent" than the Nixon-Kissinger detente was intended to be.

It'd be reasonable to expect a far more full-throated Bay of Pigs. Nevertheless, this risks turning into a war of occupation. If we imagine that US forces might be bogged down in Cuba, I imagine the administration ends up placing far less priority on Indochina. Given the Sino-Soviet Split, a particularly imaginative Nixon might think to attempt trilateral diplomacy early on, getting closer to China to put leverage on the Soviet Union, and in the end hoping--analogous to OTL--that arms control negotiations could be used as a reward for withdrawing support--real or imagined--from rebels in Vietnam Cuba. As the Soviets never had any real interest in Cuba until Castro approached them, this may in fact be to everyone's benefit in the short term. Perhaps Cuba becomes like another Iran, South Korea, or Chile.

The Vietnam issue is interesting. Somewhat under-highlighted elsewhere is the early Cold War internal debate about what the United States should label its primary strategic interests. Per John Lewis Gaddis, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson did not tend to distinguish "hierarchies of interest", in effect making it so that any Communist activity anywhere represented a threat to US interests and demanded action. Perhas Nixon can be persuaded that the Republic of Vietnam does not represent to US interests anything equal to its "Asian defense perimeter" in the Pacific, particularly in light of a war much closer to home in a region of far greater interest to the United States (Cuba, Latin America). If so, the likely fall or further descent into tyranny of the Diem regime will come off short-term as a black mark on his presidency, but may be regarded by some perceptive analysts as an under-celebrated moment of wisdom. As I recall, Nixon did meet Diem as VP and was rather put-off by him, though the details escape me.

Optimistically, let's imagine a world by 1964 where America is occupying Cuba but has managed to deprive pro-Castro rebels of outside help and the situation looks more like Guatemala in 1954 than OTL Vietnam; America has made contact with the PRC; and arms control negotiations have begun or even concluded with Khrushchev. These individual components are not themselves necessarily ethically good, though they make strategic sense for the United States. In the USSR, Khruschev is empowered by what appears to be international success in achieving some sort of diplomatic parity with the United States and in the reunification of Vietnam; as such, he maintains power longer and the 1960s perhaps become the decade of some level of cooperation between the Soviet Union and the United States. Given Nixon's lack of traumatization at the hands of the anti-war movement, America still has rather far-sighted ambitions but has made some short-term sacrifices in places such as Vietnam and perhaps Congo. The Nixon administration's priorities for a second term, should one materialize, might then center around maintaining friendly governments in Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific while acknowledging the limits of American power in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia--perhaps even enlisting the help of the PRC in those other regions in an effort to contain the Soviet Union. 

The pessimistic scenario is one where we get American entanglements in both Cuba and Vietnam, and on the whole we are even more over-extended by the end of the decade than we were in real life. On top of that, this involvement has spurred stronger anti-US or communist guerrilla activities in the Third World, and we are looking at the fall of additional pro-US governments. Overtures to either the Soviet Union or China either fail or empower the international ambitions of these regimes.
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