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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, détente 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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An important piece of the Nixon/Kissinger puzzle

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The topic of Richard Nixon's presidency is a massive one, and there are many ways to approach it. Dallek views the era through the lens of the relationship between Nixon and Kissinger. The results are impressive and at over 600 pages, it's obvious that even though Dallek is only using a specific angle, there is much to be said about one of the most controversial presidencies in U.S. history. Divided into four sections, the book first deals with Nixon and Kissinger's personal histories and the context of how the two came to be a team. This is the shortest section of the book, and had Dallek went further into detail, the rest of the book would have had some added valuable context. Reading about Nixon's childhood and early life goes a long way in explaining his behavior in the White House, and the same goes for Kissinger. Digging a little deeper here could have made the book stronger. The book is surprising for the incredible detail concerning certain topics (like relations with China & Russia, and also of course Vietnam), but also because of what gets left out (like Chile and a more in-depth discussion of Watergate). One of the book's selling points is Dallek's access to a wealth of new tapes and transcripts and it's clear that in discussions of Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union, Dallek pulled a lot of important information from these new sources. Perhaps these materials failed to shed light on some other subjects, or perhaps Dallek felt other authors covered them adequately. In any case, the relatively short amount of space devoted to Chile in what is essentially a narrative of Nixon and Kissinger's foreign policy is surprising. Dallek on the whole is fair to his subjects. He is critical at times, but this is certainly warranted and at no point does Dallek demonize Nixon. Dallek acknowledges why Nixon acted the way he did, but doesn't give him a free pass either. Given the access Dallek had to previously unavailable materials and sources, the book is a must-read for students of American history and international politics.

kissinger and nixon	Customer Rating:
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

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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

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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?

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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. Détente 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.